25 Best Apps for iPad in 2026

Some of these picks sit at the top of the App Store charts, while others are hidden gems that deserve far more attention. We have selected 25 apps across productivity, finance, entertainment, education, and creative design, and reviewed each one below in no particular order.

The best apps for iPad at a glance

App	Category	Highlight	Price
ChatGPT	Productivity	AI chatbot for creative inspiration, answers, and daily tasks.	Free | $8/month | $20/month
Agenda	Productivity	Merges notepad and task manager, linking notes to events and projects.	Free | $14.99/month
Procreate	Graphics & Design	Powerful and intuitive digital art tool with Apple Pencil support.	$12.99 (one-time purchase)
Craft	Productivity	Beautiful app for creating and organizing notes with AI-powered editing.	Free | $10/month
Adobe Illustrator	Graphics & Design	Precise vector graphics editor with cloud syncing and Adobe app integration.	Free | $9.99/month
JigSpace	Education	Uses augmented reality for interactive 3D presentations.	Free | $140.00/month
TED	Education	Video app with talks on various topics and new ideas.	Free
Khan Academy Kids	Education	Educational app with lessons and games for children aged 2-8.	Free
Notion	Productivity	Sophisticated note-taking app with flexible organization and AI integration.	Free | $12/month
Sketchbook	Graphics & Design	Award-winning sketching app with customizable tools and brushes.	Free | $2.99 (one-time purchase)
Pandora	Music	Personalized music app with digital radio and offline playback.	Free | $4.99/month
1Password	Productivity	Securely generates and stores passwords with Face ID support.	Free | $3.99/month
JustWatch	Entertainment	Streaming guide with personalized recommendations.	Free | $3.99/month
Kindle Reader	Books	E-reader app with access to a vast library of books and magazines.	Free | $11.99/month
Notability	Productivity	Note-taking app with handwriting support, audio recording, and palm detection.	Free | $19.99/year
YNAB (You Need A Budget)	Finance	Budgeting and saving app with bank syncing and real-time expense tracking.	Free | $14.99/month
Dropbox	Productivity	Cloud-based storage solution for file sharing and access across devices.	Free | $11.99/month
IFTTT	Productivity	Connects and automates various apps and devices.	Free | $3.49/month
Duolingo	Education	Language learning app with bite-sized lessons and gamified exercises.	Free | $9.99/month
CapCut	Photo & Video	Powerful video editing app with unique features like slow-motion and background removal.	Free | $7.99/month
Goodnotes	Productivity	Popular note-taking app with smooth writing experience and rich features.	Free | $11.99/year | $35.99 one-time
TurboTax	Finance	Tax filing app with expert advice and maximum refund guarantee.	Free (with paid support from tax experts available)
Grammarly	Productivity	Writing assistant with real-time feedback and AI-powered suggestions.	Free | $29.99/month
Calm	Health & Fitness	Guided meditation and mindfulness app with sleep stories and relaxing music.	Free | $14.99/month
forScore	Music	Comprehensive sheet music reader with organization and annotation tools.	Free | $19.99 (one-time purchase) | Pro: $14.99/year

Quick picks by use case

Short on time? These are the apps worth installing first, grouped by what you actually want to do on your iPad.

• Best overall: Procreate. A $12.99 one-time purchase turns the iPad into a professional drawing studio with full Apple Pencil pressure and tilt support, and there is no subscription to renew.
• Best free app: ChatGPT. The free tier handles drafting, translation, and research with no cost, and it syncs your history across iPad, iPhone, and Mac.
• Best for Apple Pencil notes: Goodnotes and Notability. Both offer palm rejection and handwriting search, so you can write naturally with your hand resting on the screen.
• Best for budgeting: YNAB. It syncs to your bank, tracks every dollar in real time, and helps you build a plan to pay down debt or save faster.
• Best for video: CapCut. It exports up to 4K with auto captions, background removal, and slow motion, all from a free tier.

Every pick above is reviewed in full below, alongside 20 more apps for music, reading, finance, and education.

Which iPad do you need to run these apps?

Almost none of them need a new one. Apple's current lineup, priced on its US store in July 2026, is the iPad (A16) at $449, the iPad Air (M4) at $749 and the iPad Pro (M5) at $1,199, all Wi-Fi at base storage, with the iPad mini (A17 Pro) covering the small-screen slot. The M4 iPad Pro and the M2 and M3 iPad Airs are now the previous generation, which is exactly where refurbished stock comes from.

