Nerdish vs EarthLayer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Nerdish
Expand your general knowledge with concise, engaging articles on diverse topics like science, history, and art. Designed for busy adults, this app delivers quick, fact-checked reads in 5-10 minutes daily to foster lifelong learning and personal growth.
- Concise articles on science, history, art, and more
- Daily 5-10 minute learning sessions
- Fact-checked and well-structured content
- Connects key ideas for deeper understanding
- Topics include psychology, technology, and daily life
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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/
EarthLayer
Discover Earth's biodiversity with this app, featuring interactive maps of wildlife and plant life. Explore species, learn about their habitats and conservation status, and read engaging nature stories.
- Interactive biodiversity maps
- Species and plant profiles
- Habitat and ecosystem exploration
- Conservation status information
- Nature stories and articles
- Search by common or scientific name
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Explore life on Earth with EarthLayer, a biodiversity discovery app that brings wildlife, plants, interactive maps, and nature stories together in one connected experience. EarthLayer includes two complete exploration experiences: SpeciesMap and PlantsMap. Move between them from the EarthLayer home screen and discover the natural world from different perspectives. SpeciesMap helps you explore animal life from around the globe. Search species by common or scientific name, open detailed profiles, examine real-world observations, and discover how wildlife is distributed across countries, regions, habitats, and ecosystems. PlantsMap opens the door to Earth’s botanical diversity. Explore plant species ranging from towering trees and flowering plants to ancient ferns, grasses, and mosses. Search for plants, learn about their classifications and conservation context, and discover the ecosystems they help support. Interactive views turn biodiversity data into a visual experience. Explore wildlife sightings, biodiversity patterns, conservation status, ecosystems, and hotspots to better understand where life is found, where it is most diverse, and where species may be facing greater pressure. EarthLayer also goes beyond maps and data with thoughtfully presented articles about wildlife, plants, conservation, ecosystems, and scientific discovery. These stories provide context for the species and landscapes you encounter throughout the app. Designed for nature enthusiasts, students, educators, photographers, researchers, travellers, and anyone curious about our planet, EarthLayer offers an accessible way to explore the connections between species, plants, habitats, and the places they call home. EarthLayer uses biodiversity and observation data from established open-data sources. The availability of species records, images, locations, conservation information, and other details may vary by region and source.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: EarthLayer at 100% against Nerdish's 60%. EarthLayer also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 5). Nerdish's advantage is ratings volume (2.7K vs 5) and rating (4.8 vs 4.6). On price, update cadence, 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. Nerdish sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. EarthLayer asks for nothing beyond the download.
Nerdish holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Nerdish has 2.7K ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 60% of Nerdish's written reviews are positive against 100% of EarthLayer's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Nerdish | EarthLayer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (2.7K ratings) — better | 4.6 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 60.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2.7K — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #72 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 62 MB | 54 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nerdish OU | Kyra Web Inc. |
Customer experience
Nerdish
EarthLayer
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
EarthLayer
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Nerdish
- Monthly Subscription14 Days trial$4.991 Month
- Nerdish Premium Monthly$4.991 Month
- Easy Quarterly Plan$11.993 Months
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- Nerdish Annual Special$29.991 Year
- Nerdish Premium Annual7 Days trial$39.991 Year
EarthLayer
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Nerdish free?
Is EarthLayer free?
Which has better reviews, Nerdish or EarthLayer?
Do Nerdish or EarthLayer have ads?
Which is updated more often, Nerdish or EarthLayer?
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