Kinder Paint vs Other Ways for Young Kids to Draw

Kinder Paint is a drawing app for children ages 2 to 6 on iPhone and iPad. A parent looking at it is usually not choosing between drawing apps alone. The real choice is wider: a box of crayons, the drawing tools already on the iPad, one of the many coloring apps for kids, or a serious art app made for adults. This post compares Kinder Paint with each of those and says plainly where I think another option is the better one.

What Kinder Paint Does

First, only what the app actually does.

Five canvases. Drawing (a simple square canvas), Paint (with layers), Sketch (for pencil sketching), Manga (for comics), and Dot (for pixel art).
Tools. Seven brush types, including crayon, pencil, fountain pen, and watercolor marker. Four shape tools (line, circle, triangle, square), a one-tap fill, undo, three palettes with 48 colors in all, and your own custom palettes. Apple Pencil is supported.
Paint Academy. Tracing lessons for geometric shapes and animal portraits.
Safety. No ads, no accounts, and it works offline. Drawings save quickly to the camera roll.
Background. It was developed under the guidance of an AMI Montessori teacher, around three themes: safety, comfort, and expressive power.
Price. The core drawing features are free. An optional Kinder Paint Pro subscription, monthly or annual, adds the Manga canvas, the Dot canvas, Paint Academy, and unlimited canvases. The current price is shown in the App Store purchase sheet.

Option 1: Paper, Crayons, and a Sketchbook

This is the honest baseline, and for many children it is the best tool there is.

What it does well. Real crayons have weight and resistance. A child learns how hard to press, how the wax builds up, and how a line changes when the paper is rough. There is no screen, no battery, and nothing to set up. A drawing on paper can go straight on the fridge.

Where it differs. Paper cannot be undone, and a big area takes a long time to fill with a crayon, which some small children find frustrating. It also takes space and makes a mess, which matters on a train or in a waiting room. Kinder Paint has undo, one-tap fill, and fits in a bag. I do not think it should replace paper. I think it is a reasonable second place to draw.

Option 2: The Drawing Tools Already on the iPad

Apple’s Freeform app, which comes with the iPhone and iPad, lets you draw or handwrite on a board and add shapes, lines, and text, with a finger or an Apple Pencil. The Notes app also has drawing tools.

What it does well. It is free and already installed. For an older child or a parent drawing alongside, it is perfectly capable.

Where it differs. Freeform is built for collaboration and organizing ideas, so its menus are designed for adults. A two-year-old will find plenty to tap that has nothing to do with drawing. Kinder Paint is designed so that a child aged 2 to 6 can use it alone: a super-simple interface, realistic brushes, and no ads or accounts in the way.

Option 3: Coloring and Character Apps for Kids

There are a great many drawing and coloring apps for children on the App Store. Many are built around coloring pages, stickers, or well known characters. They vary widely in price model: some are free with ads, some are free with in-app purchases, some are subscriptions, and some are paid once. I have not tested enough of them to name a best one.

What they do well. A coloring page gives a child a finished-looking result quickly, and a favorite character can be the thing that gets a reluctant child to pick up a brush at all.

Where they differ. The approach is different at the root. Coloring apps usually start from someone else’s picture. Kinder Paint mostly starts from an empty canvas, and its structured part, Paint Academy, is tracing practice rather than filling in outlines. If you look at one of these apps, it is worth checking whether it shows ads, whether it needs an account, and whether it works offline, because those are the points where they differ most from each other.

Option 4: Professional Drawing Apps such as Procreate

Some parents with an iPad and an Apple Pencil consider giving a child the same app an illustrator would use. Procreate is the best known. As of September 2026 it is a one-time purchase, available for iPad only, and it offers hundreds of brushes, an advanced layer system, animation tools, and very large canvases.

What it does well. It is a real professional tool, and a child who grows into drawing seriously will not outgrow it.

Where it differs. It is made for adults. The number of brushes, panels, and gestures is exactly what a professional wants and more than a three-year-old can handle. It also runs on iPad only, while Kinder Paint runs on iPhone as well. For ages 2 to 6, I think fewer choices produce more drawing.

Side by Side

	Kinder Paint	Paper and crayons	Freeform (built in)	Kids’ coloring apps	Procreate
Made for ages 2 to 6	Yes	Yes	No	Varies	No
Starts from	Empty canvas or tracing lessons	Empty page or coloring book	Empty board	Usually a picture to color	Empty canvas
Undo	Yes	No	Yes	Varies	Yes
Ads	None	None	None	Varies	None
Devices	iPhone and iPad	Anywhere	Comes with iPhone and iPad	Varies	iPad only
Cost	Core features free, optional subscription	A few crayons	Free, built in	Varies	One-time purchase

When Another Option Is the Better Choice

If you want your child to feel real materials, paper and crayons do that and an app cannot. I would keep them in the house whatever else you choose.
If your child is 7 or older and wants more control, Kinder Paint is aimed at ages 2 to 6, and a general or professional drawing app will serve an older child better.
If you only need something free for an occasional doodle, Freeform or Notes costs nothing and is already there.
If a character is what gets your child excited, a coloring app with that character may do more for motivation than any empty canvas.
If you do not want any subscription at all, note that Kinder Paint’s Manga canvas, Dot canvas, and Paint Academy are part of the Pro subscription. The core drawing features stay free.

Where I think Kinder Paint fits best is a child between 2 and 6 who wants to draw on a tablet on their own, in a family that wants no ads, no account, and no need for an internet connection. It is a first digital canvas, meant to sit next to paper rather than instead of it.