Apple's iPadOS 27 compatibility list still reaches back to the iPad Air 4th generation and the iPad 9th generation, both several generations old and both cheap on the refurbished market.

We pulled the App Store listing for all 25 apps on July 29, 2026 and checked what each one actually demands. The median minimum is iPadOS 17, and only three ask for iPadOS 18 or newer: Goodnotes at 18.6, Pandora at 18.0 and YNAB at 18.0. Khan Academy Kids still runs on iPadOS 12.

Procreate installs on iPadOS 16.3, so the drawing app most people buy an iPad Pro for is not the one setting the bar. A newer chip buys headroom rather than access: 4K exports in CapCut, bigger canvases and more layers in Procreate, less waiting when an app leans on on-device AI.

Stylus support is where the tiers genuinely split. Apple Pencil Pro works with the iPad Pro (M5), the iPad Air (M4) and the iPad mini (A17 Pro). The $449 iPad (A16) takes the Apple Pencil (USB-C) instead, which has no pressure sensitivity, no squeeze and no barrel roll, so Procreate loses its pressure curve on that model while handwriting in Goodnotes and Notability still works fine. If handwriting or drawing is the reason you want an iPad, that gap matters more than the chip does.

According to RefurbMe's tracking, an iPad reaches the refurbished market a median of 94 days after Apple announces it (as of October 2026), so a tablet announced this fall is usually on refurbished shelves, with a warranty, by early next year. Time-to-Refurb is the median lag measured across every iPad generation RefurbMe tracks, and it is a live median that moves, so check the current figure on the iPad stats page.

For the tier most app-heavy buyers settle on, see our refurbished iPad Air picks, weigh the two flagships in iPad Air vs iPad Pro, or check how long iPads last before you buy an older one.

1. ChatGPT

✨ Top features

• Instant answers from your prompts.
• Creative inspiration for work and home.
• Tailored advice for specific use cases.
• Text writing, editing, and translations.
• Paid access to the powerful GPT-5.2 model for deeper reasoning.

💲 Price: Free | ChatGPT Go: $8/month | ChatGPT Plus: $20/month 📌 Category: Productivity

ChatGPT has reshaped the way millions of people work, learn, and think about artificial intelligence. The iPad app from OpenAI lets you tap into an AI chatbot that can draft emails, brainstorm ideas, translate text, and walk you through complex problems. OpenAI now offers three paid tiers: ChatGPT Go at $8 per month for expanded usage, ChatGPT Plus at $20 per month with access to GPT-5.2 Thinking for advanced reasoning, and ChatGPT Pro at $200 per month for power users. Conversation history syncs across all your devices, making it effortless to pick up where you left off.

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2. Agenda

✨ Top features

• Add notes for what is on your agenda while preparing other notes for an upcoming event.
• Attach dates to individual notes and link them to events in your calendar.
• Use older notes to remind yourself why you took the actions you did.
• Give priority to some notes with the On the Agenda function. They get added to a particular overview in the sidebar so you can easily find them.
• Group your projects into categories and order the notes for each project.
• Sync up between iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

💲 Price: Free | Premium: $14.99/monthly
📌 Category: Productivity

Agenda merges a notepad and task manager. It is ideal for people who usually jot down ideas and events on a scrap of paper but would like that paper to be magical and organize everything for them. The notes can be grouped into projects, be linked to Calendar and Reminders, and have attachments for added context, such as office documents, scans, and photos. Whatever you add can then be displayed in timeline views that let you quickly get at the past, present, and future.

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3. Procreate

✨ Top features

• An intuitive interface made for iPad and Apple Pencil.
• Revolutionary QuickShape feature for perfect shapes.
• Smooth and responsive smudge sampling.
• It is powered by Valkyrie: the fastest 64-bit painting engine for Apple’s tablet.
• Connect a keyboard to use shortcuts for more advanced features.

💲 Price: $12.99 (one-time payment)
📌 Category: Graphics & Design

Procreate is an attractive tool for digital artists who want to make the most of the iPad Pro’s capabilities, including using the Apple Pencil. Procreate allows you to create sketches, paintings, and illustrations as your creativity dictates. This is one of the best apps for the iPad that lets students, artists, and any other user try to pursue their artistic side.

