HackerWeb vs HNR
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
HackerWeb
A clean and readable client for Hacker News, designed with iOS guidelines in mind. It offers intuitive navigation for stories and comments, automatic dark mode, and code syntax highlighting.
- Dual Web and Comments tabs
- Revolutionary comments thread UI
- Automatic Dark mode
- Smart indentations and formatting
- Automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks
- Upvoting and replying
- Comment's 'Thread view'
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HackerWeb is a super-clean Hacker News app built for maximum readability and has a lean set of features to optimize the reading experience. It’s created specifically with iOS design guidelines in mind, so it feels native and blends well with the operating system. It has a simple set of features that are usually invisible: - Dual Web and Comments tabs for easy switching between the story’s web page and the list of comments - Revolutionary comments thread UI for easy navigation, with smart collapsing to prevent being overwhelmed by too many comments - Automatic Dark mode, respecting the system’s appearance settings. - Smart indentations and formatting for comments, complementing the existing limited formatting from Hacker News. - Automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks in comments, with best-effort programming language detection. - Allow interactions like upvoting and replying, which opens up web view with login information and sessions stored in itself, instead of the app. - Comment’s “Thread view” to list all parent comments of a comment, on a flat list, for easy reading instead of manually drilling down the nested comments. - “Share as Image” for comments, which allows sharing of a specific comment, optionally including the parent comments and/or story, as an image. HackerWeb is an unofficial Hacker News client, built with React Native and Expo. This is a passion side project for learning and experimenting ideas. Since 2012. Open-sourced: https://github.com/cheeaun/hackerweb-native-2
HNR
Access and read stories from the popular tech news website Hacker News. Browse top or latest articles, save your favorites, share content, and search for specific topics. Offers customizable color themes including dark and light modes.
- Browse top/latest stories
- Save favorite articles
- Share stories
- Search functionality
- Customizable color themes
- Dark/light mode support
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A convenient way to read stories from the tech news website Hacker News (HN). Features: - Browse 100 top or latest stories - Save favorites - Share - Search - Customizable color with dark/light mode support
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: HNR at Free against HackerWeb's $2.99. HNR also leads on iOS requirement (15.2 vs 26.0). HackerWeb's advantage is chart position (#43 vs unranked) and update cadence (every 5 months vs every 11 months). On rating, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
HNR is free to download; HackerWeb costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for HackerWeb against 5.0 for HNR. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: HackerWeb has 10 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.
HackerWeb ships an update every 5 months, HNR every 11 months. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | HackerWeb | HNR |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 5.0 (10 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 85.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 10 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 months — better | Every 11 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #43 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 15.2 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 29 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Chee Aun Lim | Michael Hsieh |
Customer experience
HackerWeb
HNR
In-app purchases
HackerWeb
No in-app purchases
HNR
No in-app purchases









