drawsta vs Sketchbook
drawsta is a free sketchbook that opens to something worth drawing, on iOS 17 or later. That last part may settle this one before anything else does: Sketchbook asks less of your device than anything else here, and if you are on an older iPad, that may decide it.
| Feature | drawsta | Sketchbook |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. | Free, with a Premium Bundle in-app purchase. Its listing says “Purchase the Premium Bundle to unlock more” but does not publish a price, and neither does sketchbook.com, so we are not going to quote one. |
| Subscription | None. | No subscription found on the listing or the official site. |
| Platforms | iPhone and iPad. iOS 17 or later. | iPhone and iPad, iOS 14 or later — the lowest requirement of any app on these pages. Sketchbook Pro is also sold for macOS and Windows. |
| Tracing | A feed of pictures, and one tap puts the one you like on your canvas as a ghosted trace layer you draw straight over. Turn the ghost off and your line is what is left. | Nothing we could verify. The only reference feature in the listing is “Select color from reference images”, which picks colours rather than putting a picture under your line. You can of course import an image as a layer, as you can nearly anywhere. |
| Who it is for | People who want to draw more and keep not drawing, usually because they cannot think of what to draw. | Sketchers who want a quiet canvas. Its listing leans on an interface that is “clean and unobtrusive so you can focus on drawing”. |
Where Sketchbook wins
- It runs on iOS 14. If your iPad is old enough that drawsta's iOS 17 is out of reach, this is the answer and nothing else here is.
- Desktop versions for macOS and Windows, so the same tool is on your laptop.
- A deliberately plain interface — fewer things on screen than any other app on these pages.
- The Premium Bundle adds custom and imported brushes, layer groups, colour harmonies and palette extraction.
The honest version
Sketchbook is a quiet, capable sketchbook that has been around a long time and asks very little of your hardware. It is also, like the rest of them, a blank page. The difference here is not tools; it is that one of these apps opens to something worth drawing.
Where these claims come from
Every statement about Sketchbook on this page is from one of these, checked 29 September 2026. Prices move and differ by region — go and look rather than taking our word for it. If something could not be verified from a listing or an official site, it is not here.