
Code.org
Godot Engine
GDevelop
Invent With Python
Snap
Processing
Unity
Scratch is the programming language & online community where young people create stories, games, & animations.

FrameRef
PureRef
BeeRef
Milanote
Freeform
Refbox
Eagle App
Visual reference-board app for creatives to collect images, video, links, notes, GIFs, and PDFs, with study tools and iCloud sync across iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Which is more popular?
Based on our record, Scratch seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 579 times since March 2021.
Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.
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| Website | scratch.mit.edu | getartdeck.com |
| Pricing | ||
| Company | 2007 | Startup from France · 2026 |
| Listed in |
In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.


No description of Scratch yet.
Build a moodboard, gather references for a project, or study an artwork up close. Everything stays together instead of scattered across screenshots, folders, and tabs. COLLECT FROM ANYWHERE • Take photos and video, scan documents, or import from Photos and Files • Save web links as preview cards,...
What each product offers, as listed by its team.


Possible disadvantages
An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.


Overall verdict
Why this product is good
Recommended for
No analysis of ArtDeck yet.
Walkthroughs and reviews on video.
How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.


As answered by people managing Scratch and ArtDeck.
ArtDeck's answer:
Most reference apps stop once the image is saved but ArtDeck keeps going.
It is the only reference board where collecting and studying happen in the same place, on the device you happen to be holding.
ArtDeck's answer:
Against PureRef. PureRef is excellent on a desktop and has more specialized window modes: click-through transparency, always-on-top of one chosen app, separate overlays. It also runs on Windows and Linux, which ArtDeck does not. Choose ArtDeck when your references need to move between iPhone, iPad, and Mac, when you work on iPad beside a drawing app, when you study video reference, or when you want palette, value, composition, and measurement tools built in.
Against Eagle. Eagle is a library manager with strong tagging, smart folders, and batch operations on Mac and Windows. It has no native phone or tablet board. ArtDeck is a board first: things sit side by side on a canvas rather than in a grid, and the board travels with you.
Against Pinterest and the camera roll. Both are good at saving and bad at using. Pinterest ties your collection to an account, an algorithm, and a connection. ArtDeck boards are files on your devices, work offline, and never get reorganized by someone else's feed.
Against Milanote and general canvas tools. Those are built for teams planning work together, priced per seat per month. ArtDeck is built for one person studying images, bought once.
ArtDeck's answer:
People who save images because looking at them carefully is part of how they work.
Concretely, that is digital artists and illustrators, concept and game artists, 3D artists, designers, photographers, animators working from motion reference, and art students. It also fits anyone with thousands of screenshots and saved pins who has never been able to actually use them.
What they have in common is a habit rather than a job title: they gather references from the web, the camera roll, files, and other apps, lay them out side by side, and study what makes them work. They also tend to own Apple hardware and move between it during a single project. Save something on the phone in the morning, study it on iPad beside Procreate in the afternoon, organize the board on Mac later.
ArtDeck's answer:
ArtDeck started from a personal problem: references were everywhere and useful nowhere. Saved pins in one place, screenshots in the camera roll, links in browser tabs, images in folders. Plenty of collecting, almost no returning.
The first version was the fix for that, a board where images, links, notes, and videos could sit together on one canvas and come along across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
The second idea is the one that shaped the app. Collecting a reference and understanding it are not the same thing. Artists have always had a manual set of moves for the second part: squint at the image, flatten it to values, sample the colors, check where the lines land, measure the angle. Those moves were happening outside the app, in other tools or not at all. So ToolBox was built into the board, five lenses that open on any saved image without taking you away from it.
The belief underneath all of it is that what you collect shapes what you create. Collecting is creative work, not filing. And a tool for that should be yours: one purchase, no subscription, works offline, your boards on your own devices.
ArtDeck's answer:
ArtDeck is a native Apple application, not a cross-platform wrapper. It is written in Swift with SwiftUI, and shares one codebase across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS while adapting the interface to each.
Share your experience with using Scratch and ArtDeck. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.


Scratch lets students create interactive stories, games, and animations. The coding projects allow students to experiment and express their ideas, developing 21st-century skills like computational thinking and...
It can even permit anyone to access its junior program through which kids can learn how to make any app by taking their focus on the study related to programming. Scratch also comes with facilitating users with the...
Scratch, created by MIT students, teaches coding by allowing students to create tales, games, and animations using programming blocks. There is a vibrant online community as well as a step-by-step tutorial to assist...
We have no reviews of ArtDeck yet. Be the first one to post
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.


Here's how teaching kids goes without scratch: "This is python, we use it to do professional development work. Here's VS code, we use it to do professional development work. Let's learn them." 6 year olds: "Okay!" Proceeds to mangle... - Source: Hacker News / about 23 hours ago
What I wonder is: why has nobody noticed that code editors lack a concept of 0? When you're writing code, you can express any concept except that of an unfilled hole. We've rearranged every part of the coding process in a twisted-up way,... - Source: Hacker News / 16 days ago
Sounds like Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
Tracking ArtDeck since Aug 2026.
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Feature-packed 2D and 3D open source game engine.
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The simple way to view and organize your multiple reference images.
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GDevelop is an open-source game making software designed to be used by everyone.
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