Best Calculator App for Android With No Ads

The calculator already on your Android phone is the right one for adding up a bill or working out a discount. Another app earns its place when you need something it lacks, and most of the good ones are free. Use Desmos for graphs, RealCalc for a keypad like a handheld scientific calculator, and CalcTape or FlexCalc for long sums you need to check.

Google’s, Samsung’s and Xiaomi’s own calculators

Google’s Calculator is a free install on Google Play, with no in-app purchases. Its listing runs to two bullet points: basic sums, and scientific operations such as trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions. That is a fair length for a calculator’s description.

Samsung’s Calculator goes a step further. Samsung’s support site says it has basic and scientific functions and a unit converter. Tap the clock icon for a history of past calculations (the keypad icon closes it), the ruler icon for the unit converter, and the scientific mode icon for the extra function keys.

Xiaomi’s Calculator packs in the most. Its Google Play listing names regular, scientific and mortgage calculators, currency and unit converters, age, BMI, discount and date calculators, and a GST calculator for India. The listing says it also works on Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus phones.

A phone calculator with a history and a unit converter leaves little reason to install another everyday one. The simplest swap is OpenCalc from Darkempire, a free, fully open-source scientific calculator with roots, powers, factorials and trigonometry, a choice of themes, no unnecessary permissions and nothing to buy.

Which calculator apps have no ads

Google’s, Samsung’s and Xiaomi’s calculators carry no ads label on Google Play, and the same goes for Desmos, GeoGebra, RealCalc, OpenCalc, FlexCalc, CalcTape, Casio’s ClassWiz and NumWorks.

HiPER, Calculator Plus with History, Fraction Calculator Plus and Financial Calculators are free with ads. So are CALCU Stylish Basic Calculator and Scientific Calculator He-580, one of a whole family of HiEdu listings. ClevCalc shows ads too, and MyScript Calculator 2 is paid.

Scientific calculators, including Casio’s

RealCalc, from Quartic Software, is built to look and work like the calculator in a school bag. It has the standard scientific functions, a result history, ten memories, unit conversions, a table of constants, and an RPN mode for people who want one. It is free with no in-app purchases. Fractions, a landscape mode and a home screen widget are in RealCalc Plus, a separate paid app.

HiPER Scientific Calculator, from HiPER Labs, is for anyone who needs algebra and can live with ads. Its listing covers symbolic computation, equations and systems of equations, derivatives and integrals, graphs including 3D, matrices, complex numbers and numbers of up to 100 digits. Entering a problem from a photo and the more detailed step-by-step solutions are marked premium, and HiPER Calc Pro is sold as a separate paid app.

Desmos Scientific Calculator is free with no ads, works offline and keeps all your earlier lines on screen. Casio’s own app is ClassWiz Calc App QR, which behaves like its ClassWiz calculators, including the fx-991CW and fx-991EX. It is free to install with in-app purchases, and the listing does not spell out which parts are paid.

Graphing calculators and the TI-84

Start with Desmos Graphing Calculator. It plots cartesian, polar and parametric graphs, with no limit on how many expressions you graph at once. Sliders let you change a value and watch the curve move. It also does tables, best-fit lines and inequalities. Touch a curve and it shows the maximums, minimums and intersections. It is free, works offline and has nothing to buy.

GeoGebra Calculator Suite, also free, is the choice if you need geometry or 3D as well. One app switches between graphing, geometry, 3D and a CAS mode that solves equations and finds derivatives and integrals. NumWorks Graphing Calculator is the phone version of the NumWorks school calculator, and it can be programmed in Python.

A Google Play search for a TI-84 app turns up guides, emulators and look-alikes from other developers, and we found none published by Texas Instruments. What the company sells is the TI-84 Plus CE online calculator, a yearly subscription that its site lists for Chromebook, Windows and Mac. Wabbitemu, the Texas Instruments emulator, no longer turns up under its original developer, though a re-release from another developer is on the store. Desmos, GeoGebra and NumWorks do the same job without an emulator.

Long sums you can go back and fix

FlexCalc, from todayweather.co, and CalcTape, from schoettler Software, both fix the oldest annoyance of a calculator, which is spotting a wrong figure halfway through a long sum. Both are free with in-app purchases.

In FlexCalc you tap any number or result, change it, and the linked results update. CalcTape keeps every number and operator on a tape. You correct a figure in place and everything after it recalculates. Its listing admits it is not a scientific calculator, and its Pro upgrade adds saving, exporting and printing.

Fractions, loans and handwriting

Fraction Calculator Plus, from Digitalchemy, works in fractions and mixed numbers from start to finish, which suits recipes and woodwork. Results are reduced to their simplest form, the decimal equivalent is shown alongside, and it can explain each step. It has in-app purchases, and a Pro version rounds to the nearest fraction of an inch for woodwork and building.

Financial Calculators, from Bishinews, covers loans and mortgages in a long menu of money tools: time value of money, loan and mortgage payments, loan comparison, compound interest, return on investment, bonds and credit card payoff. The listing says it has no in-app purchases, asks for no permissions and works offline apart from the currency converter. The retirement and tax tools are American, built around 401k plans, IRAs and US paycheck tax.

MyScript Calculator 2 lets you write a sum on the screen by hand and gives the result as you write. You scratch out a number to erase it. MyScript’s newer MyScript Math adds graphs and worked steps, and its listing describes a seven-day free trial followed by a subscription or a purchase.

For homework there is also Photomath, now published by Google. You point the camera at a problem and it shows the working. Basic step-by-step explanations are free, and a Plus subscription adds more.

Calculators with converters and small tools

These add less than they seem to if your phone’s own calculator already converts units, as Samsung’s and Xiaomi’s do. Both have in-app purchases.

Calculator Plus with History, also from Digitalchemy, combines a basic and scientific calculator with percentage, tax and tip sums, currency and unit converters, a date calculator and a home screen widget. You can attach notes to saved calculations. ClevCalc is a longer list of single-purpose tools: discount, loan, fuel cost, GPA, sales tax, unit price, a tip calculator that splits the bill, and a currency converter covering 135 currencies.

Calculator apps that hide photos

Those are vaults dressed up as calculators, and they are a different kind of app, so they are not on this list.