Comparison

Sketchbook® vs Comics AI

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

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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)
Read full description

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!

About

Comics AI

This app empowers you to create unique comic strips and comic books with AI assistance or manual tools. Choose from diverse art styles, customize panels, add text, and export your work as a PDF. It's a comprehensive tool for digital comic creation.

Highlights
  • AI-assisted comic generation
  • Multiple comic art styles
  • Built-in drawing and sketch-to-image tools
  • Customizable panel layouts and text bubbles
  • Meme creation
  • Comic book PDF export
  • Creative filters and stickers
Features
Read full description

FEATURES: - Describe a scene and AI draws the comic panel in seconds - or go full DIY with the built-in tools. - 200+ ready-made characters: heroes, sci-fi rebels, fantasy legends, everyday people, kids, animals and more. - Consistent characters: pick up to 4 heroes for a scene and they keep the same face, hair and outfit in every panel. - Create your own hero: describe them in words, or start from a photo - they stay recognizable in every story you make. - 16 art styles: Anime, Manga, Webtoon, Pop Art, Noir, Gekiga, 90s Anime, Vintage, Classic, Futuristic, Shojo Manga, Graphic Novel, Kids Book, Kids Illustration, Newspaper and Realistic. - Draw to comic: sketch with your finger or Apple Pencil right on the canvas and let AI finish the art. - Sketch to image: snap a photo of any drawing and turn it into polished comic art. - Free-form panel canvas: split pages into grids or custom layouts, resize panels, zoom and pan artwork inside frames. - Drop in your own photos and mix them with AI art. - Speech bubbles, thought clouds, caption bars, comic fonts and POW-style stickers - drag, resize, rotate and layer them all. - Pro layer system: reorder, hide, lock and organize every bubble, text and bar from one panel. - Finishing filters for every artwork: Halftone, Crosshatch, Webtoonify, Posterization, Dot Matrix and more. - Auto-save: close the app mid-page and everything is right where you left it. - Comic book PDF export: assemble multi-page books, save them to your library, combine them, and export in Original, A4 or Comic Book size. - Customize everything: gutters, window and border colors, panel spacing. - Meme maker for quick laughs. - Credits never expire - what you buy stays yours. - No account needed - just download and create. - Made for iPhone and iPad, with new styles and features landing all the time. We made Comics AI for people who have stories in their head but not the time (or the pen skills) to draw every frame by hand. Give it five minutes and you'll have your first page - we'd love to see where you take it. CONTACT: contact@comicsAI.com Links for more info: - Terms of Use: https://www.comicsAI.com/terms - Privacy policy: https://www.comicsai.com/privacy - Link for more info: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202039

Screenshots

Sketchbook®4 screens
Comics AI4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Sketchbook® at 77% against Comics AI's 43%. Sketchbook® also leads on ratings volume (221K vs 297) and rating (4.8 vs 4.5). Comics AI's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs every 2 months). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. Sketchbook® sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Comics AI sells 8 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per 7 days. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Sketchbook® holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Sketchbook® has 221K ratings behind it against 297, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 77% of Sketchbook®'s written reviews are positive against 43% of Comics AI's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Sketchbook® ships an update every 2 months, Comics AI weekly. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 6 level
Sketchbook® versus Comics AI: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSketchbook®Comics AI
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (221K ratings) — better4.5 (297 ratings)
Positive reviews76.6% of reviews — better43.2% of reviews
Number of ratings221K — better297
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank#36 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS1515.0
Further details — not scored
Size144 MB115 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperSketchbook, Inc.Stanislav Cekunov

Customer experience

Sketchbook®

All ratings220,588 ratings
Positive95.8%
Neutral2.4%
Negative1.8%
Written reviews1,733 reviews
Positive76.6%
Neutral7.1%
Negative16.3%

Comics AI

All ratings296 ratings
Positive86.5%
Neutral5.4%
Negative8.1%
Written reviews44 reviews
Positive43.2%
Neutral6.8%
Negative50.0%

User reviews

Sketchbook®

From 221K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Amazing, free, and no ads
  • 👍 Lots of brushes and customization options
  • 👍 Intuitive and easy to use
  • 👍 Great for beginners and professionals
  • 👍 Smooth performance and no lag

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Occasional freezing and crashing issues
  • 🐛 Blurry or corrupted images when saving or copying
  • 🐛 Glitches with color selection and layers
  • 🐛 Inability to rotate canvas or access gallery easily
  • 🐛 Lack of blurring and clipping mask tools

Comics AI

From 297 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Good for beginners
  • 🎨 Great for generating images from sketches
  • 🏆 Excellent page design
  • 😍 Best app for generating comics
  • ✨ Amazing app functionality

Room to improve

  • 💸 Cash grab / Pay to use
  • ❌ Limited free uses
  • 📉 AI ruins creativity
  • 🐛 App not working properly
  • 😩 Annoying AI generator limit

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
Show 2 more
  • Add real-time collaboration features
  • Improve time-lapse recording and saving

Comics AI

Reported bugs

12 issues
  • App not working at all
  • New border system is a nightmare
  • Older auto-select size was easier
  • Not even working properly
  • Can't even make a square
Show 7 more
  • Trial enterprise expired after 3 days
  • Can't generate gore content
  • Everything generates as NSFW
  • Can't see NSFW content clearly
  • Lag in app
  • Speech bubbles not in English
  • Can't repeat character in two panels

Requested features

9 requests
  • More free options or a one-time purchase option
  • Allow for old way to be an option (auto-selected sizes)
  • Option to turn on blood and related content (NSFW)
  • More panel setups
  • More filters like genre and page layout
Show 4 more
  • More free genres
  • More options for AI generation (e.g., anime)
  • Ability to repeat the same character in two panels
  • Allow for auto-selected sizes of square or rectangular panels

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Sketchbook®

One-time1
  • Premium Bundle$2.99
8 purchases

Comics AI

Subscriptions5
  • Weekly$3.997 Days
  • PRO Weekly$4.997 Days
  • Monthly$7.991 Month
Show 2 more
  • PRO Monthly$12.991 Month
  • Yearly$39.991 Year
One-time3
  • 300 Credits$4.99
  • 700 Credits$9.99
  • 1600 Credits$19.99

Questions

Is Sketchbook® free?
Sketchbook® is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Comics AI free?
Comics AI is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Sketchbook® or Comics AI?
Sketchbook® is rated higher. Sketchbook® averages 4.8 out of 5 from 221K ratings, while Comics AI averages 4.5 from 297 ratings.
Do Sketchbook® or Comics AI have ads?
Neither Sketchbook® nor Comics AI shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Sketchbook® or Comics AI?
Sketchbook® ships an update every 2 months, and Comics AI weekly. Most recently, Sketchbook® was updated on November 1, 2026 and Comics AI on October 31, 2026.

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