Comparison

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader vs Hack Alerts

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

Head to head
About

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader

This app offers a beautiful and intuitive way to read tech, startup, and STEM news from Hacker News. It provides advanced features like push notifications, threaded comments, and powerful search, with extensive customization options for a personalized reading experience.

Highlights
  • Ad-free and subscription-free reading
  • Push notifications for replies
  • Nested threaded comments with collapse
  • Swipe to upvote and favorite
  • Submit new posts and drafts
  • Powerful Algolia-powered search
  • Customizable themes, fonts, and layout
Features
Read full description

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 I am a small indie developer and need your help keep the lights on. I offer an ad and analytics free and beautiful app for the absolute best experience for my users. 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. You can also leave a review on the App Store as that really helps me get the word out. Thank you for choosing HACK. If you have a programming job or have feedback, contact me at: pran@pranapps.com

About

Hack Alerts

Features
Read full description

Security alerts for major hacks, exploits, crypto and DeFi incidents, CVEs, and cloud outages - filtered for signal, not noise. Hack Alerts gives you a clean public feed of high-confidence incidents from trusted security, cloud status, and vulnerability sources. Use it to track major crypto exploits, DeFi protocol hacks, wallet-draining campaigns, actively exploited CVEs, and cloud infrastructure incidents without living inside noisy social feeds. What you get: - Push alerts for major public security incidents - A filtered feed focused on hacks, exploits, CVEs, DeFi, web3, and cloud outages - Clear incident details including project, severity, topic, impact, source, and detected time - Source links so you can verify the original report - Notification preferences for severity and topics Hack Alerts is an informational security alert feed. It is not financial advice, trading advice, incident response tooling, or a guarantee of complete coverage. Always verify critical incidents with primary sources before making operational or financial decisions.

Screenshots

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader4 screens
Hack Alerts3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Hack Alerts at none against HACK for Hacker News YC Reader's 6. HACK for Hacker News YC Reader's advantage is device support (4 vs 2). On price, ads 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. HACK for Hacker News YC Reader sells 6 one-off in-app purchases. Hack Alerts asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
HACK for Hacker News YC Reader versus Hack Alerts: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHACK for Hacker News YC ReaderHack Alerts
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (1.6K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews93.4% of reviews—
Number of ratings1.6K — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — betteriPhone, iPod
Requires iOS15.0 — better15.1
Further details — not scored
Size28 MB23 MB
Age rating9+4+
DeveloperPranoy Chowdhurykyle trusler

In-app purchases

6 purchases

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader

One-time6
  • Nice Tip$3.99
  • Kind Tip$6.99
  • Generous Tip$9.99
Show 3 more
  • Amazing Tip$12.99
  • Hack Premium$14.99
  • Godzilla Tip$19.99
None

Hack Alerts

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is HACK for Hacker News YC Reader free?
HACK for Hacker News YC Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Hack Alerts free?
Hack Alerts is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do HACK for Hacker News YC Reader or Hack Alerts have ads?
Neither HACK for Hacker News YC Reader nor Hack Alerts shows ads.

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