Comparison

Tonkro vs Retales Sampler

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Tonkro

Features
Read full description

MAKE MUSIC BY TOUCHING THE MACHINE Tonkro is a playful music workstation for iPad: part synthesizer, sampler, drum machine, sequencer, recorder, editor, mixer, and DJ performance space. SHAPE ORIGINAL INSTRUMENTS Explore distinctive synth and drum engines through four expressive controls. Each workshop is built to feel immediate: touch the illustrated machinery, hear the result, and let the characters react to your performance. SAMPLE THE WORLD Record through the microphone or import audio. Play one sound chromatically, divide it into untransposed slices, or map multiple samples across keys and pads. Trim, crop, loop, reverse, fade, change speed, transpose, and preserve the original recording with non-destructive editing. FIND RHYTHMS YOUR WAY Seven sequencer personalities turn taps, held notes, patterns, gestures, and playful systems into musical motion. Tempo, transport, MIDI, and recording stay connected, so a sketch can become an arrangement without breaking the flow. RECORD AND ARRANGE Build with eight stereo tracks. Record audio or notes, edit clips and piano-roll performances, overdub, punch, loop, lift, drop, mix, export stems, and save portable project bundles. PERFORM WITH MONSTER DECKS Load two tracks, set beat grids, sync, use key lock, cue points, hot cues, quantized loops, EQ, filters, pitch bend, and the crossfader. Record the performance or print it directly into the tape arrangement. MADE FOR PLAY Tonkro keeps its creative tools visible, touchable, and full of character. It works without an account, advertising, or third-party analytics. Your projects, recordings, and imported samples remain on your iPad unless you choose to export or share them.

About

Retales Sampler

Features
Read full description

Retales is a drum machine made of scraps of sound. Eight pads, a step grid and little else: everything is on one screen, and you understand it by looking at it. It comes with 320 kits ready to play, but the point is making your own: you tap out a few hits on the table, the app finds them, assigns them to the pads, and you have a kit nobody else has. EIGHT PADS Each pad has volume, tune, pan, character, attack and length. The filter is a single knob, low-pass one way and high-pass the other, with resonance. There are also delay and reverb sends, choke groups and reverse. SEQUENCER, PATTERNS AND SONG 16 or 32 steps. Each step has its own velocity, probability, tune and repeat. Eight patterns, A to H, that you chain into a song. Export the pattern or the song as WAV. RECORD AND SLICE Up to 20 seconds from the microphone, or an audio file. Retales finds the hits and assigns them to the pads. Clean up removes background noise from the recording and evens out the hits, without touching the original. What you make is saved in the Mine bank, with a cover photo, and you can export the project. MIDI AND AUDIO UNIT Notes 36 to 43 for the pads, Program Change and Bank Select to change kits, and MIDI LEARN, endless knobs included. As an Audio Unit instrument (AUv3), Retales opens in apps that load Audio Units v3, with the host's tempo and transport and settings you can automate. MAC, IPAD AND IPHONE It is the same app on all three. Held upright, the iPhone is for playing: the eight pads fill the screen. Turned sideways, it is the editor. In eight languages. TEN BANKS, 320 KITS, 2560 SOUNDS Every sound is synthesized for Retales. The app is free, with every feature and the Materia bank, 32 kits, unlocked. "Full Retales", a one-time in-app purchase, unlocks the other nine banks, 288 more kits, and covers the Mac, the iPad, the iPhone and the AUv3. No accounts, no ads. It collects no data.

Screenshots

Retales Sampler3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Tonkro at none against Retales Sampler's 1. Retales Sampler's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

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

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Retales Sampler sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Tonkro asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
Tonkro versus Retales Sampler: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterTonkroRetales Sampler
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo โ€” betterYes
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad, Mac โ€” better
Requires iOS18.018.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size48 MB423 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperBipasha NayakLuis Diaz-Faes

In-app purchases

None

Tonkro

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Retales Sampler

One-time1
  • Full Retales$39.00

Questions

Is Tonkro free?
Tonkro is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Retales Sampler free?
Retales Sampler is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Tonkro or Retales Sampler have ads?
Neither Tonkro nor Retales Sampler shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Tonkro or Retales Sampler?
Tonkro ships an update every 3 weeks, and Retales Sampler every 3 weeks. Most recently, Tonkro was updated on October 31, 2026 and Retales Sampler on November 10, 2026.

Other comparisons