Sketchbook® vs Simple Drawing Pad
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Sketchbook®
This app provides a professional-grade drawing and painting experience for artists and illustrators. It offers a natural drawing feel with customizable tools, layers, and guides for precision. Unlock advanced features like custom brushes and canvas resizing with an optional premium purchase.
- Full complement of brush types
- Highly customizable brushes
- Guides, rulers, and stroke tools
- Layers with blend modes
- Clean and unobtrusive interface
- Custom brush creation (premium)
- Canvas resizing (premium)
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From quick sketches to fully finished artwork, Sketchbook goes where your creativity takes you. Sketchbook is an award-winning sketching, painting, and drawing app for anyone who loves to draw. Artists and illustrators love Sketchbook for its professional-grade feature set and highly customizable tools. Everyone loves Sketchbook for its elegant interface and natural drawing experience, free of distractions so you can focus on capturing and expressing your ideas. • A full complement of brush types: pencils markers, airbrushes, smear and more that look and feel just like their physical counterparts • Brushes are highly customizable so you can create just the look you want • Guides, rulers and stroke tools support precision when you need it • Layers with a full complement of blend modes deliver the flexibility to build up and explore drawings and color • Purpose-built for sketching, the interface is clean and unobtrusive so you can focus on drawing Purchase the Premium Bundle to unlock more... • Import and export brushes • Create your own custom brushes • Resize your canvas or image • Set canvas resolution in px/inch or px/cm • Clipping masks • Time-lapse recording: choose fixed canvas view or show pan/zoom navigation • Additional layer adjustments including blur, sharpen, brightness/contrast, greyscale, and invert • Additional color harmonies • Additional custom gradients • Select color from reference images • Extract color palettes from images • Import and export color palettes • Layer grouping • Layer masking Blend Modes • Draw Outline tool • Lasso Fill tool • Export to PDF • plus more to come!
Simple Drawing Pad
Easily create drawings, take notes, or doodle with a variety of colors and pen thicknesses. Supports multi-touch for collaborative drawing and allows you to save your creations.
- Draw pictures
- Take handwritten notes
- Doodle
- 16 color options
- Adjustable pen thickness
- Multi-touch support
- Save drawings
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A simple drawing app. You can easily use it to draw pictures, take handwritten notes, doodle, etc. There are 16 different colors to choose from You can also change the thickness of the pen Multi-touch support allows multiple people to draw at the same time You can also save the images you draw
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Sketchbook® at 4.8 against Simple Drawing Pad's 4.1. Sketchbook® also leads on ads (none vs shown) and ratings volume (221K vs 36). Simple Drawing Pad's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and review sentiment (100% vs 77%). On price, update cadence, device support and iOS requirement 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
Both are free to download. Sketchbook® sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Simple Drawing Pad asks for nothing beyond the download.
Sketchbook® holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.1. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Sketchbook® has 221K ratings behind it against 36, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 77% of Sketchbook®'s written reviews are positive against 100% of Simple Drawing Pad's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 5, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Sketchbook® | Simple Drawing Pad |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (221K ratings) — better | 4.1 (36 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 76.6% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 221K — better | 36 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Ad-supported — better |
| Best chart rank | #32 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15 — better | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 144 MB | 16 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sketchbook, Inc. | Ryouhei Azuma |
Customer experience
Sketchbook®
Simple Drawing Pad
Bugs and requests
Sketchbook®
Reported bugs
4 issues- Layers randomly deleted or corrupted
- Freezing when using certain tools like the eyedropper
- Saving issues leading to loss of progress
- Incompatibility with newer iPad Pro devices
Requested features
7 requests- Add blurring and clipping mask tools
- Improve gallery and canvas rotation functionality
- Allow custom font import
- Add effects like glow, stroke, and drop shadow
- Implement layer grouping and organization
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- Add real-time collaboration features
- Improve time-lapse recording and saving
Simple Drawing Pad
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Sketchbook®
- Premium Bundle$2.99
Simple Drawing Pad
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Sketchbook® free?
Is Simple Drawing Pad free?
Which has better reviews, Sketchbook® or Simple Drawing Pad?
Do Sketchbook® or Simple Drawing Pad have ads?
Which is updated more often, Sketchbook® or Simple Drawing Pad?
Other comparisons
