Apex Launcher Pro vs Microsoft Launcher

Apex Launcher lets the user customize the app drawer, including its style (Horizontal Paginated, Vertical Paginated, Vertical Continuous or Vertical List), the method of sorting and the background transparency.

Apex Launcher allows the user to change the grid size of their home screens (up to a maximum size of 10 rows and columns) and adjust the margins on the left, right, top and bottom. Icons can be made larger by as much as 150% or reduced to as little as 50% of their original size.

Made to look like stock Android with additional features.

A marketplace where the user can download extra themes is provided. Some of the themes must be purchased via Google Play, but many are free. Paid version allows the use of themes from other launchers.

There is an option in the Apex Launcher drawer to sort apps by the most used, making for a convenient way for users to get back to their most often used apps.

Apex Launcher also allows users to hide unused or unwanted apps from the drawer.

The free version of Apex comes with swipe gesture support.

Unread count notifications create badges for home screen, dock and drawer icons that let the user know how many unread messages they have.

Infinite scrolling allows you to cycle among your home screens without ever changing directions.

Apex, which requires Android 4.0 or later, boasts a dedicated tablet UI mode. Turning this on enables the persistent search bar at the top of the display, and somewhat inexplicably disables the dock at the bottom of the screen.

It has different pages that help you to have your contacts, reminders, last files opened, and more.

Very simple drawer for productivity. Requires little time.

It has a very helpful integrated to-do card/widget.
If you use Wunderlist, you may connect this, and have your tasks synced between Microsoft Launcher and Wunderlist.

Microsoft Launcher has a powerful utility page, which contains the card widgets, which are powerful widgets integrated within Microsoft Launcher.
It is a page which by default is to the left of your home screen.

Microsoft Launcher has its own Notes card/widget, which you may use for easy to access notes and checkbox-lists.

You may enable vertical scrolling for your home screen, which enables you to add multiple pages for your apps and widgets.

Microsoft Launcher has a Recents card/widget, which can show you recent phone calls, social messaging, SMS, files, clipboard and camera activity.

There's customisation for gestures, i.e double tap to lock phone, swipe up for app drawer, etc.

Microsoft Launcher features a built-in search engine, which you may use to search the internet and your installed apps.
You may choose to use Bing, Google, or Yahoo as your search engine.

Share files directly to your Arrow Hub, which you can connect to from a PC via an URL and your Microsoft Login.