Comparison

Arrette Scale sketch drafting vs Draft Paper

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

Head to head
About

Arrette Scale sketch drafting

This app allows designers to sketch freehand while maintaining precise scale, similar to vector drafting tools. It offers intuitive drawing tools and features for easy sharing and collaboration, simplifying the design process for professionals.

Highlights
  • Freehand drawing pens with vector scaling
  • Adjustable grid system (metric/decimal feet)
  • Straight edge and circle edge tools
  • Distance and area measurement tools
  • Lasso tool for selection and manipulation
  • Layer support for organized designs
  • Easy sharing via email or saving to device
Read full description

Rated #1 Technical App for Architects by ArchDaily! Arrette Scale for iPad is an app for designers who want to draw freehand while maintaining a measurable drawing scale like vector drafting tools. Architects, urban planners, surveyors, home remodelers, field archaeologists and dozens of other kinds of professionals will find this app useful. Unlike some other vector drawing tools, Arrette is simple to use. Arrette provides the platform to begin design work and generate ideas without moving too quickly to rigid straight lines and curves. We want to help you draw much as you would normally draw on paper, but to give you the extra tools and ways to share your work that make your life easier and make the design process simpler and more productive. The basic drawing structure is a familiar one - drawing layers which can be overlayed on a base image. The Grid keeps you aware of the size of what you're drawing, and the Edge helps you draw straight lines when you want. When you're ready, you can easily share drawings by email or save them to your device. We've designed Arrette to be extremely easy to learn. In about five minutes, you'll understand how to zoom and scale your canvas, draw lines, and load base images to work on top of. Our tools will seem familiar from other structured drawing applications, but every tool we've built has been simplified and optimized with scale in mind. Uses for Arrette: * An urban designer drafts plans for a new sub-division in a small town * A real estate agent snaps a photograph of a living space and begins to sketch out ideas for staging * A new home owner sketches the plan for an elaborate garden in the back yard * An archaeologist precisely records the provenience of a newly discovered artifact, including its location on an aerial map and the outline of its form * A construction manager notes progress on a work site, sending annotated precision-scale documents back to the general contractor live from the work site These are just a few of the ways that we have envisioned Arrette becoming an essential tool for many professionals. Arrette is the ideal tool for sketching because of its ease of use, preservation of scale, and flexibility in working with original source material such as other drawings, photographs, and maps. Included drawing tools: * Freehand drawing pens that scale like vector lines but are as easy to use as pencil and paper * An adjustable grid system that you can easily flip between the metric system and decimal feet * A straight edge tool for drawing perfectly straight lines or arrays of parallel lines * A circle edge tool for drawing arcs and circles of arbitrary, but precise radius * Distance and area measurement tools for measuring the lengths, perimeters and areas of arbitrary pathways in your drawing at precise scale * A lasso tool to select, move, copy and paste previously drawn lines * Layers, for separating out parts of composite objects or for adding new ideas to an existing document that overlay earlier designs * The ability to share Arrette documents with other users or to e-mail documents in PNG or PDF formats * An eraser tool, for revising your designs or removing objects from previous work * The ability to adjust the width of all lines globally even after the lines have been drawn * A color picker to choose from a variety of different pen colors for your drawing Base image imports: * The ability to load base images to draw on top of; base images respect their original scale and direction when the document is zoomed or panned * Import base images from Email, Dropbox, and Adobe Creative Cloud * Copy and paste from other apps that support JPG, PNG or PDF Document sharing features: * Send PDFs with scale and direction information to colleagues, clients, and other parties via email * Save your work to your Photo Gallery * Share raster versions of your work with anyone via email, Twitter, or Facebook

About

Draft Paper

Create floor plans, layouts, and blueprints with ease using intuitive drawing tools. Support for multiple layers, iCloud, and Dropbox integration allows for seamless workflow. Export your designs to various formats for printing or further editing.

