8 Best Painting and Drawing Apps for Android

The best painting and drawing apps for Android right now are ibisPaint X for most people, Infinite Painter for realistic painting on a tablet, and Clip Studio Paint for comics and manga. Sketchbook, MediBang Paint, Picsart Color, Tayasui Sketches and Krita round out the list, each for a narrower kind of artist.

Every app below has a live Google Play listing and was updated within the last year when we checked on 6 November 2026. Prices change often, so we describe how each app charges rather than quoting a number.

Which painting app should you pick?

• Just starting out, or drawing on a phone: ibisPaint X or Picsart Color.
• Painting with a stylus on a tablet: Infinite Painter or Sketchbook.
• Comics, manga and webtoons: Clip Studio Paint or MediBang Paint.
• Natural, paper-like strokes: Tayasui Sketches.
• Free, open-source, desktop-class tools on a tablet or Chromebook: Krita.

1. ibisPaint X

Best for: most people, especially beginners and anime-style illustration on a phone.

ibisPaint X is the most installed app on this list, with more than 100 million downloads on Google Play. Its listing claims over 130,000 brushes, more than 30,000 materials, 46 screentones and 27 layer blending modes, plus vector tools, symmetry rulers and frame-by-frame animation. It also records your drawing as a time-lapse video, which is handy for sharing your process.

How it charges: free with ads, with in-app purchases and subscription plans for extra features.

2. Infinite Painter

Best for: realistic painting on a tablet or Chromebook with a pressure-sensitive stylus.

Infinite Painter focuses on how brushes behave on the canvas. It has hundreds of built-in brushes with over 100 settings each, full pressure and tilt support for styluses, five perspective guides for drawing buildings and scenes, symmetry tools and a hatching guide. You can also assign different actions to your finger and your stylus, so you can smudge with one and paint with the other.

How it charges: free to download, with in-app purchases to unlock the full tool set. No ads.

3. Clip Studio Paint

Best for: serious comic, manga and character art.

Clip Studio Paint is the same program many professional comic artists use on desktop. It supports up to 10,000 layers, poseable 3D models for tricky angles, liquify, gradient maps and puppet warp, and it gives access to a large library of free and paid materials made by other users.

Check the trial terms before you start a big project. According to its Play listing, on a tablet you need a monthly or annual plan to save or export artwork after the 30-day trial. On a smartphone you get 30 hours of full use each month for free, with no ads. Note that the app moved to a new Play listing, so old download links to Clip Studio Paint no longer work.

How it charges: subscription, with a free trial.

4. Sketchbook

Best for: clean, distraction-free sketching and concept work.

Sketchbook has been around for years and still has one of the calmest interfaces of any drawing app. You get pencils, markers, airbrushes and smear tools that behave like their physical versions, guides and rulers for precise lines, and layers with a full set of blend modes. The tools tuck away so most of the screen is canvas.

How it charges: free to download, no ads, with in-app purchases.

5. MediBang Paint

Best for: comics and manga on a budget, and working across devices.

MediBang Paint comes with more than 180 brushes, built-in comic panel tools, screentones, speech bubbles and over 60 fonts. It saves PSD and CMYK files for print work, and cloud sync lets you start a page on your phone and finish it on another device. You can also share a canvas with friends or a team.

How it charges: free with ads. A subscription adds 700+ extra brushes and removes limits.

6. Picsart Color

Best for: casual drawing, doodling on photos and younger artists.

Picsart Color is the easiest app here to pick up. It has layers with blend modes, a color wheel and mixer, a texture brush, pattern fill, a text tool and a symmetry mode with a rotating axis that makes mandalas and patterns quick to draw. Auto-recovery means a crash does not wipe out your drawing.

How it charges: free, with in-app purchases. The Play Store marks it as containing ads.

7. Tayasui Sketches

Best for: traditional artists who want strokes that look like real media.

Tayasui Sketches has over 20 realistic tools, including pens, felt pens, oil pastel, acrylic, airbrush and a wet watercolor brush that bleeds the way paint does on paper. The interface is minimal. Layers and many tool variants are part of the Pro upgrade.

How it charges: free to try, with a weekly or yearly Pro subscription. No ads.

8. Krita

Best for: free, open-source, desktop-grade painting on a large Android tablet or Chromebook.

Krita is the open-source painting program from the Krita Foundation, and the Android version brings its brush engines, stabilizers, layer styles, animation with onion skinning and PSD support. There is a catch older lists leave out.

What we checked: on 6 November 2026, Krita's own Google Play description still calls the Android version a beta that is "not suitable for real work yet", and says it is not offered for phones because the interface is built for big screens like tablets and Chromebooks. So treat Krita as a free option to explore on a tablet, not a phone app.

How it charges: free and open source on desktop. The Play listing has optional in-app purchases.

What happened to ArtFlow, PaperColor and the other apps on the old list?

We dropped two apps from our previous version of this page. ArtFlow and PaperColor are still on Google Play, but neither had been updated in more than a year when we checked (ArtFlow last in July 2025, PaperColor in June 2025). Apps that stop getting updates tend to break on new Android versions, so we no longer recommend them. If you need a professional photo and design suite as well, see our list of Adobe apps for Android.

Do you need a stylus?

No, every app here works with a finger. A stylus helps a lot once you care about line weight, because Infinite Painter is built for pressure and tilt, and Clip Studio Paint lets you adjust lines with a stylus. If your phone or tablet came with a pen, such as a Samsung S Pen, try Infinite Painter first, since its listing says it is designed for stylus devices with full pressure and tilt support.

FAQ

What is the best free drawing app for Android?

ibisPaint X is the best free choice for most people. It is free with ads and has a very large brush and material library. Sketchbook is a good ad-free alternative for plain sketching.

Which Android drawing app is best for manga and comics?

Clip Studio Paint has the most complete comic tools, but it needs a subscription to keep saving on a tablet. MediBang Paint is the free alternative with panels, screentones and speech bubbles built in.

Can I use Krita on an Android phone?

Not officially. Krita's Google Play listing says the Android version is a beta made for tablets and Chromebooks and is not offered for phones.

Can these apps open Photoshop files?

MediBang Paint and Krita both list PSD support in their Play descriptions. That makes it easy to move a drawing to a desktop editor to finish it.