Comparison

Ship It vs AI Tycoon

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Ship It

Build a virtual app development empire from a small studio to a large business. Manage tech debt, handle app store reviews, and hire advisors to optimize your growth. Make strategic exits to gain permanent benefits for future runs.

Highlights
  • Build and improve apps
  • Manage tech debt
  • Handle app store reviews and incidents
  • Hire and upgrade advisors
  • Automated builds and idle earnings
  • Make strategic studio exits
  • Unlock permanent legacy benefits
Features
Read full description

Turn taps into apps. Turn a tiny studio into your pocket empire. SHIP IT! is an incremental game about building apps, growing a studio, and making your next big exit. Start small, ship new versions, improve your apps, and put your earnings back into the business. BUILD SOMETHING BIGGER Write code, launch apps, and choose upgrades that move your studio forward. Build a portfolio a buyer wants, unlock automation, and keep shipping new versions. MIND YOUR TECH DEBT New features make an app earn more. Most also add tech debt, which slows its next builds. The Features screen shows exactly how much before you buy. When the debt piles up, refactor: pay a quarter of what those features cost, clear the debt, and keep every feature. THINGS BREAK From your second studio, App Review checks every 25th version. Ship a release with too much debt and it's rejected. The app goes off sale until the fix ships. Design Polish raises the limit, and each app warns you before a release would fail. Incidents keep you on your toes: servers go down, payments wobble, a Friday deploy goes wrong. Spend cash to fix it, send an adviser, or wait it out. Nothing random happens while you're idle or away, and your versions never go down. LEAVE WITH A PLAN Create a Build plan with app-version targets and let your automated builds get to work. Your studio keeps building and earning for up to 8 hours while you're away, and Night Shift stretches that to 24. Stay away longer and the overflow bank keeps earning at a quarter of the rate, for up to the same time again. MEET YOUR UNFAIR EDGE Discover 68 satirical advisers with different abilities. Choose a Power for a timely boost and seat a passive adviser at your Studio desk for an ongoing perk. Every card shows its effect at a glance, and you can swipe through your collection. Find combinations that suit your run, and collect duplicates to improve them. Rotate your team: lean on one adviser too often and they need a longer rest. A COLLECTION THAT GROWS WITH YOU Unlock CI to choose a free first passive adviser. Earn extra expansion cards as you recruit. For dedicated collectors, reaching Rank V with every adviser unlocks the road to Master VI. MAKE YOUR BIG EXIT Sell your studio and carry permanent benefits into the next run. Later, take on optional Exit Goal quests with distinct rules and rewards. Late in the game, their targets grow with your studio, so they stay a real challenge. Complete a quest to retire it from the board, or keep building a normal studio at your own pace. PLAY THE LONG GAME After 18 exits, each of your next 17 Legacy sales adds 13% code speed, compounding, so the late game keeps its pace. Old apps become classics: from v1000, an app earns ×1.5 for every newer app you've launched. Chase 8 badges and 23 tiers in the Hall of Fame, and keep every tier after every sale. Earn Feature Complete to unlock Max out, which buys every feature level you can afford on an app in one tap. Then see how your all-time revenue ranks on the Fortune leaderboard in Game Center. MAKE IT YOUR STUDIO Enjoy a lively pixel-art workspace with an original soundtrack that grows with your career, and big moments that land with stamps, bursts, and count-ups. Dress the studio with neon signs, window views, desk toys and pets, with a new drop every Monday, and fill a trophy cabinet with every exit. Watch your seated adviser join the crew. Play without an account or an internet connection. Optional purchases are available. One more version. One more upgrade. One more big idea. Ship it. Game Center wallet backup is optional. Optional in-app purchases and Founder Club subscriptions are available. All cash and earnings shown in the game are fictional in-game currency. Privacy: https://www.cleardays.co/ship-it/privacy/ Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

AI Tycoon

Features
Read full description

You found one refurbished laptop in a closet. That is enough to start. AI Tycoon is an idle tycoon game about quietly building the world's biggest AI datacenter empire. Serve AI requests for cash, buy more compute, and grow from a single laptop into a planet-scale swarm that never sleeps. Just try not to let anyone notice how much power you are drawing. WHAT YOU DO - Tap to serve AI requests and earn cash, then reinvest in bigger, faster compute. - Keep power, cooling, and water ahead of your machines, or everything throttles. - Watch your suspicion meter. Grow too fast and people start asking questions. - Fund research, then reset for Model Breakthroughs that supercharge your next run. SCALE WITHOUT LIMITS From a closet laptop to server racks, warehouses, orbital compute, and finally a Dyson swarm around the sun. Every reset makes you faster. Every upgrade buys a little more of the future. HOW IT ENDS Most idle games never end. This one lets you research the Origin of the Universe itself. Get there before anyone traces the power bill back to you, and you win. Quietly. FEATURES - A deep idle and prestige loop that keeps paying off while you are away. - Offline earnings, so your empire grows even when the app is closed. - A satirical story about compute, power, and getting away with it. - Play in your language: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. - No account and no sign-up. Your progress stays on your device. AI Tycoon is free to play, with optional ads and one-time in-app purchases, including an ad-free unlock. No loot boxes and no gambling, just numbers going up and a growing sense of unease. Serve the tokens. Cool the racks. Do not get caught.

Screenshots

Ship It4 screens
AI Tycoon4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Ship It at daily against AI Tycoon's every 6 days. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Ship It sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and AI Tycoon sells 9 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Ship It ships an update daily, AI Tycoon every 6 days. Both last shipped on October 10, 2026.

Scorecard1 real difference · 8 level
Ship It versus AI Tycoon: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterShip ItAI Tycoon
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (6 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings6 — better—
Update frequencyDaily — betterEvery 6 days
AdsYesYes
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhoneiPhone
Requires iOS17.016.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size190 MB49 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHendrik HaandrikmanFlashport GmbH

In-app purchases

4 purchases

Ship It

Subscriptions1
  • Founder Club$4.991 Month
One-time3
  • Pocket Chips — 30 Chips$0.99
  • Stack of Chips — 160 Chips$4.99
  • Crate of Chips — 350 Chips$9.99
9 purchases

AI Tycoon

One-time9
  • Golden Touch$2.99
  • Lights-Out Ops$2.99
  • Regulatory Capture$3.99
Show 6 more
  • Ad-Free Pass$3.99
  • Research Overdrive$3.99
  • Kingmaker$3.99
  • Ops Automation$3.99
  • Overclock License$4.99
  • Founder's Bundle$14.99

Questions

Is Ship It free?
Ship It is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is AI Tycoon free?
AI Tycoon is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Ship It or AI Tycoon have ads?
Both Ship It and AI Tycoon show ads.
Which is updated more often, Ship It or AI Tycoon?
Ship It ships an update daily, and AI Tycoon every 6 days. Most recently, Ship It was updated on October 10, 2026 and AI Tycoon on October 10, 2026.

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