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4. Craft

✨ Top features

• Note organization in an aesthetically pleasing app.
• Write and draw with the Apple Pencil.
• Real-time collaboration.
• Offline access.
• AI assistant.

💲 Price: Free | Plus: $10/monthly
📌 Category: Productivity

Craft is a beautiful app that creates and organizes notes directly on your iPad. It features a flexible nesting system for effortless organization, various formatting tools for visual impact, and AI-powered editing for enhanced productivity. Craft also offers collaboration with real-time sharing and commenting and seamless export options to ensure your work looks its best everywhere.

👉 Learn more: Craft vs. Notion: The Ultimate Comparison

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5. Adobe Illustrator

✨ Top features

• Precise graphic editing and drawing experience.
• Convert sketches and raster images to scalable vector images.
• Vast typographic realm with more than 18,000 fonts.
• Automatic cloud syncing across iPad and desktop.
• Learn and get inspired with daily live streams and projects from leading industry creatives.
• Integration and compatibility across various Adobe applications like Photoshop and Fresco.

💲 Price: Free | $9.99/monthly
📌 Category: Graphics & Design

Adobe Illustrator for iPad propels mobile creative design into a dynamic realm of precision and versatility. Enabling designers to craft logos, illustrations, and graphics from virtually anywhere, this app seamlessly integrates with Apple Pencil, providing a tactile and intuitive design experience reminiscent of pen and paper yet elevated with digital convenience. Remarkably, work is auto-synced to the cloud, ensuring consistent access across all devices and compatibility with other Adobe apps like Photoshop and Fresco.

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6. JigSpace

✨ Top features

• View 3D presentations in augmented reality on your iPad.
• A free library of 3D objects and materials to create your own Jigs.
• Explore interactive 3D breakdowns of complex ideas and products.
• Share your presentations using a shareable link.

💲 Price: Free | Starter: $140.00/monthly
📌 Category: Education

JigSpace uses augmented reality (AR) to educate. The app rapidly finds a flat surface onto which your object is projected, and then you can pinch to resize it or spin it with a swipe. Objects aren’t static since many animate and are gradually disassembled across a series of slides. For example, an alarm clock can open to show its gears and mechanisms. Due to the app’s AR nature, you can check everything out from any angle. It’s also compatible with Apple Vision Pro.

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7. TED

✨ Top features

• Personalized recommendations and curators’ picks.
• Subtitles in over 100 languages.
• Sync videos across devices.
• Stream videos to Apple TV using AirPlay.
• Download videos to watch them offline.

💲 Price: Free 
📌 Category: Education

TED is a video app that satisfies your curiosity by watching people talk about various topics and experiences. Although the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, it’s fundamentally interested in new ideas. This is definitely not a traditional educational iPad app, but it is one of the best free apps for students and curious people who want to learn and explore via the experiences of some of the most accomplished people in their fields. It’s a breath of fresh air amid all the TV and social media noise.

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8. Khan Academy Kids

✨ Top features

• Teaches basic skills in reading, math, phonics, and social-emotional skills, among many others.
• Thousands of lessons, activities, books, and games for children from 2 to 8 years of age.
• Parents can choose lessons from the library.
• Learning at home or in school. 
• Teachers can quickly and easily find lessons and monitor student progress using teacher tools.

💲 Price: Free
📌 Category: Education

Khan Academy is an educational app that offers children a wide range of courses. This free app will help kids develop and understand basic concepts like empathy, problem-solving, and self-confidence while having fun with many activities. The lessons and books are organized from preschool through second grade for children ages 2 to 8.

👉 Learn more: 5 Best iPads for Kids

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9. Notion

✨ Top features

• Use drag and drop to arrange any content. Great for prioritizing lists and to-dos.
• Supports images, checkboxes, bookmarks, lists, relations, code snippets, and 20+ block types.
• Notion syncs across devices seamlessly.
• Share your pages and edit them together with comments.
• Nest pages inside pages and create a well-structured project.

💲 Price: Free | Plus: $12/monthly
📌 Category: Productivity

Notion is a sophisticated note-taking app with a sleek design. It offers a highly flexible interface for taking notes and creating to-do lists, letting you organize your tasks into tables, kanban boards, galleries, and calendar views. At the same time, you can also sync Notion with Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Todoist, and other services in a full bidirectional synchronization. Notion has also integrated AI to offer you limitless possibilities using the app. It’s an all-in-one productivity solution that is simply one of the best apps for your iPad, phone, and computer.

