Calligraphy HD vs Paintwork
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Calligraphy HD
Explore the art of calligraphy with a wide selection of digital nibs and brushes. Customize stroke thickness, texture, and pen angle to develop your unique lettering style. Save your creations to your device's photo gallery.
- Customizable nibs and brushes
- Adjustable stroke thickness
- Varying stroke texture
- Pen angle control
- Variety of backgrounds
- Save artwork to gallery
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Develop and create your very personal lettering style with Calligraphy HD Calligraphy HD comes with a choice of nibs and brushes, simply select your favourite tool and instantly vary nib thickness, stroke texture and pen angle. Discover a variety of backgrounds and save your artwork to your device photo gallery.
Paintwork
Create handwritten notes, diaries, and drawings with a vast array of tools. Features include customizable brushes, vector graphics, a rich color palette, and image import. Export your creations as PDFs or images.
- Customizable brushes and erasers
- Extensive vector graphics tools
- Rich color palette
- Image and material import
- Handwriting assistance
- PDF and image export
- Customizable backgrounds and canvas
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Paintwork is a simple and powerful software for handwritten notebooks, diaries, and hand drawn images. It includes functions such as: brush list (hundreds of brush effects, customizable brush thickness, color, transparency, dynamic strength weights, etc.), eraser list (each brush effect can be used as an eraser), Vector graphics tools (including lasso, vector eraser, vector pen, annotation pen, highlighter, wavy pen, double line pen, text box, illustration, dashed line, horizontal and vertical dashed line, curve, closed shape, text pen, rectangle, ellipse, straight line, arrow, triangle, pentagram, polygon, etc.), and also include many related attribute settings, Color list (with a rich color palette and customizable manual configuration of commonly used colors), copy and cut the content of specified areas on the page, import images or materials, as well as a simple calculator, handwriting assistance, and photo scanning of document files. Unlimited writing, ruler, recognition of text, printing of text, filling, and the ability to export PDF files or images. Supports custom background functionality, custom canvas paper, and more. It can be used to write for classroom or book learning notes, handwritten notes for work meetings, hand drawn mind maps, hand drawn account creation, hand made account book making, writing diaries, recording life thoughts, calligraphy practice, handwritten brush and pencil characters, hand drawn artistic characters, and so on. Supports Apple pencil. Can export images or PDFs. If you have any comments or feedback, please feel free to contact us. Contact email: pw_team@163.com If you like our application, please give us a good review. Thank you.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Paintwork at 65% against Calligraphy HD's 10%. Paintwork also leads on rating (4.6 vs 1.6) and ads (none vs shown). Calligraphy HD's advantage is iOS requirement (9.0 vs 15.6). On price, in-app purchases, monetization model 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
Both are free to download. Calligraphy HD sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Paintwork sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Paintwork holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 1.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Paintwork has 17K ratings behind it against 64, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 10% of Calligraphy HD's written reviews are positive against 65% of Paintwork's.
Calligraphy HD ships an update every 3 months, Paintwork weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Calligraphy HD | Paintwork |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 1.6 (64 ratings) | 4.6 (17K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 10.4% of reviews | 65.4% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 64 | 17K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Weekly — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 19 MB | 200 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | TOUCHSCREEN LEARNING LTD | 伟典 苏 |
Customer experience
Calligraphy HD
Paintwork
Bugs and requests
Calligraphy HD
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Paintwork
Reported bugs
3 issues- App freezing or crashing when using certain features
- Artwork getting deleted or not saving properly
- Inability to import or work with external images
Requested features
4 requests- Add more color options and blending tools
- Improve stability and reduce crashes
- Provide more tutorials and onboarding for new users
- Allow users to save and access their artwork easily
In-app purchases
Calligraphy HD
- Calligraphy HD Full App$2.99
Paintwork
- Monthly subscription premium$0.991 Month
- Annual subscription premium$3.991 Year
- Unlock local version$9.99
Questions
Is Calligraphy HD free?
Is Paintwork free?
Which has better reviews, Calligraphy HD or Paintwork?
Do Calligraphy HD or Paintwork have ads?
Which is updated more often, Calligraphy HD or Paintwork?
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