App Store roundup · September 2026
The best word games on the iOS App Store right now
Apple's Word category chart is half party games and half puzzle giants with a million ratings. Here is what is actually in it this week, what the ratings mean, and the five apps worth your home screen.
Play WordDuel — free, no download ← all articlesThe short answer
If you want a word puzzle you can pick up for ten minutes a day, install Wordscapes and the free NYT Games app and stop there. Wordscapes is the biggest word game on the chart by a mile and still gets updated weekly; NYT Games gives you Wordle, the Crossword and Spelling Bee in one place. If you want to play with someone, the picture is thinner: NYT Crossplay is the only true two-player word game near the top of the chart, and it is eight months old.
What the chart actually contains
| # | Game | Developer | Rating (reviews) | Price | Last updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Solitaire Associations Journey |
Hitapps Games LTD | 4.7 (219,524) | Free | 2026-08-31 |
| 2 |  Imposter Game - Party Edition |
Sven Vucak | 4.8 (88,775) | Free | 2026-05-21 |
| 3 |  Charades Guess Game · Guessly |
smak apps | 4.6 (20,512) | Free | 2026-08-27 |
| 4 |  Charades - Family & Party Game |
Dmytro Cheverda | 4.8 (134,974) | Free | 2026-08-26 |
| 5 |  NYT Games: Wordle & Crossword |
The New York Times Company | 4.8 (293,165) | Free | 2026-08-31 |
| 6 |  Word Search Explorer® |
PlaySimple Games Pte Ltd | 5.0 (840,268) | Free | 2026-09-08 |
| 7 |  Zen Word® - Relax Puzzle Game |
Oakever Games | 4.9 (476,499) | Free | 2026-09-03 |
| 8 |  Crossword Go! |
PlaySimple Games Pte Ltd | 4.9 (78,663) | Free | 2026-08-31 |
| 9 |  Word Connect Association |
PlaySimple Games Pte Ltd | 4.9 (32,783) | Free | 2026-08-28 |
| 10 |  Wordscapes - Word Game |
PeopleFun, Inc. | 4.8 (1,129,180) | Free | 2026-09-01 |
Two things stand out. First, "Word" on the App Store does not mean word puzzle. Five of the top ten are party games where the phone is a prop: Imposter, Guessly, Charades, Headbands and, on the paid side, Heads Up!. They are excellent at a table and useless on a train. Second, the ratings are almost useless for ranking. Everything in the top ten sits between 4.6 and 4.95, so the review count is the better signal of staying power: Wordscapes has 1,129,094 ratings, Word Search Explorer 840,152, Zen Word 476,381. A 4.89 with 5,820 ratings (Word Tiles, released in July) tells you it is new and liked, not that it will still be here at Christmas.
The chart leader this week, Solitaire Associations Journey, is a card game with a word mechanic bolted on. It is popular, at 219,445 ratings, but if you came for words it is not the one.
The five worth installing
Wordscapes is the crossword-meets-anagram game everyone has seen an ad for, and the ads undersell it: the puzzles are gentle, the daily challenges are genuinely daily, and PeopleFun has shipped updates almost every week since 2017. It suits anyone who wants a calm five minutes rather than a contest. The honest drawback is the same as its business model: it is built around ads and coin purchases, and it never asks you to think very hard. Multiplayer: none, beyond tournaments against strangers' scores.
NYT Games: Wordle & Crossword
NYT Games is where Wordle lives now, next to the Crossword, Spelling Bee, Connections and Strands. The Wordle is free; the full Crossword archive wants a subscription. At 293,161 ratings it is smaller than the puzzle giants above, which says more about how many people play Wordle on the website than about the app. It suits people who want one good puzzle a day and the streak that comes with it. Drawback: it is deliberately solo. You can share a grid of squares, but you cannot play a round against a friend.
Crossplay is the New York Times' answer to that last complaint. Released in January 2026, it is a two-player word game with an asynchronous back-and-forth: you take a turn, your friend takes theirs when they get to it. At 219,066 ratings in eight months it is clearly landing. It suits people who already live in the NYT app and want a low-pressure game with one friend. Drawback: it is turn-by-notification rather than live, so a "game" can stretch across days, and you need each other's accounts.
Crossword Go! is the most competitive thing in the top fifteen: real-time crossword duels against other players, from the studio behind Word Search Explorer. It suits people who want a clock and an opponent. Drawback: you are matched with strangers, the free-to-play layer is thick, and it is a crossword, so a good vocabulary matters more than a good guess.
wurdweb sits at number three on the paid chart with a perfect 5.0 from only 32 ratings, because it came out on 19 August. Adriaan de Jongh's puzzle has you grabbing words from a list and crossing them on a board with, in the developer's words, Sunday-morning vibes. It costs $3.99, has no ads, and is the one game here that feels designed rather than optimised. Drawback: it is new and small, and $3.99 buys a puzzle, not a service that will keep adding levels.
The paid chart is a different world
| # | Game | Developer | Rating (reviews) | Price | Last updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Heads Up! |
Warner Bros. | 4.8 (294,714) | $1.99 | 2026-09-01 |
| 2 |  Taboo |
Marmalade Game Studio | 4.9 (4,698) | $1.99 | 2026-05-19 |
| 3 |  wurdweb |
Adriaan de Jongh | 5.0 (32) | $3.99 | 2026-08-19 |
| 4 |  Scribblenauts Remix |
Warner Bros. | 3.6 (2,456) | $0.99 | 2018-06-19 |
| 5 |  Heads Up! Charades for Kids |
Warner Bros. | 4.7 (3,832) | $4.99 | 2021-06-29 |
Heads Up!, Taboo and the Kids edition are party games sold outright; wurdweb and Cozy Crosswords are indie puzzles sold outright. There is no overlap with the free chart at all, which tells you where the money is: free-to-play word puzzles live on ads, and the people willing to pay $2 want either a night with friends or a quiet puzzle without ads.
Where WordDuel fits
None of the apps above lets you sit down with one specific friend and race the same five-letter word, live, without installing anything or signing in. That gap is what WordDuel is for: a free two-player Wordle in the browser, either solving one shared word together or picking a secret word for each other. Where WordDuel is weaker than the chart: there is no daily puzzle, no solo campaign, and no leaderboard, so if you play alone on the bus, Wordscapes or NYT Games is the better install. If you want to know how a round works, the rules are here, and the comparison of multiplayer word games covers the browser options.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most popular word game on iPhone?
By review volume, Wordscapes by PeopleFun, with about 1.13 million App Store ratings at a 4.8 average as of 8 September 2026. Word Search Explorer (840,000 ratings) and Zen Word (476,000) are the next largest in the Word category.
Is Wordle free on the iOS App Store?
Yes. Wordle is inside the free NYT Games app, which also holds the Crossword, Spelling Bee and Connections. Some puzzles need a New York Times Games subscription, but the daily Wordle does not.
Which iPhone word games are actually multiplayer?
Of the September 2026 Word chart, NYT Crossplay is a two-player word game, Crossword Go! runs real-time crossword duels, and the party apps (Heads Up!, Imposter, Guessly, Charades, Headbands) are played in the same room. For a live two-player game in the browser with a specific friend, WordDuel needs no app or account.
Are the top word games on the App Store free?
The Top Free Word chart apps cost nothing to install and run on ads and optional purchases. The Top Paid chart is led by Heads Up! at $1.99, Taboo at $1.99 and the indie puzzle wurdweb at $3.99, none of which show ads.