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10. Sketchbook

✨ Top features

• Full set of brush types.
• Customize your brushes to be exactly as you want them.
• Create your own custom brushes.
• Import and export brushes.
• Color selection from images.
• PDF export.

💲 Price: Free | Premium Bundle: $2.99 (one-time payment)
📌 Category: Graphics & Design

Sketchbook is easily one of the best apps for iPad for graphic design and (you got it!) sketching. This award-winning app is perfect for professional artists and illustrators looking for highly customizable tools, brushes, rulers, and stroke tools to do their magic and bring to life the designs and drawings they have in mind.

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11. Pandora

✨ Top features

• Search and play your favorite songs, podcasts, albums, and playlists on demand.
• Create playlists on your own or powered by Pandora.
• Download the music for offline listening.
• Unlimited skips and replays.
• High-quality audio.
• Ad-free music.

💲 Price: Free | Plus: $4.99/monthly
📌 Category: Music

Pandora is a personalized music app that works as a digital radio since it lets you create stations from your favorite songs, artists, or genres. With the Home Sharing function, you can access the entire music library of your iPad, even replacing your home stereo in the process. At the same time, you can take the music app wherever you go with CarPlay. It’s free to use and includes other advanced features you must pay for, such as offline playback.

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12. 1Password

✨ Top features

• Generate strong and unique passwords for your online accounts.
• Access your passwords from multiple devices.
• Create vaults to store and organize your passwords efficiently.
• It is compatible with Face ID.
• You can share specific passwords with family members, friends, or clients.

💲 Price: Free | $3.99/monthly
📌 Category: Productivity

Tired of creating and remembering complicated passwords? 1Password is an excellent service for safely generating and storing passwords without remembering them. Everything you need to memorize is, well, one password! The app for iPad will let you generate and create passwords so you don’t have to manually enter them when using the tablet. And it now supports passkeys!

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13. JustWatch

✨ Top features

• It’s 100% legal (in case you were wondering!).
• Select your favorite services and filter different attributes like movie genre or release year.
• Stay up-to-date with the daily list of new releases for movies and TV shows on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Plus, Hulu, and 100+ other services.
• Best deals for renting and buying movies and TV shows online.

💲 Price: Free | Pro: $3.99/monthly
📌 Category: Entertainment

With so many streaming services and content on demand nowadays, it can be challenging to find out what to watch and, most importantly, where to watch it. JustWatch is here to get personalized recommendations based on the content you watch on streaming platforms. Think about it as a streaming guide that lets you find your next favorite movie, TV show, or documentary.

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14. Kindle Reader

✨ Top features

• Hundreds of books, magazines, and comics are included with Amazon Prime.
• Bookmark, make highlights, and take notes while reading.
• Track your reading progress and know how much time is left in the chapter or book.
• Customize text size, font type, margins, alignment, and orientation.
• Switch to Audible to listen to the audiobook (if available) inside the same app.

💲 Price: Free | Kindle Unlimited: $11.99/monthly
📌 Category: Books

The Kindle Reader app for the iPad is like having an e-reader inside your tablet. When you buy a book on Amazon, it will be sent directly from the website to your iPad and be ready to download and read. Use the landscape mode so reading on your tablet feels more natural. In addition, if you have Amazon Prime, you can access a wide selection of books included with the program.

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15. Notability

✨ Top features

• Use various tools for creating notes, drawing, journaling, highlighting text, and adding audio.
• Replay audio recordings and tap anywhere on your note to listen to them.
• Group notes with subjects and dividers.
• Precisely erase ink or shapes with different brush sizes.
• Make presentations on a full screen when connected to an external display.
• AI-powered Learn feature.

💲 Price: Free | Plus: $19.99/year 📌 Category: Productivity

Notability is a note-taking app that lets you handwrite your notes instead of typing them, which is ideal for iPad owners who also have the Apple Pencil. In any given note, you can sketch, handwrite, type, cut out a section, paste it back in, and record audio that is saved with that specific note. The Plus plan, at roughly $20 per year, unlocks iCloud syncing, unlimited edits, and advanced organizational tools. Palm detection means you can write with your hand resting on the screen without triggering unwanted marks.

