Comparison

HEPCon vs Zotero

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

HEPCon

This app provides a structured mobile agenda for scientific and professional conferences, connecting to existing systems. Attendees can access program details offline, build personalized schedules, and receive live updates. Organizers can offer a mobile companion without workflow changes.

Highlights
  • Browse full conference program with filtering
  • Offline access to abstracts and session details
  • Personalized schedule with reminders
  • Bookmark talks and export to calendar
  • Follow announcements and live updates
  • Access venue information and contacts
  • Participate in presentation discussions
Features
Read full description

HEPCon is a structured mobile agenda platform for scientific and professional conferences. Designed for complex, multi-track events, it connects directly to existing conference systems such as Indico and delivers a reliable, offline-ready program experience for participants. With HEPCon, attendees can: • Browse the full conference program with advanced filtering • Access abstracts and session details offline • Build a personalized schedule with reminders • Bookmark talks and export them to their calendar • Follow announcements and live updates from organizers • Access venue information, sponsors, and key contacts • Participate in discussions around presentations • Discover featured conferences and explore upcoming events Built for large academic and technical conferences, HEPCon scales to events with hundreds or thousands of participants while keeping the experience simple and fast. For organizers, HEPCon provides a ready-to-use mobile agenda companion without requiring changes to existing workflows. Carry your conference with you — online or offline.

About

Zotero

This research tool helps you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share your academic and professional work. Save articles, books, and webpages, add notes and highlights, and generate bibliographies in thousands of styles. Collaborate with others and sync your library across devices.

Highlights
  • Collect research from various sources
  • Organize with collections and tags
  • Annotate PDFs and webpages
  • Generate citations and bibliographies
  • Collaborate in group libraries
  • Sync across devices
Features
Read full description

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use research tool that helps you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share your work. COLLECT • Save journal articles, newspaper articles, books, webpages, and more via the Share button in Safari and other apps • Automatically download article PDFs to read • Quickly add physical books and articles to your Zotero library by scanning book barcodes or article DOIs with your iPhone or iPad camera ORGANIZE • Use collections and tags to organize your research • View and edit bibliographic information for your research items ANNOTATE • Read PDFs, EPUBs, and webpage snapshots and add highlights and notes, or use an Apple Pencil to make freehand annotations CITE • Instantly generate citations and bibliographies in over 10,000 formats and journal styles including APA, Chicago, IEEE, MLA, Turabian, and Vancouver SHARE • Collaboratively collect sources and mark up PDFs in group libraries with your colleagues • Synchronize your personal and group research libraries to access them via Zotero’s desktop app and the Zotero website • Use the Zotero desktop app to insert your annotations into Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs documents and automatically generate bibliographies from the sources you used Visit zotero.org to learn more about everything you can do with Zotero. Having trouble? Have an idea? Post bug reports and feature requests to the Zotero Forums at forums.zotero.org to talk directly to Zotero developers. ZOTERO AND PRIVACY Since 2006, the Zotero team has been committed to creating the best research software, and we believe that includes putting you in full control of your own work. We’re an independent, nonprofit organization, and we’ll never sell your data.

Screenshots

HEPCon4 screens
Zotero2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Zotero at 78% against HEPCon's 50%. HEPCon's advantage is update cadence (every 5 days vs every 3 weeks). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

HEPCon ships an update every 5 days, Zotero every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
HEPCon versus Zotero: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHEPConZotero
PriceFreeFree
Rating—4.6 (436 ratings) — better
Positive reviews50.0% of reviews77.9% of reviews — better
Number of ratings—436 — better
Update frequencyEvery 5 days — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better16.6
Further details — not scored
Size117 MB237 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMartin VassilevZotero

Customer experience

HEPCon

Written reviews4 reviews
Positive50.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative50.0%

Zotero

All ratings431 ratings
Positive89.6%
Neutral4.9%
Negative5.6%
Written reviews263 reviews
Positive77.9%
Neutral10.3%
Negative11.8%

Bugs and requests

HEPCon

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

Zotero

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Unable to unzip PDF snapshots
  • Annotations disappearing or moving unexpectedly
  • Dark mode not working as expected
  • Inability to add citations directly from the app

Requested features

6 requests
  • Eraser tool for annotations
  • More color options for pen and highlighter
  • Ability to open PDFs in external apps
  • Bookmarking and table of contents support
  • Improved search functionality
Show 1 more
  • Offline access to downloaded PDFs

In-app purchases

None

HEPCon

No in-app purchases

None

Zotero

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is HEPCon free?
HEPCon is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Zotero free?
Zotero is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do HEPCon or Zotero have ads?
Neither HEPCon nor Zotero shows ads.
Which is updated more often, HEPCon or Zotero?
HEPCon ships an update every 5 days, and Zotero every 3 weeks. Most recently, HEPCon was updated on October 24, 2026 and Zotero on November 3, 2026.

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