ibis Paint X, Sketchbook and MediBang Paint compared for brushes, layers, manga tools and learning to draw on iPhone or iPad.
For many people who draw, the phone has replaced the sketchbook permanently, and not as a novelty: undo, unlimited layers and trying a colour without ruining paper change the economics of learning and experimenting. What separates the leading apps is not raw brush count but the kind of drawing each one is built for. One is a feature-dense studio that records every stroke as a teachable video. One clears the screen away to mimic pencil and ink naturally. One exists for comics, with panels, tones and cloud continuity to a desktop. The 3 apps in this guide were picked as the best answer to each of those briefs.
ibis Paint X packs hundreds of brushes, unlimited layers and rulers into a generous free app, uniquely recording your drawing process as video.
It is the most widely used digital drawing app globally and one of the most complete: hundreds of brushes, unlimited layers, perspective and symmetry rulers, and a recording engine that captures the whole drawing process as video. That last feature is also its best teaching tool, because the community publishes videos showing every stroke of a finished piece, so a beginner can watch how a drawing is actually built. The free version is remarkably full; the price is frequent ads between actions, with some brushes unlocked by watching them, and an interface that overwhelms newcomers at first.
Sketchbook hides the interface to leave the canvas, with brushes that mimic pencil, ink and watercolour convincingly and no ads.
Previously developed by Autodesk, it is the cleanest environment of the three: a minimal interface that disappears while you work and brush engines that imitate traditional pencil, ink and watercolour with enough fidelity to feel natural. Artists moving from paper find the transition gentlest here, and full layers and blend modes are still present despite the simplicity. The trade-off is scope: comic-specific tools are absent next to ibis Paint, the user community is smaller, and performance can be uneven on modest phones with large canvases. The choice for drawing itself, not the ecosystem around it.
MediBang Paint is built for comics and manga: panel templates, halftone screentones, speech bubbles and cloud sync to desktop.
Its toolset is aimed squarely at sequential art: panel frame templates, halftone screentones, speech-bubble lettering and cloud synchronisation that lets a page started on the phone continue on a computer with layers intact, the workflow that makes long manga projects practical. The app is almost entirely free and widely used by manga artists, which keeps tutorials and shared material plentiful. The frictions are an account requirement for cloud features and downloadable materials, a cluttered interface, and ads in the free version. Outside comics its advantages shrink.
Pros
Purpose-built for comics and manga
Screentones, panels and speech bubbles
Cloud sync keeps layers on desktop
Cons
Account needed for cloud and materials
Cluttered interface
Ads in the free version
Download price only. In-app purchases and subscriptions may cost extra.
Questions & answers
Which is the best free drawing app?
ibis Paint X, by a clear margin: the free version includes hundreds of brushes, unlimited layers and perspective rulers, paid for by ads between actions. MediBang Paint is also nearly fully free and is the obvious pick when comics are the goal. Sketchbook is free and ad-free with a more limited toolset, while Infinite Painter is another free option worth trying for painting-focused work. All four are usable without spending.
Do I need a tablet and stylus to draw digitally?
No. Plenty of artists draw with a finger on a phone and the apps support it fully. That said, a pressure-sensitive stylus changes the work substantially, because stroke width and opacity respond to the hand like real media, and you do not need top-end gear: almost any tablet with a compatible stylus delivers that jump. Finger drawing is fine for learning; expect to want a stylus once linework starts mattering.
Do these apps teach drawing or are they only tools?
Mostly tools. The partial exception is ibis Paint X, whose process recording has produced a vast library of videos showing every stroke of finished drawings, and watching those is a genuinely effective way to learn technique. None of them teaches fundamentals systematically. For anatomy, perspective or composition you will still want separate courses or books; think of the apps as the studio and the recordings as a window into other artists' studios.
Can I move drawings to a computer?
Yes. All three export PNG with transparency and layered formats desktop software can open, so finishing a piece on a larger screen is straightforward. MediBang Paint goes furthest with its cloud sync: start a page on the phone or tablet and continue it on the computer with layers preserved, which matters most for long comic projects where exporting individual files becomes annoying.
More related apps
App library · United States App Store. Prices and availability reflect the last check.
