iNaturalist User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience48.7% of reviews
Neutral15.2% of reviews
Negative experience36.1% of reviews

~ Based on 446 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is iNaturalist Safe?

iNaturalist appears mostly safe based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for iNaturalist is 82/100.

This assessment is based on 684 user ratings, with an App Store average of 4.1/5.

Safety Analysis

72.2% of ratings point to a safe experience
8.9% of ratings suggest some concerns
18.9% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 684 App Store ratings for iNaturalist.

Is iNaturalist Legit?

iNaturalist appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for iNaturalist is 95/100.

Based on 95 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Best plant ID app by far

It’s free but I’d pay considering how good the plant ID is. Just fantastic. Your data also helps research, instead of making some tech oligarch even richer. Proof that not all tech is rotten these days.

Intentionally Skittish?

Overall, I find this app very helpful, when out in the woods. However, I’ve noticed that shy’s away from identifying plants, such as poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. It refuses to identify them with 100% confidence. I suspect this is a liability issue? I get it, but I would appreciate it if it was a little more honest about its assessment. I mean… If I can identify poison ivy… This app certainly should.
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Huge improvements over iNat Classic

I am a longtime iNaturalist user (almost a decade) who struggled with the limitations of the iPhone app for years, especially the limited number of uploads at a time. This app version (on Advanced Mode) has dramatically increased functionality (awesome easy in-app observationsearch, ability to see updates on the identifications you’ve done for others, etc.) and of course preserves all my fav features of the platform, like the computer vision system that offers possible preliminary ID of your observations based on visual attributes and geography. (This has been an element of iNaturalist for over a decade, long before computer vision started being sold as AI, but the model has gotten much better and in this app version the way it shows results with percent probability is very helpful in decision-making.) I still think the Android app functionality is slightly better in a few ways, but the computer vision and upload grouping is now better in the iPhone app. (This is impressive for anyone who knows how bad the iPhone app was compared to Android for years.) Also, I am hyped about the new easy “species I haven’t seen before” filter!! Now I’m just waiting for it to get easier to add observations to projects and edit their project attributes/tags in app 😀

Of course, as always, iNaturalist is for documenting the presence of organisms that are growing naturally outdoors in nature, not houseplants or domestic animals, and the observation system *starts* with the optional computer vision suggestions but depends on community consensus (just like, y’know, science), but these are exactly the things I want from it.
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Use iNat Classic

I love iNaturalist but they need to fire whoever is making this app it keeps getting worse. iNat classic is great would be nice if they just expanded its functionality

It’s great! But let’s make the AI optional.

I really love iNaturalist and the community that it builds, but the AI eats up my phone power and makes me feel so guilty about damage it’s doing to the environment. Please make the AI optional!

Edit: Thank you for your help, I truly appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me.

Super useful

I really like the feature where you can use the map to see where a taxon has been seen. Like a live habitat map.

Great! Some Suggestions

This app is fantastic and it genuinely gets me out the house. I think if concepts such as weekly/seasonal tasks or achievements badges would make this app rival Pokemon Go. Little in-app goals and medals would have me in a chokehold. A tab that shows you creatures to look out for in your area, popular sightings or species hot-spots would be fun too :)
The app feels a little bit clunky sometimes as well. There needs to be a search function for other users in-app.
Overall great.
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My favorite app!

This is the only app I voluntarily pay for. Using iNat to learn more about the creatures all around me (and maybe even help a scientist out with their research!) has brought so much joy to my life.

INaturalist now says mushrooms are paw paws

Title says it all. The AI model is garbage now.
What model is INaturalist using? Any disclosure here?
The dev replies saying “we’ve always used machine learning is really really poor argument for the slop AI you are using NOW. It has gotten so terrible. The UI is a nightmare & there IS NOT a way to switch to the older amazing version of iNat in the settings as the devs state here. Constant overload of email notifications, but when you open the app you don’t see ANY of them. What have you done to this app? Is this what the big google money brought to iNat? & you ask for donations?!? Fix this app first. Once loved iNat when it was reliable & useful, it is not anymore. Notice the dev reply, they don’t answer questions
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Garbage and useless.

I tried this out by taking a picture of my edelweiss plant. This app identified it at 98% angiospermae. What is angiospermae? A “flowering plant”. Well of course my flower is a flowering plant. That’s not helpful.

So I search for its “other suggestions”. It gave edelweiss a 1.8% match. Wow, so basically what that tells me is that this app doesn’t work at all.
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It’s great! But let’s make the AI optional.

I really love iNaturalist and the community that it builds, but the AI eats up my phone power and makes me feel so guilty about damage it’s doing to the environment. Please make the AI optional!

Disagree with AI use

Uses generative AI to ID photos, would not have downloaded if I’d been aware of this. Disappointed, since I heard good things about iNaturalist and it’s community based identification. Does iNat classic not use AI?

Easily my favorite ID app

It’s super, super easy to upload photos, ID species, and add species IDs to other peoples’ photos. I love taking walks and taking pictures in the app. It’s also so awesome to connect with your local science community outside of clubs.

As for suggestions - I haven’t used the web version yet, so maybe this is easier on computer, but I would love if the app had:

- a way to bulk edit locations (like if I took a bunch of pics at 1 park, it’s time consuming to add the location to 30 observations when I get home)
- accessibility settings to make the location markers larger, it takes like 5 tries for me to tap them exactly, they have an annoyingly small hit box
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Wish there was an option to block spiders

This app is great fun, I really enjoy seeing what people in my area have posted but I wish there was some way to block seeing a main species, my phobia of spiders is so strong I cannot see photos of them so it can be hard to browse knowing they are mixed in with all the other observations. Secondly I can never get the map icons to open up an observation, this feature only works for me on the web version? I also wish the icons got much bigger as you zoom in on them in the map. Overall such a great concept and way to track animal populations
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Another bought out app

I recently discovered this app, recommended by someone on TikTok. So I downloaded it earlier, hoping to discover new spiders in my home! But ofcourse, I do research into apps I support. It didn’t take me long to find out they accepted a 1.5 million deal by google to use ai. A bunch of their users protested and stopped using the app. It is such a shame to see an app lose its trusted followers just for extra money.

Although they are not using the most common wide spread ai that is getting hated on and destroying environments, currently. This most likely won’t stop them from doing such in the future. The pushback from their community stopped them from their most recent ai project, so I’ve read. So the only reason they stopped was not because of morals, but because of how their community appropriately reacted. Apparently they stopped using a ai summary tool, most likely similar to what google does when you search up something now on there. But this doesn’t mean they won’t use harmful ai in the future if they can be bought out.

The app is so good to use and I’d hate to lose it if I see more harmful ai as I continue to use the app.
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Great plant and animal identifier would recommend

Would give six stars if I could

One of the best identifier apps

Uses non generative ai to identify any species under the sun (to the best of its abilities, the better the photo the more accurate the ID). If it’s wrong other people will step in and correct you. Every observation you make can help researchers, as this app can help map the distribution of species along with possible migratory patterns. The app reminds me of an irl Pokédex, identify new species to add to your list and read descriptions about them
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Favourite App

Absolutely love this app. It has become one of my biggest hobbies, exploring in the woods or around my neighborhood finding animals, plants, etc. Feels like Pokémon + science.

Lack of Explanation about App Updates

The app developer keeps updating this app but always fails to explain what exactly changes or why.
Are there bug fixes? Privacy changes? Security issues? There seems to be a big lack clarity by the developer.

amazing

I love this app, it is really useful for identifying organisms around where I live!
The numerous updates keep improving it and making it better.