Best Crossword Apps for iPhone and iPad (2026)

You have an iPhone or an iPad, and you want a crossword app that fits it. Not a stretched phone app on a 13-inch screen, and not a paywall you meet after the download. This guide covers nine crossword apps on the App Store, checked against their listings on September 22, 2026: what is free, which ones carry the App Store's Contains Advertising label, which two are Apple-only, which one opens .puz files, and how each behaves on an iPad.

The short version: Grid Genius is the free pick if you want a fresh puzzle on any topic plus a daily challenge, NYT Games is the classic, and Apple News+ Puzzles and Black Ink are the two Apple-only options. If you also need Android or a browser in the picture, our best crossword puzzle apps roundup is the full cross-platform comparison. This post stays inside the Apple ecosystem.

The short answer

• Best free crossword app for iPhone: Grid Genius. A free daily challenge with a global leaderboard and streaks, community puzzles, free puzzle makers, and AI-generated puzzles on any topic.
• Best for the classic daily: NYT Games. The download is free, but the crossword and the Mini both need a subscription.
• Best Apple-only option: Apple News+ Puzzles, if you already pay for News+. Black Ink, if you solve .puz files from indie constructors.
• Best ad-free library without a subscription: Penny Dell Daily Crossword, with a one-time $19.99 Remove Ads purchase.
• Best free library of human-made puzzles: Crossword Puzzle Redstone, if you can live with ads or pay once to remove them.

Read the App Store listing before you download

Every App Store listing has an Information section, and it answers most of the questions people search for. Here is what to look at, and what we found for the apps below.

• Compatibility. A native iPad app shows an iPad line that reads "Requires iPadOS" and a version. Every app in this guide has one. A listing that only names iPhone runs on iPad in a scaled-up window instead.
• Age Rating. The Contains Advertising label lives under the age rating. It appears on Penny Dell, Redstone, Daily Themed Crossword, Crosswords With Friends, Apple News and Grid Genius. It does not appear on NYT Games, Black Ink or Crosswords Classic.
• In-App Purchases. A one-time Remove Ads purchase (Penny Dell, Redstone) is a different deal from a subscription (NYT, Black Ink Premium, Apple News+, Grid Genius Pro) or a coin economy (Daily Themed, Crosswords With Friends). The list shows the names and prices before you install anything.
• Version History. The notes are where developers mention Files app support, iCloud Drive or Apple Vision Pro. Black Ink's notes mention the Files app and Vision Pro; Crosswords Classic's mention iCloud Drive.

Crossword apps for iPhone and iPad, compared

Every entry below was checked against its US App Store listing on September 22, 2026. Prices are the US prices shown on the listing.

The apps, one by one

Grid Genius: AI Crosswords

Grid Genius is a crossword maker and a daily puzzle in one app, and it is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, with the same app on Android and in a browser at play.gridgenius.app. The free tier is the widest on this list. You get a free daily challenge with a global leaderboard and streaks, community puzzles, and two puzzle makers (word list and freeform) that need no account. Every account also gets AI-generated puzzles on any topic you type: 3 to start, then 1 free per day.

The hints are the part no other app here has. AI Hints rephrase a clue or add a related fact instead of just revealing letters, so you keep solving. Free accounts get 2 a day plus a daily bonus and ad rewards. Pro ($7.99 a month or $49.99 a year) makes AI generation and hints unlimited, removes ads, adds news-grounded puzzles and premium themes. A 7-day free trial exists on the yearly plan only.

The honest limits: the puzzles are AI-generated on demand, not newspaper puzzles from a named constructor. There is no .puz import on iOS. Puzzles load from the server, so printing a puzzle as a PDF is the offline route. The free tier carries the Contains Advertising label because it uses opt-in rewarded ads for hint top-ups; Pro is ad-free. For a head-to-head with the classic, read Grid Genius vs the NYT Crossword.

NYT Games: Wordle & Crossword

The New York Times crossword now ships inside NYT Games, listed on the App Store as NYT Games: Wordle & Crossword. The download is free, but the daily crossword and the Mini both need a subscription: the Mini stopped being free in August 2025, and any NYT plan that includes Games unlocks it. The new Midi and the archive of over 10,000 past puzzles are for subscribers too. The in-app purchase list shows a New York Times Crossword Subscription at $6.99 and at $39.99, plus Games monthly options at $4.99 and $5.99.

