MediBang Paint vs Paintrix Studio

Price

Paintrix Studio is free with every tool included, while MediBang Paint is free to download with paid upgrades.

MediBang Paint is free with ads. MediBang Premium plans, from $2.99 on the US App Store, add 700 more brushes, and ads can be removed with a separate $7.99 add-on.

Paintrix Studio is free to download, and every brush, layer, tool and export is unlocked. Pro costs $4.99 a month and unlocks one thing: reopening projects you saved earlier, so new work is always free to start and finish in one sitting.

Platforms

Both run on iPad and iPhone. Only MediBang Paint runs on Android, Mac and Windows.

MediBang Paint has an iPad app, a separate iPhone app, and versions for Android, Mac and Windows. Its cloud feature, which needs a MediBang account, lets you move a drawing between devices.

Paintrix Studio is one app for iPad and iPhone with the same features on both, and one Pro subscription covers every device on your Apple Account. There is no Mac, Windows or Android version.

Brushes

MediBang Paint includes 180 adjustable brushes, and Premium plans add 700 more. You can also make your own brushes.

Paintrix Studio has 60 brushes in nine families: Oil Paints, Watercolor, Pencils, Charcoals, Pens, Spraypaint, Water Brushes, Basic and Manga. Oil brushes leave raised impasto and bristle grooves and drag the paint already on the canvas, and the ten Manga brushes include a G-Pen and Maru that thin and swell with your stroke speed. Apple Pencil pressure, tilt and hover work out of the box, with squeeze to undo on Apple Pencil Pro. You can save brush presets, but not import custom brushes.

Comics and manga

MediBang Paint was built with comics in mind, with 1,000 screentones, 60 fonts for lettering, easy comic panels and shared canvases for team projects.

Paintrix Studio has a dedicated Manga / Comic canvas with 7 page sizes, from manga and B4 pages to comic strips, double-page spreads and vertical scroll pages for webtoons, and 23 ready-made panel layouts you can mirror. Panel borders sit on a locked layer you can unlock and edit, and the Manga brushes add dot screentones, hatching and stipple to the G-Pen, Maru, Fineliner and ink pens. It is all free. Lettering and speech balloons are not built in.

Layers and editing

MediBang Paint: It covers the essentials with layers, blend modes and filters, and keeps the interface simple and lightweight, so it stays fast without needing much storage.

Paintrix Studio: Layers are unlimited and free, with clipping masks, alpha lock and live adjustments on every layer: brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, vibrance, temperature, tint, bloom, and drop and inner shadows. Selections cover rectangle, ellipse, lasso and two magic wands, the transform tool can flip, rotate and distort all four corners, and Smudge, Pinch, Bubble and Liquid Mode run on the GPU in real time. There are no layer blend modes.

Drawing tools and extras

MediBang Paint: Group Project lets you and your friends draw on the same canvas, cloud saving keeps drawings in step between devices, and MediBang Paint records a timelapse of your work.

Paintrix Studio: Drawing aids include mirror mode with up to 12-way radial symmetry, Quick Shapes that keep your stroke's pressure and taper, linear, radial and angular gradients, 14 paintable materials such as gold, marble and wood, and a reference image layer. Draw Together lets two people paint on one canvas in real time from iPad or iPhone, and every painting records a timelapse you can export as video. There is no text tool, animation or PSD export.