Apple / education / AVMATH
REVIEW
AvMath is the no-frills flight-math calculator pilots actually open.
A focused aviation reference that replaces the cross-check between an E6B, a unit converter, and a scratch pad with a single screen — for the small audience that needs exactly that.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
Most aviation apps on the App Store want to be your full flight bag — charts, weather, routing, logbook, the lot. AvMath wants none of that. It is a single-purpose calculator that does the arithmetic a pilot used to do on the back of a kneeboard, and nothing more.
That restraint is the point. Student pilots learning the formulas, weekend GA fliers who don’t want to pay a hundred dollars a year for a full EFB, and instructors checking a student’s numbers in a briefing room are the obvious audience. Everyone else can keep scrolling.
The app has been quietly updated through 2026 and remains free. For a tool this narrow, that’s the right trade.
It does the arithmetic a pilot used to do on the back of a kneeboard, and nothing more.
FEATURES
AvMath collects the small calculations a pilot runs constantly into a single screen-by-screen reference: time-speed-distance, fuel burn and endurance, wind correction, density altitude, and the standard unit conversions between knots, mph, nautical miles, statute miles, kilometres, litres, US gallons, and pounds. Inputs are typed in directly rather than scrolled on a wheel, which makes it considerably faster than working an E6B mechanical computer or a generic scientific calculator.
The app is built for iPad and iPhone with portrait and landscape layouts. There is no account, no sync, no subscription, and no internet dependency at runtime — useful for the cockpit, where cellular coverage is unreliable and pilots prefer apps that don't phone home.
It is not a flight planner. There is no chart layer, no route storage, no METAR/TAF feed, no weight-and-balance template for a specific airframe. AvMath sits in the slot between a unit converter and a full EFB like ForeFlight — closer to a smart kneeboard than to a navigation tool.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The pricing is the headline win: AvMath is free with no ads, no in-app purchases, and no telemetry that needs disclosing. For a tool a student pilot might use twice during a ground-school session and then once a week on a cross-country, that's the right model.
The execution on the math is also genuinely tight. Each calculation lives on its own screen, the unit toggles are unambiguous, and answers update as you type. Compared with running the same numbers through a generic calculator app, you save the mental load of remembering which conversion factor you need and in what direction.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The audience is narrow by design, and the app does not try to widen it. There's no built-in tutorial for a student pilot who isn't already familiar with the formulas behind density altitude or wind correction angle — you need to know what you're asking the app to compute before its single-purpose screens make sense.
Polish is uneven in places. The layout still reads like a utility built by one developer rather than a designed product, and there is no iCloud sync of any saved scenarios — if you compute a flight plan on your iPad and switch to the iPhone, you re-enter everything. A history tab, even local, would change how the app feels on a long flight day.
CONCLUSION
AvMath is for student pilots, private-licence holders, and instructors who want a faster way to do the same arithmetic a kneeboard already supports. It is not a competitor to ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot, and shouldn't be evaluated against them. If you're already paying for an EFB, you don't need this. If you're flying small GA on a tight budget and you only want the math, AvMath earns its spot on the home screen.