Comparison

Procreate Pocket vs HEAVYPAINT Classic

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

Head to head
About

Procreate Pocket

Create expressive sketches, rich paintings, and beautiful illustrations on your iPhone. This app offers a complete art studio with hundreds of brushes, advanced layering, and powerful design tools.

Highlights
  • Hundreds of handmade brushes
  • Advanced layer system
  • High resolution canvases
  • Revolutionary QuickShape feature
  • Frame-by-frame animation
  • Customizable brush studio
Read full description

App of the Year winner Procreate Pocket is the most feature-packed and versatile art app ever designed for iPhone. Procreate Pocket has everything you need to create expressive sketches, rich paintings, gorgeous illustrations, and beautiful animations. Offering hundreds of handmade brushes, a suite of intuitive artistic tools, an advanced layer system, and the powerful Valkyrie graphics engine. Work on the couch, on the train, at the beach, or while waiting in line for coffee. It’s a complete art studio in the palm of your hand. Highlights: • High resolution canvases — up to 16k by 4k on compatible devices • Intuitive Dark Mode interface made for iPhone • Revolutionary QuickShape feature for perfect shapes • Smooth and responsive smudge sampling • Powered by Valkyrie, the lightning-fast 64-bit painting engine • Create art in stunning 64-bit color • 250 levels of undo and redo • Continuous auto-save — never lose work again Breakthrough brushes: • Packed with 100s of beautifully crafted brushes • Brush sets keep your painting, sketching, and drawing brushes organized • Over 100 customizable settings for every brush • Brush Studio — design custom brushes • Import and export custom Procreate brushes • Import Adobe® Photoshop® brushes, and run them faster than Photoshop® Full-featured layering system: • Layer your art for precise control over details and composition • Create Layer and Clipping Masks for non-destructive editing • Stay organized by combining layers into groups • Transform objects simultaneously across multiple layers • Access over 25 layer blend modes for industry-grade compositing Color without compromise: • Fill your line work with ColorDrop • Disc, Classic, Harmony, Value, and Palette color panels • Import color profiles for color matching • Assign Color Dynamics to any brush Precision design tools: • Add vector text to your illustrations • Easily import all your favorite fonts • Crop and resize your canvas for perfect composition • Perspective, isometric, 2D, and symmetry visual guides • Drawing Assist perfects your strokes in real time • StreamLine smooths your strokes for beautiful lettering and expert inking Animation Assist: • Easy frame-by-frame animation with customizable onion skinning • Create storyboards, GIFs, animatics, and simple animations • Export your animations in the full resolution of your canvas Dramatic finishing effects: • Gradient Map — remap your image’s colors with a customizable gradient • Glitch, Chromatic Aberration, Glow, and Halftone to add new dimensions to your work • Gaussian and Motion Blur filters for depth and movement, or use Sharpen for perfect clarity • Advanced Noise filter gives you more control for a classic, retro look • Adjust Hue, Saturation, or Brightness in real time • Powerful image adjustments including Color Balance, Curves, and HSB • Bring your art to life with the fun, intuitive, and creative Warp, Symmetry, and Liquify Dynamics Time-lapse replay: • Relive your creative journey with Procreate's celebrated Time-lapse Replay • Export your Time-lapse recording in 4K for high-end video production • Share a short, 30-second version of your Time-lapse on your socials Reference Companion: • Keep a full canvas or reference image with you at all times • Paint on your face with AR • Color-pick right from the reference window Import assets and share your creations: • Import or export your art as Adobe® Photoshop® PSD files • Import Adobe® ASE and ACO Color Palettes • Import images files such as JPG, PNG, and TIFF • Drag and drop artworks, brushes, palettes, and fonts between applications• Export to AirDrop, iCloud Drive, Photos, iTunes, Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, Weibo, Mail, and more • Share your art as PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, HEVC, or MP4 files

About

HEAVYPAINT Classic

A streamlined painting application focused on pure colors and shapes. It offers essential tools for artists, including improved smudge and blur, layers, masking, and erasing. Ideal for quick sketches, studies, and plein air work.

Highlights
  • Improved Smudge tool
  • Improved Blur tool
  • Layers
  • Masking
  • Clipping
  • Erase tool
Features
Read full description

HEAVYPAINT ClassicA simple yet secretly powerful painting app! Focus on pure colors and shapes with a streamlined interface. Ideal for plein air painting, color notes, sketches and studies. + Improved Smudge + Improved Blur + Layers + Masking + Erase + Clipping 30 day trial with full functionality.

Screenshots

Procreate Pocket4 screens
HEAVYPAINT Classic4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: HEAVYPAINT Classic at Free against Procreate Pocket's $5.99. HEAVYPAINT Classic also leads on update cadence (every 5 days vs every 3 months) and rating (4.1 vs 3.8). Procreate Pocket's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and ratings volume (13K vs 179). On 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

HEAVYPAINT Classic is free to download; Procreate Pocket costs $5.99 up front. HEAVYPAINT Classic sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Procreate Pocket asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

HEAVYPAINT Classic holds the better App Store score, 4.1 against 3.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Procreate Pocket has 13K ratings behind it against 179, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 61% of Procreate Pocket's written reviews are positive against 52% of HEAVYPAINT Classic's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Procreate Pocket ships an update every 3 months, HEAVYPAINT Classic every 5 days. Both last shipped on September 25, 2026.

