Charles Proxy vs Better Stack On
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Charles Proxy
Capture and inspect network requests and responses directly on your iOS device. Debug networking issues without needing a computer. View detailed metadata, headers, and bodies, and even transfer sessions to a desktop for further analysis.
- Capture network requests and responses
- Inspect metadata, headers, and bodies
- SSL Proxying for plain text viewing
- Measure network performance
- Block requests to specific hosts
- DNS spoofing
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Charles Proxy for iOS lets you capture, inspect and modify network requests and responses on your iOS device. You can view metadata, headers and bodies in the app, so you can finally debug your app’s networking issues without a computer. Charles Proxy for iOS is an app from the creator of Charles Proxy for desktop. HOW IT WORKS Turn Charles on when you want to start capturing. Charles captures your network requests and responses in the background while you test your app or website. Return to Charles to inspect the requests and responses. If you also have Charles on your desktop, you can transfer recorded sessions to your desktop to explore them on the big screen. Charles creates a local VPN on your device. All of your network traffic passes through Charles on your device, and then out to the internet as usual over either WiFi or Mobile / Cellular data. There is no remote server involved, and your data always remains private to you. FEATURES * SSL Proxying to view SSL requests in plain text * View and share request and responses bodies * Syntax highlighting for text request and response bodies * Measure network performance over WiFi or Mobile / Cellular networks * Block requests to nominated hosts * DNS spoofing
Better Stack On
Manage incidents, monitor uptime, and communicate service status with your team. Receive alerts through various channels, schedule on-call rotations, and create branded status pages for your users. Integrates with over 100 services.
- Incident alerts via push, SMS, calls, email, Slack, Teams
- Incident reports with screenshots and timelines
- On-call scheduling and calendar integration
- Uptime monitoring with fast HTTP(s) checks
- Heartbeat monitoring for CRON jobs
- Branded public status pages
- Integrations with 100+ apps
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Better Stack is a single platform for uptime and infrastructure monitoring, incident management, on-call scheduling, error tracking, and status pages. Our AI SRE agent doesn't just tell you that something broke, it helps you find out why, right from your phone. INCIDENT ALERTS Get incident alerts via your preferred channel: push notifications, SMS, phone calls, e-mails, Slack, or Teams messages. Acknowledge the incident with a single click on your phone to let the rest of the team know you’re taking care of it. INCIDENT REPORTS Every incident is captured with a screenshot, the error messages, and a second-by-second timeline of exactly what happened. Fixed it? Write a quick post-mortem so the whole team learns from it. AI SRE When an incident hits, you don't have to investigate alone. Tap the AI SRE tab and our agent digs through your logs, metrics, and traces, lines up recent deployments and metric changes, and pinpoints the root cause. It can open a pull request with a fix, and always asks for your approval first. ON-CALL SCHEDULING Set up on-call rotations, request cover, and add overrides. On-call colleague asleep? Smart escalations wake up the next person, or the whole team, when no one responds. Sync your schedule to Google Calendar or Outlook so everyone knows when they're on. UPTIME MONITORING Monitor uptime with reliable HTTP(s) and ping checks from multiple regions, as often as every 30 seconds. HEARTBEAT MONITORING Use our heartbeat monitoring for your CRON scripts and background jobs, and never lose a database backup again. ERROR TRACKING Track exceptions across your stack with Sentry-compatible error tracking. Ask AI SRE to investigate any error and trace it to the change that introduced it. STATUS PAGE When something goes down, your team isn't the only one who needs to know. Create a branded public status page to keep your customers informed and build confidence in your product. And the best part? You can set it all up in just 3 minutes! RICH INTEGRATIONS Integrate with over 100 apps and connect all of your infrastructure services. Sync with tools like Heroku, Datadog, New Relic, Grafana, Prometheus, Zendesk, and many more.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Better Stack On at Free against Charles Proxy's $8.99. Better Stack On also leads on update cadence (every 8 days vs every 2 months). Charles Proxy's advantage is review sentiment (52% vs 17%). On ads, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement 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
Better Stack On is free to download; Charles Proxy costs $8.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Charles Proxy ships an update every 2 months, Better Stack On every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Charles Proxy | Better Stack On |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $8.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.0 (187 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 51.9% of reviews — better | 16.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 187 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 8 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 17.2 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 60 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | XK72 Limited | Better Stack, Inc. |
Customer experience
Charles Proxy
Better Stack On
Bugs and requests
Charles Proxy
Reported bugs
4 issues- Doesn't work with latest iOS versions
- Fails to export sessions frequently
- Incompatible with apps using VPN
- Large JSON bodies not displayed properly
Requested features
5 requests- Add ability to edit and replay requests
- Improve JSON viewer and formatting
- Add support for WebSockets
- Provide option to map to local
- Add scripting and breakpoint features
Better Stack On
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Charles Proxy
No in-app purchases
Better Stack On
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Charles Proxy free?
Is Better Stack On free?
Do Charles Proxy or Better Stack On have ads?
Which is updated more often, Charles Proxy or Better Stack On?
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