If you shoot enough to want a solver in your pocket, you've watched the market shift under you. Apps that used to cost a few dollars once now want a monthly fee, the biggest name in the category sells tiers, and the old default answer — Strelok — can't be downloaded at all. This page maps the honest landscape: which serious apps still sell one-time, which went subscription and why, and which are free because an ammo maker pays for them.
| App | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Shooter | $19.99 once, per platform | Classic trajectory solver, iOS and Android |
| GeoBallistics | Free + $14.99 Pro unlock | Solver with terrain mapping and range cards |
| Ballistic-X | $7.99 once (base app) | Photo group measurement and sight correction |
| Zero Considerations | $9.99 once | Photo zeroing to turret clicks, full solver, 301 spec-drawn reticles |
Prices checked August 2026. Store prices change — confirm on the listing before buying.
One of the oldest paid solvers still on sale, and its developer has kept the promise most others broke: one-time purchase, free updates. It's a straight ballistic calculator — rifle and load profiles, atmospherics, trajectory tables in MOA and MIL. No photo tools, no zeroing workflow. Note the purchase is per platform: buying on iOS doesn't cover Android.
Free to run with one rifle; a one-time $14.99 Pro unlock adds unlimited rifles, range-card save and export, Kestrel connectivity, and online backup. Its distinctive feature is mapping — plotting shots over real terrain — which makes it popular with hunters planning positions. Vortex has promoted it, which tells you the solver is taken seriously.
The best-known group-measurement app: photograph your target, mark your point of aim and each impact, and it computes group size and a scope correction. Since v3.0.3 (June 2025) it ships its own printable BX targets that set the photo's scale automatically. The base app is a one-time $7.99; be aware its optional Advanced Toolkit is sold as a yearly in-app purchase, so read the listing if you want every feature. It measures groups — it isn't a full trajectory solver.
Our app. Covered honestly below, after the rest of the landscape.
Applied Ballistics Quantum is the serious long-range platform, and it's tiered: a free Ultralite level, with the full Elite feature set available as a subscription — about $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year as of this writing — or unlocked free when the app pairs with AB-enabled hardware like a compatible Kestrel. To be fair about it: what the subscription funds is real. Custom Doppler-measured drag models for specific bullets, aerodynamic jump and spin drift modeling, profile sync across devices — that data cost real money to shoot and maintain. If you run ELR matches with a Kestrel on your belt, it can be worth every cent.
The objection isn't the price, which is modest. It's the model: your solver access stops the day you stop paying, and a rifle you zeroed under last year's subscription doesn't care that this year's lapsed.
Hornady 4DOF is genuinely free with no catch. It's also technically interesting: for bullets in its library it solves from measured drag coefficients rather than a G1/G7 BC, and the library covers Hornady plus selected match bullets from Sierra, Berger, Lapua, and Nosler. The limits are structural, not hidden — the library centers on supported bullets, and it's a trajectory calculator, not a zeroing workflow.
Lapua Ballistics is free and runs a 6DOF model with Doppler-verified data for Lapua's own bullets — excellent if that's what you shoot; anything else is manual entry. Federal offers a free calculator built around its factory loads too.
The pattern is the same everywhere: these apps exist to sell ammunition. Nothing wrong with that — free is free, and Hornady's math is legitimately good — but development follows the brand's priorities, and the feature set stops at drop tables. None of them will measure your group from a photo or tell you how many clicks to turn.
Three reasons, in descending order of legitimacy:
Here's the thing the subscription pitch glosses over: the solver math is local. Every consumer ballistic app runs a point-mass (or modified point-mass) integration a modern phone finishes in milliseconds — this math ran fine on 2010 hardware. The standard drag models are public. Reticle subtensions come from manufacturers' published spec sheets. Measuring a shot group from a photo is on-device computer vision. Nothing in the zeroing job requires a server, an account, or a signal.
And at the range, you frequently don't have a signal. Rifle ranges sit in valleys, behind berms, past the edge of coverage — exactly where the app has to work. An app that phones home to unlock features is making an architecture choice, not meeting a necessity. For a tool whose whole job happens at a concrete bench in a dead zone, offline isn't a feature. It's the spec.
Zero Considerations is $9.99, once, for everything — no subscription, no ads, no account, and offline for everything except one optional weather lookup you tap. The core loop: photograph your target before and after the string, and the app measures the group and converts your point-of-impact error into a click count for your optic's click value. The free printable targets carry coded corner markers that set the photo's scale and correct camera tilt and perspective, and bullet holes are detected automatically (you can add or remove any the camera got wrong) — against Ballistic-X, its closest one-time neighbor, those are the differences, along with what happens next: the same purchase continues into truing your muzzle velocity from observed drop, DOPE cards, a full solver, and holdover points on 301 reticles drawn from published manufacturer subtension data. What it won't do is certify your zero — no app can. Confirm with a follow-up group before you trust any correction, and treat trued velocity as a good field estimate, not a chronograph reading.
As of August 2026: Shooter ($19.99, per platform), GeoBallistics ($14.99 Pro unlock), Ballistic-X ($7.99 base), and Zero Considerations ($9.99 for everything). Verify on the store listing — prices move.
The Ultralite tier is. Full Elite is a subscription (about $19.99 a year as of this writing) or free when paired with AB-enabled hardware.
No fee, no tricks. The trade-off is structural: bullet libraries built around the maker's products, and nothing beyond trajectory solutions — no photo measurement, no click workflow.
The math never does. Some apps need a connection for accounts or sync; the good offline ones work in a dead zone and treat weather download as optional.
One purchase, every feature, works with zero bars. Start with the free targets — they're useful with or without the app.
Zero Considerations — photograph the target, get the measured group and the exact clicks to dial, then keep the DOPE. One-time $9.99 on both stores — no subscription, no account, works with no signal.
App Store — $9.99 once Google Play — $9.99 once What it does Free printable targets
On Android, Google Play gives you 48 hours to ask for a refund — try it on your next range trip and keep it only if it earns its spot in your range bag. Not ready today? Wishlist it on Google Play and Google will notify you if the price drops before opening day.