Highlights
  • Draw lines, rectangles, text, and more
  • Support for multiple layers
  • Export to PDF, JPEG, and DXF
  • iCloud and Dropbox integration
  • Mirror, translate, rotate, and scale operations
  • Apple Pencil support
Features
Read full description

Draft Paper is a simple and intuitive way to make floor plans, layouts or blueprints quickly and easily. Touch and drag to draw lines and rectangles on up to 10 independent layers, then export directly to PDF, JPEG or DXF ready for printing, emailing or editing in other software. Full feature list: + Drawing: Line, Dotted Line, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Segment, Text, Erase, Measure, Presentation + Multi file iCloud support + Export to JPEG / Vector PDF / DXF + Upload / download from DropBox or any other compatible app + Mirror / translate / rotate / scale operations + Smooth, fast and intuitive zooming / panning + Multiple layers and colors + Selectable right / left handed modes. + Unlimited undo + Unlimited size drawing area + Apple Pencil support (including double tap) + Metric / Imperial (USC) units support + Designed for iPhone and iPad For full instructions please visit our website, http://draftpaper-app.com

Screenshots

Draft Paper4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Draft Paper at Free against Arrette Scale sketch drafting's $8.99. Draft Paper also leads on rating (4.4 vs 2.6) and update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 3 months). Arrette Scale sketch drafting's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and review sentiment (60% vs 51%). On ads 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

Draft Paper is free to download; Arrette Scale sketch drafting costs $8.99 up front. Draft Paper sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Arrette Scale sketch drafting asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Draft Paper holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 2.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Draft Paper has 16K ratings behind it against 14, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 60% of Arrette Scale sketch drafting's written reviews are positive against 51% of Draft Paper's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Arrette Scale sketch drafting ships an update every 3 months, Draft Paper every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 11, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard9 real differences · 1 level
Arrette Scale sketch drafting versus Draft Paper: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterArrette Scale sketch draftingDraft Paper
Price$8.99Free — better
Rating2.6 (14 ratings)4.4 (16K ratings) — better
Positive reviews60.0% of reviews — better50.8% of reviews
Number of ratings1416K — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 2 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS12.4 — better15.0
Further details — not scored
Size53 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperArrette, Inc.Giles Goddard

Customer experience

Arrette Scale sketch drafting

All ratings14 ratings
Positive42.9%
Neutral0.0%
Negative57.1%
Written reviews40 reviews
Positive60.0%
Neutral7.5%
Negative32.5%

Draft Paper

All ratings15,754 ratings
Positive85.2%
Neutral5.6%
Negative9.2%
Written reviews362 reviews
Positive50.8%
Neutral14.9%
Negative34.3%

Bugs and requests

Arrette Scale sketch drafting

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

Draft Paper

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Saved files disappearing or becoming corrupted
  • Inconsistent behavior when zooming and panning
  • Inability to import/export files as expected

Requested features

4 requests
  • Add copy/paste functionality
  • Improve text editing capabilities
  • Provide more precise measurement tools
  • Implement ability to save multiple versions of a project

In-app purchases

None

Arrette Scale sketch drafting

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Draft Paper

One-time1
  • All Features$9.99

Questions

Is Arrette Scale sketch drafting free?
Arrette Scale sketch drafting costs $8.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Draft Paper free?
Draft Paper is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Arrette Scale sketch drafting or Draft Paper?
Draft Paper is rated higher. Arrette Scale sketch drafting averages 2.6 out of 5 from 14 ratings, while Draft Paper averages 4.4 from 16K ratings.
Do Arrette Scale sketch drafting or Draft Paper have ads?
Neither Arrette Scale sketch drafting nor Draft Paper shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Arrette Scale sketch drafting or Draft Paper?
Arrette Scale sketch drafting ships an update every 3 months, and Draft Paper every 2 weeks. Most recently, Arrette Scale sketch drafting was updated on October 11, 2026 and Draft Paper on October 14, 2026.

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