Comparison

Nerdish vs Abstrct

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

Head to head
About

Nerdish

Discover fascinating facts and expand your general knowledge with short, engaging articles and audio content. Explore diverse topics from science and history to health and culture, designed for quick learning on the go.

Highlights
  • Original, well-researched articles
  • Audio versions of all content
  • Microlearning format (approx. 10 mins per article)
  • Visually rich content with historical images
  • Wide range of educational topics
  • Designed for busy adults
Features
Read full description

Nerdish is a learning app that helps you grow your general knowledge. The articles inside are our own — written to show you things you'd never thought to look up, feed your curiosity, and help you learn more about the world. You can read them or listen to them, and most take about ten minutes: why people like spicy food, what Nefertiti actually looked like, how the internet crosses oceans. What's inside: - Articles we write ourselves. Each one starts with a question our editors find interesting, and gets researched properly before it's written. - Topics from the life around you. Sleep, coffee, déjà vu, the internet, Nefertiti — things you pass by every day without wondering about them. - Our own writing framework. It keeps every article interesting and concise, but still genuinely educational — a lot of thought went into getting all three at once. - Built as microlearning for adults. Short chapters of a couple of minutes each, designed to fit a phone screen and a busy day. - Audio for everything. Read it, listen to it, or follow the text while it plays. - Historical photographs, archive material and artwork alongside the text, with facts and details in the margins. - A wide range of subjects, from the human body to ancient history — and the connections between them. We built Nerdish for people who: - would rather spend phone time on something better than socials. Same ten minutes, different outcome. - enjoy learning random things for no particular reason. Curiosity doesn't need a goal attached to it. - want to stay mentally sharp. Reading something unfamiliar is a small habit that keeps the mind working. - want to find their way back to reading. Short pieces are easier to start with than a book you've been meaning to open for months. - want to have more to say — about art, history, or why the sky is blue. Why it works: There's no way to measure general knowledge and no point where you have enough. But it's what you're using when you read the news, or decide whether something sounds true, or find a solution that came from somewhere unrelated. Hardly any of us sets out to work on our knowledge. Nobody ever taught us how — there's no course in general knowledge, nowhere obvious to begin. So it stays on the list of things you'd like to do. Nerdish works because the mechanism is already there. Curiosity is what built your general knowledge in the first place, and it doesn't need much — an interesting question and ten minutes. And knowledge doesn't stay in separate piles. We write science with its history in it, history with its culture, and culture with the people behind it — nothing is only about one thing. Pick a topic, read or listen, learn something you'd never thought to look up. That's how general knowledge grows. Learn with us about: - Health and the human body: sleep, memory, ageing, and how the body actually works. - History: ancient empires, revolutions, great discoveries, and the people who changed things. - Science and technology: space, evolution, physics, AI, inventions, and everyday phenomena explained properly. - Daily things: why déjà vu happens, how coffee was discovered, where common ideas come from. - Art and culture: painting, music, architecture, design, literature, and the movements behind them. - Food: where dishes come from and why we like what we like. - Famous people: the lives behind the names. Welcome to being Nerdish with us! Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Abstrct

Features
Read full description

Abstrct is a clean, distraction-free reader for open-access research papers and preprints. No accounts, no ads, no clutter — just a fast way to stay on top of new work in your field. BROWSE & DISCOVER • A continuously updated feed of recent papers from arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, ChemRxiv, TechRxiv, OSF Preprints, and Authorea • Filter by source and subject category, or browse papers by topic and pin the topics you follow • Sort by newest or by what's trending with other readers this week • Full-text search across titles and abstracts READ COMFORTABLY • A built-in reader opens the full HTML version of papers, with native math rendering — equations and symbols display correctly, no broken formulas • Open the original source page or PDF whenever you want • A dark, typography-first interface designed for long reading sessions KEEP TRACK • Bookmark papers to read later, and mark them read when you're done • Your read history is remembered automatically • Save filter combinations you use often and reorder them to taste • Everything stays on your device by default; optional sync keeps bookmarks, history and saved filters in step across your own devices, end-to-end encrypted GO DEEPER • "Explain" hands a paper to the AI assistant app of your choice for a plain-language summary • Discover related papers through similarity PRIVACY Abstrct has no user accounts and never asks for your identity. Your bookmarks, read history, and saved filters live on your device. If you turn on sync, an encrypted copy is stored on our server so your own devices can share it — we never hold your key and cannot read it. The app sends anonymous, aggregate usage analytics (keyed by a random install id, never your identity) so we can improve the app and surface trending papers, and release builds send automatic crash reports — full details are in the privacy policy. No ads, no social trackers, and your data is never sold. Abstrct is built for researchers, students, and anyone who likes to read papers straight from the source.

Screenshots

Nerdish4 screens
Abstrct4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Abstrct at none against Nerdish's 5. Nerdish's advantage is chart position (#86 vs unranked) and device support (3 vs 1). 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. Nerdish sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Abstrct asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard3 real differences · 8 level
Nerdish versus Abstrct: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterNerdishAbstrct
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (2.7K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews60.4% of reviews—
Number of ratings2.7K — better—
Update frequencyEvery 5 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreemium—
Best chart rank#86 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.0 — better16.0
Further details — not scored
Size63 MB28 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperNerdish OUAlessandro Rizzo

Bugs and requests

Nerdish

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Incomplete articles with missing content
  • Frequent app crashes and freezes
  • Subscription issues and billing problems

Requested features

4 requests
  • Add audio narration option
  • Implement bookmarking and note-taking features
  • Improve search and filtering capabilities
  • Provide more free content without ads

Abstrct

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

5 purchases

Nerdish

Subscriptions5
  • Monthly Subscription14 Days trial$4.991 Month
  • Nerdish Premium Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Easy Quarterly Plan$11.993 Months
Show 2 more
  • Nerdish Annual Special$29.991 Year
  • Nerdish Premium Annual7 Days trial$39.991 Year
None

Abstrct

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Nerdish free?
Nerdish is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Abstrct free?
Abstrct is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Nerdish or Abstrct have ads?
Neither Nerdish nor Abstrct shows ads.

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