FD Viewer vs Bird Up
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
FD Viewer
Access and read detailed text weather products from the National Weather Service. This app reformats Area Forecast Discussions into a user-friendly interface, allowing easy navigation through sections and offices.
- Read Area Forecast Discussions (AFDs)
- View NWS offices on a map
- List offices by distance or alphabetically
- Paginated section navigation
- User-friendly reformatting of weather data
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Area Forecast Discussions (AFDs) are a text weather product released by the National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Offices to inform and elaborate on the public forecast. FD Viewer presents each office on a map and also displays a list of offices sorted by distance or alphabetically. Selecting an office will display the latest Forecast Discussion paginated by section. Swipe right or left to navigate through each section. This app merely reformats the web-based AFD information in a user-friendly format. All credit for the forecast information goes to all the hardworking people at the NWS. TBD: I plan to support in-app glossary popups that will describe some of the more arcane acronyms and phrases used in the forecast text.
Bird Up
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Bird Up is a Tiger Mountain paragliding weather application. - Live weather data is provided by David Wheeler's stations located at drw.selfip.com - Windgrams are courtesy of T. J. Olney's wxtofly.net which generates Dr. Jack's RASP visualizations. - Meteograms are from weather.gov, and are the same as Roland's Soarcast It is likely that more locations will be added. Please submit feedback to contact@birdup.cloud
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: FD Viewer at every 2 weeks against Bird Up's every 8 months. Bird Up's advantage is iOS requirement (12.0 vs 16.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
FD Viewer ships an update every 2 weeks, Bird Up every 8 months. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | FD Viewer | Bird Up |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 8 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 2 MB | 25 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Neil Cormia | Robert Howell |
In-app purchases
FD Viewer
No in-app purchases
Bird Up
No in-app purchases
