Report updated Jul 1, 2026
Sketchbook®
For artists, illustrators, and hobbyists seeking a digital drawing experience that mimics traditional paper and pen.
Sketchbook® is a well-regarded graphics & design app that is free with in-app purchases. With a 4.2/5 rating from 924.4K reviews, it maintains solid user satisfaction. Users particularly appreciate extensive library of free brushes and tools supports creative expression for digital art beginners, though gallery and save management issues cause permanent loss of user artwork after exiting remains a common concern.
What is Sketchbook®?
Sketchbook is a digital drawing and painting app for artists and hobbyists, available on iOS and Android.
Users hire Sketchbook for a distraction-free, natural drawing experience that mimics physical media without the recurring cost of professional suites.
Current Momentum
v6.2 · 1w ago
Maintenance- Shipped Draw Outline premium tool.
- Shipped Lasso Fill premium tool.
- Updated Color Editor swatch identification.
Active Nemesis
Adobe Fresco: Draw & Paint App
By Adobe
Other Rivals
7-Day Rank Pulse 🇺🇸
Graphics & DesignRating Pulse 🇺🇸
Recent User Mood
What makes this app unique?
What Does It Look Like?
What Are The Key Features?
Customizable brush types including pencils, markers, and airbrushes that mimic physical drawing tools
Unlocks advanced tools including custom brush creation, canvas resizing, layer grouping, and export to PDF
Multi-layer support with blend modes for complex composition and color exploration
How much does it cost?
- Free version with core sketching tools
- Premium Bundle via in-app purchase for advanced features
Freemium model gates professional-grade productivity features behind a one-time or recurring purchase while keeping the core sketching experience free.
Who Built It?
Sketchbook
Providing a distraction-free digital canvas for artists and illustrators. Enabling creative workflows from quick sketches to finished art.
Portfolio
3
Apps
What other apps does Sketchbook make?
Explore the full Sketchbook report
Portfolio breakdown, audience, momentum, and every app published by Sketchbook.
What do users think recently?
High confidence · Latest 120 of 1.5K total reviews analyzed
How did the latest release land?
What is the recent mood?
Recent user voice shows a excited sentiment. Users appreciate extensive library of free brushes and tools supports creative expression for digital art beginners and ad-free experience provides a clean and focused environment for long-form drawing sessions, but report gallery and save management issues cause permanent loss of user artwork after exiting.
What Users Love
What Frustrates Users
What Users Want
How have ratings & review volume moved?
Rating, review sentiment, and total reviews over time, with release markers showing the post-launch impact.
Vertical markers = app releases. Hover any release for the post-release impact delta.
View the full user-sentiment analysis
Mood gauge, ratings & review-volume history, every praise / complaint / request, and sentiment over time.
What is the competitive landscape for Sketchbook®?
Where is it available?
Localized markets (10)
How's The Graphics & Design Market?
Sketchbook occupies the "pro-sumer" gap between basic sketching apps and professional suites. It holds the #25 Free position in the US (Category 6027) while maintaining a #73 Grossing rank, indicating that the free-to-paid conversion funnel is secondary to its role as a high-volume user acquisition tool.
How does it evolve in the Graphics & Design market?
Sketchbook holds the #25 Free position in the US (Category 6027) while maintaining a #73 Grossing rank, indicating that the free-to-paid conversion funnel is secondary to its role as a high-volume user acquisition tool.
Rank progression
191 active rankings tracked — 30-day window
The rivals identified
Nemeses(1)
Adobe Fresco is the primary nemesis because it targets the same professional-grade digital illustration market with a focus on high-fidelity, natural media simulation.
Differentiators
- Offers proprietary Live Brushes that realistically mimic oil and watercolor paint physics on digital canvases
- Provides seamless cross-app integration with Photoshop and Illustrator for professional-grade creative workflows
- Includes advanced motion tools that allow artists to animate their drawings directly within the app
Head to head
Sketchbook should focus on its 'natural drawing' UX and performance speed to retain the hobbyist market while avoiding a direct feature-war with Adobe's professional suite.
Contenders(4)
This app occupies the entry-level creative space, competing for users who prioritize simple, touch-based drawing experiences.
This app competes by capturing the process of creation, a feature often sought by artists who use Sketchbook for tutorials.
Differentiators
- Prioritizes screen recording functionality to help users create time-lapse tutorials of their drawing process
- Includes a dedicated tracing paper mode that simplifies the process of learning to draw complex subjects
ArtStudio targets the same creative demographic by providing a comprehensive suite of painting and layer-based editing tools.
NiBoard competes by offering an infinite canvas experience that overlaps with Sketchbook's ideation and quick-sketch use cases.
Same space(3)
While focused on 3D, it competes for the same creative time and budget of artists who use Sketchbook for concept art.
A major peer in the mobile illustration space, it competes directly for the professional artist's primary drawing app slot.
Infinite Painter is a direct peer that offers a similarly robust brush engine and professional-grade layer management system.
Differentiators
- Provides advanced perspective guides that significantly speed up the creation of complex architectural or environmental sketches
- Offers a highly granular layer management system that rivals desktop-class software for complex digital illustrations
Compare Sketchbook® against every rival
All rivals in one side-by-side table — identity, store metrics, ratings & sentiment, and strategic intel — plus a head-to-head page for each.
The outtake for Sketchbook®
Strengths to defend, gaps to attack
Core Strengths
- Ad-free interface sustains long-form creative sessions
- Brush engine mimics physical media for natural feel
- High-fidelity output supports professional use cases
Critical Frictions
- Gallery data-loss bugs trigger churn
- No cloud-save functionality
- 0.7-star Android-iOS rating gap
Growth Levers
- Animation timeline integration
- Wearable companion app
- B2B education partnerships
Market Threats
- Adobe Fresco's cross-app ecosystem
- Animation-focused rivals
- Platform-level OS updates causing instability
What are the next best moves?
Audit gallery save logic because users report permanent artwork loss → reduce churn
Gallery data-loss is the #1 complaint theme in sentiment analysis.
Trade-off: Pause animation feature development — stability is a prerequisite for retention.
Ship cloud-save functionality because it is the top-requested missing feature → unlock data-loss frustration
Users cite inability to recover work as a critical failure.
Trade-off: Deprioritize new brush-engine presets — existing library is sufficient for current user base.
A counter-intuitive read
The lack of subscription-based cloud sync is not a weakness but a moat, as it keeps the app lightweight and accessible for the casual hobbyist market that Adobe Fresco ignores.
Feature Gaps vs Competitors
- Real-time cloud synchronization (available in Adobe Fresco but missing here)
- Frame-by-frame animation timeline (available in Adobe Fresco but missing here)
Key Takeaways
- Prioritize stability fixes for gallery persistence to stop churn among long-term users.
- Evaluate an animation feature set to address the #1 user request.
- Defend the hobbyist segment by maintaining the ad-free, distraction-free core experience.
Sketchbook holds its category lead through sticky, ad-free drawing mechanics but bleeds users to gallery-management bugs, so revenue growth hinges on fixing data persistence before expanding the feature set.
Where Is It Heading?
Stable
The casual-art market is consolidating around apps that offer both high-fidelity drawing and seamless project portability. Sketchbook remains advantaged by its clean UX, but the lack of cloud-save and animation tools leaves it exposed to rivals that offer more comprehensive creative workflows.
Persistent gallery data-loss reports in the latest version erode trust, which accelerates churn among long-term power users.
The ad-free, distraction-free core experience continues to drive high organic install velocity, maintaining a top-30 chart slot.