Published 2026-09-05
Eleven roguelikes on the App Store for less than five dollars, ordered by which one I would buy first, with prices, ratings and last update dates checked by hand on 5 September 2026.
Five dollars is not a budget on the App Store. It is roughly the standard price of the genre's best work on this platform, which is a strange thing to be able to write. The list below is not a list of cheap roguelikes. It is most of the shelf.
Every price, rating and last update date here was pulled by hand from Apple's own search API on 5 September 2026, US storefront. Prices are set per country, so yours may differ from these. I am the developer of one of the games mentioned at the bottom, which is exactly why I looked this shelf up properly rather than from memory.
The order is the order I would buy them in, not the order of their ratings.
The one to buy first, and the one to buy if you buy only one. It holds 4.89 out of 5 across 4,126 ratings, which is both the highest score on this shelf and by far the largest pile of ratings behind a score that high. Released August 2021 and last updated 23 March 2026, still maintained by Evan Debenham, one person.
It is a traditional roguelike: turn based, no timer, permanent death, and it will end a two hour run because you walked one tile in the wrong direction, without apologising. That is the point. If you want to know whether this genre is for you, this is the honest test, and at $4.99 it is the cheapest honest test there is. App Store
If what you came for is slot machines, start here, and yes, I am aware of what I am recommending. Released 17 December 2025 by Future Friends Games, 4.9 out of 5 across 5,885 ratings, the biggest number on this page. Turn based: you spin, you pay a debt at the end of each round, the debt grows. It is very good, and more finished than most things in its price band. I would rather send you to it and be trusted on the other ten entries. We have a fuller comparison of what plays like CloverPit if that is the shelf you are shopping. App Store
The best value per dollar on the App Store, and it has been for a decade. Released 15 October 2015, last updated 22 December 2020, 4.71 across 1,757 ratings. Nobody has touched it in nearly six years and nobody needs to.
It is played in portrait with one thumb, a vertical fall through a well with guns on your boots, and a run takes a few minutes. If you are shopping for something to play standing up on a train, stop reading here. App Store
Released 21 December 2013 and last updated 22 October 2025. Twelve years of updates is a thing you will not find twice on this list, and it is worth more than any review score. 4.69 across 788 ratings.
Turn based tactics on a hex grid: no hidden information, no reaction speed, nothing to fumble. Pure decisions, one hand, offline. It is also the entry most likely to be dismissed for looking like a 2013 game, which it is. App Store
Released 20 July 2023 by TrampolineTales, 4.7 across 332 ratings. A slot machine you build like a deck: symbols go on the reels, the rent comes due, the rent goes up. It is the game that proved the shape worked, and everything on the slot shelf since owes it something. The rating count is low because it is a niche inside a niche, not because people were disappointed. More on what came after it. App Store
The newest thing here: released 17 August 2026, three weeks old, 4.88 across 257 ratings, from the same publisher as CloverPit. A slot machine roguelite with a dungeon crawl attached. Nobody can tell you yet how it holds up at hour twenty, me included. Everything else about it looks right. App Store
Read the store listing carefully before you tap. There is a free Brotato, updated 3 September 2026, and a separate paid app called Brotato: Premium at $4.99, 4.74 across 3,633 ratings. They are two different installs, not an unlock inside one app.
Waves, a shop between them, weapons that stack into nonsense by wave fifteen. If that is the itch, there is a longer piece here on what else plays like Brotato on iPhone. App Store
Terry Cavanagh's dice game, on iOS since July 2022, last updated 30 July 2026, 4.57 across 220 ratings. Every character rewrites what the dice do, which is a lot of variety for the money. It sits here rather than higher because its runs are long and it asks more of a small screen than anything above it. App Store
4.58 across 469 ratings, and a genuinely good one handed card game: you swipe left or right, and that is the entire control scheme. Buy it knowing it was last updated on 26 September 2020. It works, and it is not going to change. App Store
The famous one, and the weakest port here. 4.46 across 127 ratings, last updated 3 May 2021. The game itself is a landmark: heirs with inherited traits, a castle that resets, a lineage instead of a character. The problem is precision platforming on a virtual stick, on glass. Its score is the lowest of anything I would still recommend, and I think the touchscreen is the reason. App Store
The cheapest entry, and honest about what it is: 4.72 across 29 ratings, released 11 May 2015, last updated 16 February 2022. Twenty nine ratings is not enough to mean anything statistically, and I am including it anyway, because at $1.99 the question is not whether it is a masterpiece.
Darkest Dungeon: Tablet Edition, $4.99. It is a great game on a computer. On the App Store it sits at 3.44 out of 5 across 684 ratings, the only score under four on this shelf, it was last updated 2 May 2022, and its supported device list starts at the iPad Air, so it is not going on your iPhone at all. Buy it somewhere else.
Two things fall out of an afternoon of checking prices by hand.
The first is that price and depth are unrelated in this genre. The $2.99 entry has more hours in it than several $9.99 ones, and the most expensive things on the shelf, Balatro and Slay the Spire at $9.99 each, are not better buys than Shattered Pixel Dungeon at half that. Choose by the shape of your session instead: minutes standing up, twenty minutes sitting down, or an hour with a notepad.
The second is that last update date is worth more than a score. Three of these have had no update since 2021 and a fourth none since early 2022. That is fine for a finished game and fatal for one that still needs an iOS update to run, and the store shows you which is which if you scroll far enough. It is why the list above quotes the date every time.
If your real question is ads rather than price, we keep a separate hand checked page for that: iOS roguelikes with no ads.
REELS is my game, released 2 September 2026, so I am not going to give it a rank on my own list. Here is what is true about it. It is a slot machine roguelite: the reels spin, your weapons fire on what they land on, and the souls you reap pay a toll that climbs faster than you do. One hand, portrait, offline, no ads, no lives, no energy, no currency, no account. There is a free trial, what you earn in the trial stays yours, and one purchase unlocks the rest permanently.
It is three days old and the smallest thing named on this page. Everything above it has more hours in it, and CloverPit at number two is the better known game on the same shelf. What REELS has that none of them do is that the reels spin in real time while things are trying to kill you. Trying it costs nothing.