Alternative Citadel Colour App: a simpler way to manage your paints
You want to know which paints you own, which ones you still need, and what to buy without wasting time. The Citadel Colour App — now rebranded as the Warhammer Colour App — can help at the start. But it quickly feels limited once your collection goes beyond the GW range or when you are juggling multiple projects at once.
This guide gives you an honest assessment: what the official app does well, where it falls short, and what alternatives actually exist for a hobbyist who mixes brands or wants a project-based shopping list rather than a showcase catalogue.
What the official Citadel / Warhammer Colour app does well
Let us be honest: the official app has real strengths. It covers the entire Citadel / Warhammer Colour range with official photos, type descriptions (Base, Shade, Layer, Contrast, Technical), and Games Workshop recipes. If you paint exclusively GW and follow official guides, it does exactly what it promises.
The collection tracking function works well for simple use: you tick the pots you own, the app shows what a recipe needs. It is clear and fast for a single-brand collection under 60-70 pots.
The integration with community recipes (especially via paint.warhammer.com) is a concrete advantage for beginners. You find a YouTube tutorial, open the app, see whether you own the paints. That is the use case it was built for.
Why look for an alternative to the Citadel Colour App
The first friction point: the app stays focused on the GW range. If you mix Citadel, Vallejo, and Army Painter — which most experienced painters do — it gives you little help when deciding what to keep, replace, or substitute. Cross-brand equivalents are not part of its feature set.
The second: multi-project management is limited. You can mark paints as owned, but linking a specific list to one army and automatically seeing shared references across two projects is cumbersome. If you are running Space Marines and Tyranids in parallel, you will do the cross-referencing by hand.
The third: project-based shopping lists are not its strong suit. The app can show what a recipe needs, but it cannot generate what is specifically missing for your next project after subtracting what you already own in common with another. For serious Warhammer paint collection management, that is the real gap.
Comparison: official app, ChromaStack, Impcat, spreadsheet
Official GW app (Warhammer Colour App): free, covers 100% of the GW range, official recipes, basic collection tracking. Ideal if you paint exclusively Citadel / Warhammer Colour.
ChromaStack: free, multi-brand (Citadel, Vallejo, Army Painter and more), cross-brand conversion by Delta-E CIEDE2000, army-based shopping list. Ideal if you mix brands, need accurate equivalents, or want a clean shopping list for a specific project.
Impcat: full community collection manager, all brands, recipe import/export, sharing format. Excellent for cataloguing a large collection and sharing lists with other painters.
Excel / Google Sheets: maximum flexibility, zero learning curve if you already know it. But manual maintenance, no automatic deduplication, and no cross-brand equivalents. To get the most out of it, see the guide on organising Citadel paints in Excel.
Concrete case: 100 pots, two armies, two brands
Imagine a painter with around a hundred pots — half Citadel, half Vallejo — building a Space Marines force and a Kill Team in parallel. They think they already own Macragge Blue, Leadbelcher, and Nuln Oil, but are unsure about quantities. They also have Vallejo Medium Blue (70.963) somewhere, but do not know if it is close enough to substitute.
With the official GW app, they can check their Space Marines recipes — but not their Vallejo pots, and not the cross-referenced list across both projects. They will do the cross-checking by hand.
With ChromaStack, they select both armies, see shared references, confirm that Vallejo Medium Blue covers Macragge Blue (ΔE ~4, acceptable for a basecoat), and leave with a clean shopping list that does not buy the same thing twice. That is exactly the use case the tool was built for.
Why ChromaStack fills this gap
ChromaStack starts from real use rather than a catalogue. The tool does not show you a pretty paint grid — it answers the practical question: 'What do I need to buy for this project, given what I already own?'
Cross-brand conversion is built in. Looking for the Vallejo equivalent of Abaddon Black? Delta-E scores are right there. Want to check whether your Vallejo Black (70.950) is an exact match? ΔE < 1 — it is the same colour on a miniature. These figures come from the ChromaStack conversion chart.
It is not a magic promise. It is a targeted tool for a specific problem: avoiding duplicates, finding accurate substitutes, and preparing a useful shopping list. Nothing more, nothing less.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, the app is free on iOS and Android. It lets you track your paints, browse official recipes, and access Games Workshop guides. It is however limited to the Citadel / Warhammer Colour ecosystem.
The main options: ChromaStack (multi-brand, Delta-E conversion, army-based shopping list), Impcat (full community collection manager for all brands, recipe import/export), and Excel/Sheets spreadsheets (flexible, but manually maintained). For painters who mix Citadel and Vallejo, ChromaStack is the most complete option for cross-brand conversions.
Impcat is an excellent community collection manager for cataloguing pots, browsing recipes, and sharing lists. ChromaStack focuses on a different problem: finding cross-brand equivalents by Delta-E CIEDE2000 and generating army-based shopping lists. The two complement each other rather than compete.
ChromaStack works differently: instead of importing a pot list, you select your armies and the tool generates the useful paint list. There is no import from the Citadel Colour App, but the setup is immediate — a few clicks are enough to get a project-based shopping list.
An Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet is the most flexible option without an app: columns for Brand / Name / Reference / Quantity / Status / Project. Simple, but manually maintained. For cross-brand conversions and army-based shopping lists, ChromaStack is more efficient once you go past 30-40 active pots.
Conclusion
The official Citadel / Warhammer Colour app is a good tool for what it does: GW recipes, single-brand collection tracking, guide access. If you mix brands, run multiple projects in parallel, or want accurate equivalents, a multi-brand alternative like ChromaStack matches your real use better.
Try ChromaStack