On Apple hardware it is a native iPhone and iPad app that requires iOS 18 or iPadOS 18, so an older iPad may be out. The listing carries no Contains Advertising label. There is no puzzle maker and no way to solve outside what the Times publishes. If you want the NYT puzzle in a different solver, Black Ink and Puzzazz both mention NYT puzzles on their listings, with a Times subscription.

Apple News+ Puzzles

This is the one you cannot get anywhere else. Apple News+ includes original mini and full-size crossword puzzles, and the App Store description for Apple News also lists an Emoji Game, Quartiles and sudoku. There is no standalone puzzles app: you open the News app and the puzzles are inside. Apple says News+ Puzzles needs iOS 17, iPadOS 17 or macOS Sonoma 14, so the same subscription covers your iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The catch is the price and the map. News+ costs $12.99 a month in the US, with one month free for new subscribers, and Apple says News+ is available only in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. A News+ subscription also turns on Offline Mode, which the listing says downloads stories, recipes and puzzles for the plane. If you already pay for News+ or Apple One Premier, the puzzles are a free bonus. If you do not, $12.99 a month is a lot if the crosswords are all you want.

Black Ink Crosswords

Black Ink is Red Sweater Software's Mac crossword solver, and the iOS version runs on iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro. It is the app for people who collect puzzles from constructors' websites. Red Sweater says it opens any puzzle file designed for the Across Lite format, which is the .puz file format, and the App Store version history says the app shows up in the Files app's Open With menu and accepts drag and drop of puzzle files. The listing also names paid sources it works with, including the New York Times, American Values Club, Inkubator and Crossword Nation.

The core features are free forever, according to Red Sweater: downloading from bundled sources and solving in the grid. Check Answer and Reveal Answer are Premium features, listed at $1.99 a month, $19.99 a year or a $99.99 one-time purchase. There is no Contains Advertising label. The Mac app is a separate download, and neither the listing nor the developer's page mentions iCloud sync between the two.

Crosswords Classic

Crosswords Classic by Stand Alone, Inc. is the veteran here, and the only paid-upfront app on the list at $9.99. It downloads puzzles from a list of sources with one tap: Newsday, King Features, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Jonesin' and others, plus a Premium Crosswords subscription for a few more. The listing calls out iPad-specific touches, including a touch-and-hold hint on iPad and a two-finger tap to resize the clue list, and it lets you rotate the screen to see the puzzle and the clues together.

The version history lists iCloud Drive support, and the description says you can sync puzzles with the Crosswords Mac app, which is sold separately on the Mac App Store. The listing does not say whether it opens .puz files directly, so we have not claimed it. There is a free Crossword Light app with 40 puzzles, but its listing shows a last update in April 2024, so try it as a demo rather than a daily driver.

Penny Dell Daily Crossword

Penny Dell brings puzzles from the Penny Press and Dell magazines to iPhone and iPad. The free tier is three new puzzles a day at easy, medium and hard, plus a 12-puzzle sampler. The listing carries the Contains Advertising label, and Remove Ads is a one-time $19.99 purchase, so there is no subscription to keep paying. Puzzle collections sell as packs from $2.99 to $9.99, and the description says the collections play offline and without ads.

It is a traditional app with no maker, no custom topics and no AI hints. For a longer look at the pay-once route, see our guide to a crossword app with no ads.

Crossword Puzzle Redstone

Redstone lists 30,000+ human-made puzzles from more than 80 constructors, in mini, midi and 15x15 sizes and four difficulty levels, and the description says there are no subscriptions. Offline Mode and Dark Mode are named features. The trade is ads: the listing carries the Contains Advertising label, and Remove Ads is a one-time $34.99 purchase, with extra packs from $0.99.

On Apple hardware it is a native iPhone and iPad app, and the compatibility section also lists Apple silicon Macs and Apple Vision Pro. There is no puzzle maker and no .puz import.