👉 Related: 21 Best Apps for the Apple Pencil

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16. YNAB (You Need A Budget)

✨ Top features

• Have a big-picture view to know the finances from all your accounts in one place.
• View changes to your budget in real-time synced across devices.
• Create an easy-to-visualize plan to help you get out of debt or save more efficiently.
• Track the progress of your financial priorities.
• Visualize your spending trends with customizable reports.

💲 Price: Free | Subscription: $14.99/monthly
📌 Category: Finance

YNAB helps you budget and save your money more intelligently. The app can sync to your bank account and has real-time expense tracking, so you know where every dollar goes at every moment. At the same time, YNAB lets you work with goals, one of the most important things about saving and investing.

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17. Dropbox

✨ Top features

• Automatically upload and store videos and photos from the camera.
• Access any file in your account and preview over 175 different file types with no software required.
• Send large files by copying and pasting a link you can share with anyone, even if they don’t have a Dropbox account.
• Scan documents, receipts, or IDs using your device and transform them into high-quality PDFs.
• Sync folders on your computer to Dropbox with computer backup.
• Recover older versions of files or restore deleted files with version history and file recovery.

💲 Price: Free | Plus: $11.99/monthly
📌 Category: Productivity

Dropbox is a great way to get extra free storage on your iPad. This popular cloud-based storage solution also lets you easily share files between devices. You can also use Dropbox if you have a lot of documents on your computer and want to access them easily from your device. It’s one of the best iPad apps you can get along with Google Drive and OneDrive.

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18. IFTTT

✨ Top features

• Control everything around you with your voice and Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
• Automate your smart home and stay safe with intelligent security alerts.
• Stay informed about what’s happening in news outlets.
• Streamline your social media and use the cross-posting function.
• Back up and share your photos automatically.

💲 Price: Free | Pro: $3.49/monthly
📌 Category: Productivity

IFTTT is an applet that connects over 600+ apps, such as Twitch, Google Drive, Twitter, Telegram, Weather Underground, Instagram, and other devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. It helps users integrate third-party apps and functions to automate their homes and activities on their iPads.

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19. Duolingo

✨ Top features

• Concise and bite-sized lessons for language learning.
• Over 40 languages, including commonly spoken ones and fantasy languages like High Valyrian!
• Lessons meticulously designed by language experts to foster lasting language retention.
• Speaking, reading, listening, and writing exercises.
• Unrestricted access to all language courses for free.

💲 Price: Free | Super Duolingo: $9.99/monthly
📌 Category: Education

Embark on a linguistic journey with Duolingo, the world’s most downloaded education app, offering a playful and efficient pathway to learning over 40 languages, music, and math. With bite-sized lessons formulated by language experts, Duolingo ingeniously integrates speaking, reading, listening, and writing practices to solidify your vocabulary and grammar skills, all while making learning feel like a game. Duolingo’s science-backed teaching methodology, proven to encourage long-term language retention, ensures you’re well-prepared for authentic conversations in your chosen language.

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20. CapCut

✨ Top features

• All basic editing functions you can expect from a professional video editor.
• Keyframe video animation.
• Slow-motion video creation.
• Video stabilization feature.
• Auto captions, text-to-speech, and background removal.
• 4K and Smart HDR support.

💲 Price: Free | Subscription: $7.99/monthly
📌 Category: Photo & Video

Editing video on an iPad can be easy and rewarding, especially if you use a powerful all-in-one app like CapCut. It has some unique features that stand out from other apps, such as slow-motion, auto-captions, text-to-speech, background removal, and trending effects and filters. The result is easy to share, and the video editor supports up to 4K 60FPS exports with Smart HDR. Worth noting: CapCut is owned by ByteDance and was briefly removed from U.S. app stores in January 2025 due to national security legislation. It has since been reinstated, but its long-term availability in the U.S. depends on ongoing government negotiations.

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21. Goodnotes

✨ Top features

• Custom outlines creation.
• Drawing perfect shapes and lines with the Shape Tool.
• Add or import custom elements, like stickers, tables, and pictures.
• iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive sync.
• AirPlay support to connect your Mac.
• Laser Pointer to guide your audience in presentations.

💲 Price: Free | Essential: $11.99/year | Special Edition: $35.99 (one-time purchase) 📌 Category: Productivity

Goodnotes has become one of the most popular note-taking apps on iPad, and its latest pricing reflects a shift toward flexibility. The Essential plan at $11.99 per year unlocks unlimited notebooks, audio recording, and exclusive templates. If you prefer to pay once and own forever, the Special Edition costs $35.99 as a one-time purchase with Apple-only access. Either way, you get a smooth writing experience powered by a leading vector ink engine, plus the ability to move, resize, and rotate your handwriting, import PDF files, and add rich elements like stickers and images.

