Tootoise vs Beluga
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Tootoise
A straightforward client for the Mastodon social network, allowing users to manage multiple accounts, interact with timelines, and customize their experience. It offers robust post management features, including editing and pinning, along with privacy controls like muting and blocking.
- Manage multiple Mastodon accounts
- View and post to timelines
- Create and edit post lists
- Pinning and bookmarking posts
- Mute, block, and report users
- Customizable theme colors
- Edit posts
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Tootoise is a simple Mastodon client. ## You can do this - View and post timeline - Add and switch multiple accounts - List display, creation and editing - Add, remove and list favourites - Add, remove and list bookmarks - Display notifications list (Not push notifications) - Display and input of custom emoji - Post information about the song you are currently listening to - Sharing from other applications (Safari, etc.) - Use with iPad multitasking function (SplitView, SlideOver) - Change theme color - Absolute time display - Pinning posts - Mute, block, report, filter - Search (As per server specifications) - Display and vote on poll - Edit a post (Some functions are not yet supported.) - Setting and displaying the ALT attribute (alternate text) ## These are not possible - Push notifications - Streaming - Create a poll - Relative time display The text size can be changed from the iOS Settings view. You can check the license of the library etc. used in this App by tapping the app icon in iOS settings.
Beluga
Share your thoughts and updates with friends and followers through a "tweet-like" feed. It generates a mini-website for easy sharing, even with non-users, and supports RSS feed readers for broader reach. This decentralized app ensures you own your data.
- Tweet-like content publishing
- Personalized mini-website generation
- JSON Feed compatibility
- Decentralized data ownership
- RSS feed reader integration
- Multiple S3-compatible storage support
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Publish your thoughts and keep your friends and followers informed of what you are up to. This app is ideal for publishing self-hosted tweets with photos and links. All your posts are added to your Beluga feed, and a mini-website is generated and published so you can easily share with everyone, even people that don’t use the app. You can think of Beluga as a feed reader/writer. All Beluga feeds are JSON Feed and RSS compatible, so your friends can follow you on many popular feed reader apps like NetNewsWire and others available on iOS and macOS. Beluga is decentralized. We don’t have any servers. So you are the owner of your data, and your self-hosted tweets live wherever you like. Beluga runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Your devices stay in sync through your own site, so you can post from any of them and pick up right where you left off. To publish your Beluga feed and mini-website, you must have a web server or an account with a hosting provider. We currently support SFTP, WebDAV, Neocities, Netlify, GitHub Pages, Bunny.net, and S3-compatible object storage like Amazon Web Services S3, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, Digital Ocean Spaces, Linode Objects, Backblaze B2, DreamHost, and many others.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Beluga at 5.0 against Tootoise's 4.3. Tootoise's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 6 months) and ratings volume (18 vs 1). 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Beluga holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Tootoise has 18 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Tootoise ships an update every 2 weeks, Beluga every 6 months. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Tootoise | Beluga |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (18 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 68.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 18 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 6 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 27.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 23 MB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Naoki Kuwata | Blimp |
Customer experience
Tootoise
Beluga
In-app purchases
Tootoise
No in-app purchases
Beluga
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Tootoise free?
Is Beluga free?
Which has better reviews, Tootoise or Beluga?
Do Tootoise or Beluga have ads?
Which is updated more often, Tootoise or Beluga?
Other comparisons