Daily Themed Crossword

Daily Themed Crossword by PlaySimple serves one themed puzzle a day, with a different theme for each day of the week and hundreds of puzzles to play. It is free to download, coins are the in-app currency (packs from $2.99), and the listing carries the Contains Advertising label. A VIP Membership, listed at $7.99 in the in-app purchases, removes ads and adds archive access and daily bonus coins.

It is an easy, friendly daily habit on an iPhone. It is not the app for a purist, and the coin economy means the free version nudges you toward the store.

Crosswords With Friends

Zynga's Crosswords With Friends is a pop-culture daily: Movie Monday, TV Tuesday, Sports Fan Friday and so on, edited by Trip Payne and Amy Reynaldo. A free mini and midi come with the daily, there is a leaderboard for friends, and a calendar archive. It is free with the Contains Advertising label, coins from $2.99, and subscription entries at $5.99 and $9.99 that the description says remove ads and unlock archived puzzles.

The puzzles are lighter than a newspaper grid, which is the point. Pick it if you want a social daily with friends who also have iPhones. If crosswords are only one of the word games you play, our best word games of 2026 covers the rest of the field.

What we left out

The Guardian's standalone Puzzles & Crosswords app is gone: its App Store URL returned nothing in the US and UK storefronts when we checked, though the main Guardian news app's description still mentions crosswords and sudoku. Puzzazz is still listed, and it is the only listing that mentions Apple Pencil and Split View, but its last update was September 2021, so we could not recommend it as a first choice on a current iPad.

iPad layouts, Apple Pencil, iCloud and .puz files

These are the four things people ask about crossword apps on Apple devices, and the listings answer them more plainly than reviews do.

iPad layout

Every app in this guide ships a native iPad build, so the grid and the clues are laid out for the bigger screen rather than scaled up from the phone. Crosswords Classic goes furthest in its listing, with iPad-only hint and font controls and a rotated view that shows the grid and the clues together. Apple News+ Puzzles and Black Ink also run on the Mac (News+ natively, Black Ink through its separate Mac app), and Black Ink, Redstone and Penny Dell list Apple Vision Pro.

Apple Pencil

Handwriting your answers is rarer than you would hope. Puzzazz is the only listing that mentions Apple Pencil, for switching between pen and pencil entry, and its listing shows no update since 2021. Every other app here, including Grid Genius, expects you to tap a square and type. On an iPad, that means the on-screen keyboard or a keyboard case.

iCloud and sync

Crosswords Classic mentions iCloud Drive in its version history and syncing puzzles with its Mac app. Apple News+ is a subscription on your Apple Account, and Apple lists News+ Puzzles for iPhone, iPad and Mac. No other listing here mentions iCloud, so treat "sync" as an account feature rather than an iCloud one, and check the listing before you count on it.

.puz files and offline play

Black Ink is the app for .puz files: Across Lite format, opened from the Files app. Grid Genius does not import .puz on iOS; its puzzles come from the daily challenge, the community and the makers, and you can build your own with the free crossword puzzle maker on the web or in the app. For offline solving, Penny Dell's collections and Redstone's Offline Mode are the listings that say so, and Apple News+ downloads puzzles in Offline Mode. Grid Genius loads puzzles from the server, so the offline route there is printing a PDF.

Which one should you download?

• You want a free app that does the most. Grid Genius. Free daily, free makers, AI puzzles on any topic, and AI Hints that help you think. Start on the daily challenge or browse puzzles by topic.
• You want the New York Times puzzle. NYT Games, with the subscription, or Black Ink if you prefer its solver and already subscribe.
• You already pay for Apple News+. Open the News app. The crosswords are included, on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
• You solve indie .puz puzzles. Black Ink. Free to download and solve, Premium for check and reveal.
• You want newspaper puzzles from many sources in one app. Crosswords Classic, $9.99 once.
• You want no ads without a subscription. Penny Dell, with the $19.99 Remove Ads purchase.
• You want the biggest free library and can tolerate ads. Redstone, with a $34.99 exit from the ads if you stay.
• You want a light daily habit. Daily Themed Crossword or Crosswords With Friends, with the coin economy in mind.

Frequently asked questions