Firesource vs Wildfire Aware®
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Firesource
Track live wildfires with real-time data on a map and in a feed. Access detailed fire perimeters, news updates, and air quality measurements. Users can also report nearby fires with photos and location data.
- Live fire map and feed
- Real-time fire perimeters
- Air quality measurements (AQI)
- User-reported fire alerts
- Satellite fire detections
- News updates and reports
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Firesource’s features: ◦ Live fire feed - both on map and in scrollable menu ◦ Local and national fire incidents - news updates and reports ◦ Fire perimeters - access all realtime fire perimeters at once with information about fire growth and progress, including acreage, containment, personnel, fire cause, and fire behavior ◦ Report a fire - instantly inform other users of a nearby fire by pressing the + button, taking a picture of the fire, and submitting ◦ Air quality - see the effects of recent fires by viewing realtime air quality measurements across the country ◦ Satellite fire detections can indicate new fires and how current fires are spreading National Fires (InciWeb, Cal Fire, IRWIN): InciWeb is an interagency incident management system run by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. InciWeb collects wildfire incident data from several agencies across the United States and provides all of this data together in several feeds. Firesource presents wildfire incidents reported by InciWeb in real time, providing the fire’s location and detailed status. Learn more about InciWeb at their website: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/. Learn more about Cal Fire, which also provides incident information, at their website: https://www.fire.ca.gov. Learn more about IRWIN, the data hub of fire reports, at https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/WFIT/applications/IRWIN/. National Fires (Perimeters): Perimeter data is provided by the Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services (WFIGS) Group and hosted in the National Interagency Fire Center ArcGIS Online Organization (The NIFC Org). Firesource displays fire perimeters and descriptions of their progress in the ‘National Fires’ tab of the menu, with this information updated on a regular basis. Learn more about the NIFC at their website: https://www.nifc.gov User-Reported Fires: Allowing app users to report a fire and immediately inform other users is an essential aspect of Firesource. To report a fire, press the yellow + button in the top right corner of the map, select the type of fire (vehicle fire, forest fire, terrain fire, structure fire), take a photo of the fire, and press submit. To ensure the validity of fire reports, the user must take a photo of the fire and cannot access Camera Roll to select a picture. Please note that submitting a fire report automatically creates the report at the user’s location, to further ensure that the fire is local and valid. When viewing user-reported fires in the feed, other users can ‘rate’ the fire report by confirming that it is active, contained, or a spam reporting. Air Quality: Air quality measurements from across the United States are collected from AirNow.gov, which provides national air quality data using the Air Quality Index (AQI). This data is color-coded to provide information about health concerns due to PM2.5 pollutants. Satellite-Detected Fires: Thermal hotspot detections are displayed and collected from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), which is an instrument on the Terra and Aqua satellites. Information provided from MODIS about each detection includes brightness (brightness temperature in Kelvin of a fire pixel) and confidence (quality of fire pixel). These fire detections are extremely useful, as they can indicate new fires and fire spread. Learn more about MODIS at their website: https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov Firesource is not affiliated with any government agencies. Firesource is only available for iPhone and iPad in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Privacy Policy: https://firesourceapp.weebly.com/privacy-policy.html Learn more and contact us at https://firesourceapp.weebly.com/
Wildfire Aware®
This app offers an interactive map to monitor wildfires with real-time satellite detection and incident data. It provides environmental overlays and near-real-time notifications for areas you care about, including fire weather information.
