Hacker News Tech Reader vs Reeder.
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hacker News Tech Reader
This app offers a beautiful and intuitive way to read the latest tech, startup, and STEM news from Hacker News. It features customizable reading options, push notifications, and advanced search capabilities, all without ads or subscriptions.
- Ad-free and subscription-free experience
- Push notifications for replies
- Nested comment threads
- Advanced search with filters
- Customizable fonts and themes
- Article sharing and archiving
- Support for multiple browsers
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HACK for YC's Hacker News is the most beautiful and easy way to read about the latest tech, startup and STEM news. - No Ads. No subscriptions. - Login or Register your Hacker News account - PUSH NOTIFICATIONS for Hacker News replies to comment or post - Supported on iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Setting to block AI posts on HN. - Comments are presented in nested threads - Tap a comment to collapse that thread - Swipe left or right on stories and comments to upvote and favorite - Ability to submit new posts including drafts - Long press a story, link or comment to share - iPad supports split view - On iPads, you can drag a story / comment / story's image (link) to open it in safari in split view. This is useful for when you are viewing the app in split view / multitasking and like opening the link / story / comment in a browser side by side. - Landscape and Portrait support - 3D touch for peek, pop support - Home screen 3D touch shortcuts - Hide posts from the feed - Tap the bottom button to scroll to the next root comment in the thread. Long press it to go to the previous one - All known hacker news endpoints - News, front page, Ask HN, Show HN, Show HN Newest, classic, active, best stories, best comments, new stories, new comments, noob stories, noob comments, jobs, over 100-500 points - Submit posts, reply, comment using your HN account - Browse top 100 leader accounts - Browse stories from a specific site, user or date - Search in comments and usernames! Search is case and diacritic insensitive and ignores punctuations. Search uses an CONTAINS, OR operation if multiple words are typed. - Can select / highlight the comment/post title text for lookup/copy/translate etc iOS native operations. - Powerful search (powered by Algolia API) - use @date to sort by date, #story to filter for stories, #comments to filter for comments, #author_username to filter by user etc. These tags can be separated by commas. Refer to https://hn.algolia.com/api for more tags. - Dark mode - both pure black and gray mode - Low contrast text mode to make the text not be pure white - Many color choices & color picker for customization - App icons in variety of colours for light and dark mode - Font choices - Ability to change font sizes, padding etc to make the layout as compact as you like! - Threaded comments with color bar to maintain visual orientation - Articles open in Safari view with setting to automatically open in "readability" mode - Tap the domain in a story to see all stories from that site - Tap the username in a story or comment to go to the user profile - Browse your submitted stories and comments, favorited stories and comments, upvoted stories and comments - Archive: View an archive of the post website. archive.is, archive.org & google cache. - Share comment as image - Articles can be opened in built in safari or 3rd party browsers. Supports Brave, Firefox, Firefox Focus, Orion, Opera Touch, Dolphin, DuckDuckGo, iCab Mobile, Microsoft Edge and Chrome. Go to settings > Disable the "Use in-app Safari" setting > tap that row to change the default browser. All stories and comments are via Algolia API and Hacker News API: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/api https://github.com/HackerNews/API Profile picture robots lovingly delivered by Robohash.org There are ongoing costs of developing and maintaining HACK. I am a small indie developer and need your help keep the lights on. I offer a beautiful app for the absolute best user-experience. I don't use intrusive ads, trackers, third-party analytics, subscriptions, or other nonsense. I need to run my own server for caching high quality favicons shown in the app plus for push notifications for replies to hacker news posts. If you can afford it, please support me by purchasing the one-time-only in-app-purchase or giving me a tip. No subscriptions. It's a small and fair amount which helps cover development costs of future updates. Contact me at: pran@pranapps.com
Reeder.
Consolidate your reading, watching, and listening into a single, unified timeline. Syncs seamlessly across devices and allows for easy sharing of curated content. Organize links and create custom views with powerful filters.
- Unified content timeline
- Cross-device syncing
- Shared public feeds
- Customizable filters
- Save and organize links
- iCloud sync
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Reeder is your all-in-one inbox for reading, watching and listening to content from various sources. From Unread Counts to Timeline Syncing Say goodbye to unread counts! With Reeder, your timeline position is synced across all your devices, letting you pick up right where you left off. Shared Feeds Turn any tag into a public, auto-updating feed that can be viewed in any browser or added to any RSS reader that supports JSON feeds, making it simple to share your curated content. Unified Timeline Reeder supports more than just RSS feeds. It integrates videos, podcasts and social media posts into a single, streamlined view. While it’s not meant to replace full-featured clients, Reeder offers a centralized way to keep track of everything you follow, with the option to open content in other apps (if supported) when you want to dive deeper. Filters Create custom timelines with filters based on keywords, media types or feed types. Save and Organize Links Easily save links from Safari or any other app to Reeder using its share extension, keeping everything organized and easy to find. iCloud Sync Reeder only syncs what’s important — your subscriptions, timeline position and tagged items (including Links, Favorites, Bookmarks and Later) — across all your devices using iCloud, making syncing faster and more efficient, with changes pushed to your other devices within seconds. Content is fetched directly from the sources, ensuring you always have the latest updates. Terms of Use: https://reeder.app/terms Privacy Policy: https://reeder.app/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Hacker News Tech Reader at 94% against Reeder.'s 53%. Hacker News Tech Reader also leads on rating (4.7 vs 4.3) and monetization model (free vs freemium). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Hacker News Tech Reader sells 6 one-off in-app purchases and Reeder. sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Hacker News Tech Reader holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1.6K and 900 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 94% of Hacker News Tech Reader's written reviews are positive against 53% of Reeder.'s.
Hacker News Tech Reader ships an update every 3 days, Reeder. every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Hacker News Tech Reader | Reeder. |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (1.6K ratings) — better | 4.3 (900 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 93.5% of reviews — better | 53.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1.6K — better | 900 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 28 MB | 30 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Pranoy Chowdhury | Silvio Rizzi |
Customer experience
Hacker News Tech Reader
Reeder.
Bugs and requests
Hacker News Tech Reader
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Reeder.
Reported bugs
4 issues- Feeds failing to import or sync correctly
- Inconsistent timeline ordering and display
- Podcast and video playback issues
- Crashes and stability problems
Requested features
6 requests- Add read/unread status indicators
- Improve feed organization with folders
- Provide more customization options for layout and typography
- Integrate with third-party RSS services
- Introduce keyboard shortcuts for common actions
Show 1 moreShow fewer
- Add option to hide read/viewed content
In-app purchases
Hacker News Tech Reader
- Nice Tip$3.99
- Kind Tip$6.99
- Generous Tip$9.99
Show 3 moreShow fewer
- Hack Premium$12.99
- Amazing Tip$12.99
- Godzilla Tip$19.99
Reeder.
- Monthly$1.991 Month
- Yearly$14.991 Year
Questions
Is Hacker News Tech Reader free?
Is Reeder. free?
Which has better reviews, Hacker News Tech Reader or Reeder.?
Do Hacker News Tech Reader or Reeder. have ads?
Which is updated more often, Hacker News Tech Reader or Reeder.?
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