Sketchbook® vs RoughAnimator
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!
RoughAnimator
Create traditional hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animations on your iPad. This app offers professional-grade tools like unlimited layers, onion skinning, and audio import, making it suitable for both beginners and experienced animators. Export your work in various formats or import it into professional animation software.
- Timeline with unlimited layers
- Onion skinning
- Audio and video import
- Custom brushes
- Apple Pencil support
- Export to video, GIF, image sequence
- Import to professional software
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A fully featured hand drawn animation application for iPad. Made by an animator, for animators. Powerful enough for professionals, simple enough for beginners. Everything you need to create traditional hand drawn frame-by-frame animation, anywhere you go! Features: - Timeline with unlimited layers and easily adjustable exposure length of individual drawings, for pose-to-pose or straight-ahead animating - Onion skinning - Preview playback - Scrub along timeline - Import audio for lip syncing - Import video for rotoscoping animation - Custom brushes - Supports Apple Pencil, Logitech Crayon - Control framerate and resolution - Export animation to Quicktime video, GIF, or image sequence - RoughAnimator projects can be imported to Adobe Flash/Animate, After Effects, and Toon Boom Harmony - Also available on desktop See a short film animated with RoughAnimator: https://youtu.be/vaHuJNNPoMM
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Sketchbook® at Free against RoughAnimator's $7.99. Sketchbook® also leads on ratings volume (221K vs 3K). RoughAnimator's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 1) and update cadence (fortnightly vs every 2 months). On rating, review sentiment, ads 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
Sketchbook® is free to download; RoughAnimator costs $7.99 up front. Sketchbook® sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. RoughAnimator asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Sketchbook® against 4.6 for RoughAnimator. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Sketchbook® has 221K ratings behind it against 3K, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 77% of Sketchbook®'s written reviews are positive against 79% of RoughAnimator's.
Sketchbook® ships an update every 2 months, RoughAnimator fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on November 4, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Sketchbook® | RoughAnimator |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $7.99 |
| Rating | 4.8 (221K ratings) — better | 4.6 (3K ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 76.6% of reviews | 78.6% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 221K — better | 3K |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | #38 | #8 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15 | 13 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 144 MB | 31 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sketchbook, Inc. | Jacob KAFKA |
Customer experience
Sketchbook®
RoughAnimator
User reviews
Sketchbook®
From 221K App Store ratingsWhat 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
RoughAnimator
From 3K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Easy to use
- 🚀 Smooth animation
- 💡 Useful features like camera and audio
- 👍 Intuitive interface
- 👍 Great for beginners
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes when importing video/audio
- 🐛 Laggy performance with larger projects
- 🐛 Pixelated/blurry drawings when playing animation
- 🐛 Onion skin not working
- 🐛 Brush issues like splotchy lines
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 moreShow fewer
- Add real-time collaboration features
- Improve time-lapse recording and saving
RoughAnimator
Reported bugs
4 issues- Crashes when importing audio
- Onion skin not working
- Pixelated drawings when playing animation
- Laggy performance with larger projects
Requested features
8 requests- Add transparency support for exports
- Implement a text tool
- Provide more brush options and customization
- Add a ruler/shape tool
- Improve audio handling (record, import, sync)
Show 3 moreShow fewer
- Implement a tween/animation feature
- Add layer grouping and organization tools
- Provide a dark mode option
In-app purchases
Sketchbook®
- Premium Bundle$2.99
RoughAnimator
No in-app purchases