Goodnotes now requires iPadOS 18.6 or later, the highest bar of any app on this list.

👉 Related: 10 Best Note-Taking Apps for iPad

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22. TurboTax

✨ Top features

• Get advice from tax experts.
• Simple tax returns are free.
• They guarantee the maximum refund.
• TurboTax pays any possible IRS penalties if their calculations are not accurate.
• You can auto-import your activity.
• Report sales of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and crypto.
• They work with more than 350 deductions.

💲 Price: Free | Paid support from tax experts
📌 Category: Finance

Ah, yes, filing and paying your taxes is everyone’s hobby, right? If it’s not your favorite thing and you have doubts about how to do it properly, leave it to TurboTax. Easily one of the best finance apps for the iPad, it will put you in contact with tax experts to ensure all calculations are correct and help you save the maximum amount of money.

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23. Grammarly

✨ Top features

• All the features from the desktop version.
• A keyboard that works in all your apps, so you can get feedback on your writing wherever you are.
• Document editor for long-form writing.
• Voice-to-text tool to save you time.
• Premium features: advanced suggestions, plagiarism detection, personal style guide, and tone detection
• AI text generation, correction, and suggestions.

💲 Price: Free | Premium: $29.99/month
📌 Category: Productivity

Grammarly is a must-have app for anyone who wants to improve their writing, whether you’re a student, professional, or creative writer. With Grammarly, you can get real-time feedback on your grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style, as well as suggestions for improving clarity, conciseness, and engagement. Additionally, Grammarly AI can help you generate text and ideas and edit your tone and style, among many others.

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24. Calm

✨ Top features

• Introductory meditation lessons to learn mindfulness.
• Daily Calm: unique meditations of 10 minutes each day.
• Sleep stories narrated by well-known artists.
• Relaxing music and soundscapes.
• Mood tracking.

💲 Price: Free | Premium: $14.99/month
📌 Category: Health & Fitness

Take a deep breath. Calm is more than a guided meditation and mindfulness app for your iPad and other devices; it includes masterclasses, sleep stories, and stretching exercises. If you are considering starting your meditation journey, Calm also offers introductory lessons to begin learning with daily guided exercises. More than 1.8 million ratings with an average of 4.8 make it one of the best apps for your iPad.

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25. forScore

✨ Top features

• Sync PDFs and scores to all devices and import from various sources, including cloud services and content providers.
• Organize your scores meticulously with metadata and smart bookmarks, and create setlists.
• Optimize viewing with portrait, dual-page, or Reflow layouts on your device, catering to your reading preference.
• Annotate with ease, draw, type text, or add common symbols, and manage layers of annotations for different needs.
• Simplify navigation and manage repeats with customizable links, buttons, and easy rearrangement of score pages.
• Expand functionality with integrated utilities such as a metronome, pitch pipe, tuner, and piano keyboard.

💲 Price: Free | $19.99 (one-time purchase) | Pro: $14.99/year 📌 Category: Music

Transform your musical practice and performance with forScore, the comprehensive sheet music reader that ensures your scores are always at your fingertips, whether on the move or on the stage. Offering far more than paper, forScore organizes, refines, and simplifies your musical sheets, allowing instant access, smooth page turns, and interactive annotation. Globally acclaimed and featured in Apple keynotes, this app is not merely a tool but an extension of your musicality.

Final thoughts

Whether you are sketching in Procreate, filing taxes with TurboTax, or learning a new language through Duolingo, each of these apps makes a strong case for keeping your iPad within arm’s reach. The ecosystem continues to grow in 2026, with AI-powered features arriving across productivity, note-taking, and creative tools alike. ChatGPT, Notion, Grammarly, Craft, and Notability now ship built-in AI assistants, so on-device intelligence has moved from a novelty to a baseline expectation this year.

If you are looking for a powerful tablet to run these apps without paying full price, check out the 7 best refurbished iPads or read our guide to buying a used iPad before you commit. Visit RefurbMe to find the iPad with the exact specs you need, warranty included.

Browse available deals in real time below.

You can also explore our lists with the 20 best iPad games and the 21 best Mac apps.

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