a vs Last Seen Up
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
a
Run a full Unix-like terminal environment on your iOS device. Execute a wide range of commands, edit files, and even program using included interpreters and compilers. Supports multitasking and integration with Shortcuts.
- Local Unix terminal emulator
- SSH client
- File transfer (scp, curl)
- Text editing (vim, ed)
- Scripting languages (Python, Lua, Perl, JS)
- C/C++ compiler
- TeX distribution
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a-Shell is a complete local terminal emulator, allowing to run most Unix commands on your iOS device. You can transfer files using scp and curl, edit them with vim and ed, process them using grep, awk and sed. You can work with git repositories using lg2. Most commands are compiled for iOS native Arm64 format, making them fast and well integrated with the BSD Unix that powers iOS/iPadOS. a-Shell includes Python, Lua, Perl, JavaScript, C, C++ for programming and TeX (texlive 2025, with Tikz and LuaTeX) for text processing. There are also multiple network utilities: nslookup, ping, whois, ifconfig... Type help for help, help -l to get the full list of commands. a-Shell can be controlled from Shortcuts: run commands in order, process files in a-Shell, get the results as text or files, transfer files to other apps... a-shell uses iOS 13+ “multiple windows” ability, so you can run multiple shells at the same time, with different commands, in different directories. You can edit a file in one window with vim and process it in the other with python. Compile your C or C++ programs to webAssembly using clang or clang++, and execute the resulting binary. A complete webAssembly SDK is included (WASI-libc). a-Shell is the complete version. If you need a smaller app, and you don't need a C compiler, a TeX engine, or numpy and matplotlib, there is a-Shell mini.
Last Seen Up
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Know the moment it stops answering. Last Seen Up watches your servers, sites, queues and cron jobs, and wakes you when something stops responding. Checks run on our servers around the clock, so the alert reaches you whether or not your phone is awake. WATCH WHAT MATTERS Add a website and it is one monitor, not three. We check that it answers, and we keep an eye on the SSL certificate and the domain registration behind it, so the renewal you forgot is a reminder weeks out instead of an outage on a Saturday. Servers, ports, DNS records and anything that answers a ping are all one tap to add. CATCH THE JOBS THAT DIDN'T RUN A cron job that stops running fails silently. Give it a heartbeat URL to call when it finishes, and if the call never comes we tell you. The alert shows the last several runs at a glance, so a job that has been failing every other night for a week looks different from one that broke tonight. ALERTS BUILT FOR 3AM Alerts arrive as Time Sensitive notifications, so they break through a Focus. Long-press one to see how long it has been down and what failed, then acknowledge or snooze without opening the app. If nobody answers, escalation rings the next person on your list, and the last rung is an actual phone call. WATCH IT UNFOLD An open incident puts a live counter on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, ticking up until it recovers and then ending with how long it took. Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets keep your worst monitor in view. ON YOUR WRIST The Apple Watch app carries the full roster and lets you acknowledge an incident with your phone in another room. Complications put your fleet's state on the watch face. SEE THE SHAPE OF IT A dashboard for uptime and response times, with how fast a site usually answers and how slow it gets on a bad day. Maintenance windows keep planned work from paging anybody. BUILT NOT TO LIE TO YOU If the app cannot reach our servers it says so plainly rather than showing you a reassuring green screen. Every relative time is measured against server time, not your phone's clock. Status is never colour alone, so it reads correctly on a watch face, in sunlight, and with VoiceOver. FREE TO START Three monitors and everything above, free, with no trial and no card. Pro raises the account to 50 monitors and lets you bring up to 10 people onto the team, each seeing only the monitors you assign them. - iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch - Sign in with Apple, passkeys, or an emailed code - Full VoiceOver and Dynamic Type support Add the first one in about thirty seconds. SUBSCRIPTION Last Seen Up Pro is an auto-renewable subscription, sold monthly at $5.99 or yearly at $59.99. It raises the account to 50 monitors and 10 people on the team, and unlocks nothing else. Payment is charged to your Apple Account on confirming the purchase, and the subscription renews automatically at the then-current price unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends. Manage or cancel it in Settings on your iPhone, under your name, then Subscriptions. Privacy policy: https://lastseenup.com/privacy Terms of Use (EULA): https://lastseenup.com/terms
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: a at none against Last Seen Up's 2. a also leads on chart position (#21 vs unranked) and iOS requirement (14.0 vs 18.0). Last Seen Up's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs monthly). On price, ads and device support 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. Last Seen Up sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $5.99 per month. a asks for nothing beyond the download.
a ships an update monthly, Last Seen Up every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 22, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | a | Last Seen Up |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (561 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 78.3% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 561 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Best chart rank | #21 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1.9 GB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nicolas Holzschuch | Timothy Murphy |
Bugs and requests
a
Reported bugs
3 issues- Toolbar buttons not accessible in portrait mode on some devices
- Pasting from clipboard can insert unexpected characters
- Sourcing certain script files causes crashes
Requested features
5 requests- Add support for package managers like Homebrew or APT
- Implement more advanced shell features like job control and better tab completion
- Integrate Git for version control
- Allow installing additional packages and libraries
- Improve clipboard and file management integration
Last Seen Up
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
a
No in-app purchases
Last Seen Up
- Pro (Monthly)$5.991 Month
- Pro (Yearly)$59.991 Year