- Interactive wildfire map
- Satellite detection layers
- Detailed incident information
- Environmental overlays
- Near-real-time notifications
- Fire weather information
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Wildfire Aware® provides an interactive map-centric experience free to the public. It serves as a central hub for authoritative information, consolidating multiple data streams into a single interface for easier monitoring. *Satellite Detection Layers: Real-time visualization of thermal hotspots from NASA VIIRS, MODIS, and NOAA HMS Fire Detections. *Detailed Incident Information: View updated perimeters from FIRIS (California only) and other state/federal agencies as they become available. *Environmental Overlays: Review National Weather Service (NWS) watches and warnings directly on the map alongside active fire data. As a Premium feature of Wildfire Aware®, we provide near-real-time notifications of wildfires in areas you care about. When a fire is dispatched by a NIFC participating agency anywhere in the United States, you are notified as quickly as possible. We provide wildfire alerts quickly and supplement them with the most current Fire Weather information, including Temperature, Wind Speed and Direction, and Relative Humidity at the time of the fire. As fires burn for days or months, Wildfire Aware not only provides you with notifications about perimeter updates but also provides authoritative supplemental agency data as well. Letting you know where the fire is. We source information from NIFC, IRWIN, InciWeb, CAL FIRE, US Forest Service (USFS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Department on Interior (DOI), and Texas A&M Forest Service, to name a few. Anyone who has lived through a fire knows that Fire Weather is just as important as fire information. Wildfire Aware provides you with National Weather Service (NWS) Alerts related to Wildfires as soon as they are issued. From Fire Weather Watches and Red Flag Warnings before a fire, to Flash Flood Warnings and Watches after a fire, we keep you wildfire aware at all stages of a wildfire. Wildfire alerting for Canada is now available for Canada! We provided as much of the equivalency information as possible for Canadian Wildfires as well. The reported active fire locations are updated daily as provided by fire management agencies (provinces, territories and Parks Canada). The wildfires data is managed through a national Data Integration Project (DIP) coordinated by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) and Natural Resources Canada with participation from all partner agencies. Environment and Climate Change Canada issues public weather alerts about weather-related hazards in order to notify those in affected areas so that they can take steps to protect themselves and their property from harm. Alerts are classified depending on the severity and timing of the subject event and include warnings, watches, advisories and statements. We do not provide detailed information from radio traffic like Watch Duty, but instead, we provide information from authoritative sources as soon as it is published. We also provide links, whenever possible, to the appropriate social media platforms for additional authoritative data. We strive to give the most reliable information to the public as quickly as possible. Our founder not only survived a deadly and destructive fire in 2020 but also spent 13 years with CAL FIRE as a dispatcher and GIS specialist. Wildfire Aware® provides authoritative and vetted information, which is essential during any wildfire. When misinformation runs rampant during and after a wildfire, we strive to give you the most authoritative information available. Important Wildfire Aware® is an information aggregation platform. All data—including fire locations, perimeters, and weather conditions—is sourced from third-party public agencies. This information is provided "as is" for situational awareness only. Wildfire Aware® does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of notifications and should not be relied upon as a primary life-safety tool. Users should always follow the instructions of local emergency management and law enforcement.
Screenshots
Verdict
Firesource and Wildfire Aware® both sit at 4.7 stars, but that hides the real split: 98% of Wildfire Aware®'s written reviews are positive against 39% of Firesource's. Firesource's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 4) and ratings volume (2.7K vs 24). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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. Wildfire Aware® sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Firesource asks for nothing beyond the download.
Firesource holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Firesource has 2.7K ratings behind it against 24, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 39% of Firesource's written reviews are positive against 98% of Wildfire Aware®'s, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Firesource ships an update every 2 months, Wildfire Aware® every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Firesource | Wildfire Aware® |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (2.7K ratings) — better | 4.5 (24 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 38.6% of reviews | 97.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2.7K — better | 24 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 6 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 13.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 38 MB | 56 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Hemal doshi | The Analytical Moose LLC |
Customer experience
Firesource
Wildfire Aware®
User reviews
Firesource
From 2.7K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Great for road closures
- 👍 Nice app to have for fire research
- 👍 Comprehensive fire records
Room to improve
- 🐛 Inaccurate and outdated information
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and app issues
- 🐛 Slow performance
- 👎 Limited coverage (no Canada, Australia)
- 👎 Difficult to view fire perimeters
Wildfire Aware®
From 24 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Quick notifications
- 👍 Easy to use
- ✅ Up-to-date and accurate information
- 🗺️ Shows close-by cameras
- 💡 Alert radius setting
Room to improve
- 🐛 App slept on
- 🐛 App seems to have removed a feature (wind streams)
- 🐛 Extremely slow and constantly freezes
- 🐛 Crashed multiple times during a wildfire
Bugs and requests
Firesource
Reported bugs
3 issues- Fires not showing up on the map
- Air quality data not updating
- App keeps logging users out
Requested features
3 requests- Horizontal view for iPad
- Notifications for nearby fires
- More detailed fire information (size, direction, containment)
Wildfire Aware®
Reported bugs
3 issues- Extremely slow and constantly freezes
- Crashes multiple times
- Took forever to load during a wildfire
Requested features
1 request- Reintroduce wind streams overlay on the map
In-app purchases
Firesource
No in-app purchases
Wildfire Aware®
- Wildfire Aware Monthly$2.991 Month
- Wildfire Aware$2.991 Month
- Wildfire Aware Yearly$19.991 Year
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- Wildfire Aware$19.991 Year
Questions
Is Firesource free?
Is Wildfire Aware® free?
Which has better reviews, Firesource or Wildfire Aware®?
Do Firesource or Wildfire Aware® have ads?
Which is updated more often, Firesource or Wildfire Aware®?
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