drawsta vs Sketchbook
drawsta is a free drawing app with tracing built in, no account and nothing to unlock. Sketchbook is a free canvas you bring your own reference to, with a Premium Bundle for the rest of its tools. The device requirements differ: drawsta is iOS 17 or later, Sketchbook is iOS 14.
| 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 | Tap a picture and it lands on your canvas as a ghosted layer you draw straight over. Turn the ghost off and your line is what is left. Bring your own photo and it works the same way. | No dedicated trace mode. Sketchbook's own help describes the workflow: importing an image creates its own layer, and changing a layer's opacity is “useful when tracing or referencing an image on another layer”. You bring the picture. |
| Who it is for | Working artists who draw from reference: illustrators, tattooers, designers, anyone who sketches. | Sketchers who want a quiet canvas. Its listing leans on an interface that is “clean and unobtrusive so you can focus on drawing”. |
Choose Sketchbook if
- you are on iOS 14, 15 or 16: drawsta needs iOS 17 or later.
- you want the same sketchbook on your laptop: there are macOS and Windows versions of it.
- you want as little as possible on screen while you draw, and custom brushes, layer groups and palette extraction when you need them.
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 canvas you have to go and find the picture for. The difference here is not tools; it is that one of these apps has the tracing built in.
Where these claims come from
Every statement about Sketchbook on this page is from one of these, checked 9 October 2026. They are named rather than linked: a source you can look up is as checkable as one you can tap, and this page is not here to hand you a download button for somebody else. Prices move and differ by region. If something could not be verified from a listing, an official site or official documentation, it is not here.
- Sketchbook on the App Store
- sketchbook.com