Scorecard9 real differences · 2 level
Procreate Pocket versus HEAVYPAINT Classic: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterProcreate PocketHEAVYPAINT Classic
Price$5.99Free — better
Rating3.8 (13K ratings)4.1 (179 ratings) — better
Positive reviews61.1% of reviews — better51.6% of reviews
Number of ratings13K — better179
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidFree with in-app purchases — better
Best chart rank#1 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS15.4.112.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size372 MB51 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSavage Interactive Pty LtdHEAVYPOLY, Inc.

Customer experience

Procreate Pocket

All ratings12,700 ratings
Positive69.3%
Neutral8.3%
Negative22.4%
Written reviews2,073 reviews
Positive61.1%
Neutral13.7%
Negative25.2%

HEAVYPAINT Classic

All ratings179 ratings
Positive77.7%
Neutral3.4%
Negative19.0%
Written reviews91 reviews
Positive51.6%
Neutral14.3%
Negative34.1%

User reviews

Procreate Pocket

From 13K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Excellent drawing app for iPhone
  • 👍 Customizable brushes and palettes
  • 👍 Convenient for on-the-go sketching
  • 👍 Affordable price point
  • 👍 Seamless integration with iPad version

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs
  • 🔍 Limited features compared to iPad version
  • 🔍 Lack of undo/redo buttons
  • 🔍 Pixelated output when transforming layers
  • 🔍 Difficult to draw precise lines and shapes

HEAVYPAINT Classic

From 179 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🎨 Unique, innovative painting tools and brushes
  • 💡 Forces deliberate, decisive artistic decisions
  • 🎯 Minimalist interface encourages focus on fundamentals
  • 🔄 Playback feature to review artwork creation
  • 🎪 Fun, experimental approach to digital art

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Frequent crashes and data loss
  • 😤 Confusing, unintuitive UI/UX
  • 🔄 Inconsistent UI changes between updates
  • 💰 Switched from one-time purchase to subscription model
  • 🚫 Poor documentation and lack of tutorials

Bugs and requests

Procreate Pocket

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Imported images/brushes not showing up
  • Layers merging unexpectedly
  • Color issues when tracing or filling
  • Navigation bar disappearing during use

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add blending and smudge tools
  • Increase layer limit and canvas size
  • Implement dark mode option
  • Add text and fill tools
  • Improve undo/redo functionality

HEAVYPAINT Classic

Reported bugs

18 issues
  • App crashes frequently, causing work loss
  • Auto-save feature unreliable despite crashes
  • Canvas flips upside down randomly
  • Transform tool deletes paintings
  • Undo button requires multiple taps
Show 13 more
  • Zoom functionality buggy and destabilizes canvas
  • Canvas resize not working
  • Image corruption with layer duplication
  • Eye dropper functionality haphazard
  • Fill tool doesn't work with selected colors
  • Pressure setting eliminates mark-making
  • Brush size settings change across all tools
  • Some brush textures cannot be changed
  • Random blobs appear on export
  • App crashes when switching between drawings
  • Trial period not clearing for paid users
  • Incompatibility with SE2 and older devices
  • Speaker popping on undo action

Requested features

15 requests
  • Gesture controls (2-finger undo, 3-finger redo)
  • Pressure sensitivity for brush size
  • Lasso tool for moving selections
  • Redo button functionality
  • Canvas zoom capability
Show 10 more
  • Resizable/collapsible UI elements
  • Ability to move canvas with single finger
  • Line work capabilities
  • Better brush texture preset selection
  • Canvas size input field
  • Eraser tool
  • Moveable UI panels
  • Tutorial or onboarding guide
  • Better save/export documentation
  • Pressure control for size on all tools

In-app purchases

None

Procreate Pocket

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

HEAVYPAINT Classic

One-time2
  • Seurat Texture Brushes$4.99
  • HEAVYPAINT Pro$9.99

Questions

Is Procreate Pocket free?
Procreate Pocket costs $5.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is HEAVYPAINT Classic free?
HEAVYPAINT Classic is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Procreate Pocket or HEAVYPAINT Classic?
HEAVYPAINT Classic is rated higher. Procreate Pocket averages 3.8 out of 5 from 13K ratings, while HEAVYPAINT Classic averages 4.1 from 179 ratings.
Do Procreate Pocket or HEAVYPAINT Classic have ads?
Neither Procreate Pocket nor HEAVYPAINT Classic shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Procreate Pocket or HEAVYPAINT Classic?
Procreate Pocket ships an update every 3 months, and HEAVYPAINT Classic every 5 days. Most recently, Procreate Pocket was updated on September 25, 2026 and HEAVYPAINT Classic on September 25, 2026.

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