Comparison

Lysten vs Tidings

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

Head to head
About

Lysten

Easily discover and listen to podcasts with a privacy-focused player. Enjoy features like offline listening, interactive widgets, and seamless sharing with friends. Syncs via iCloud for a personal experience.

Highlights
  • Privacy-focused design
  • iCloud sync for progress
  • Offline episode downloads
  • Interactive widgets
  • Sleep timer
  • Adjustable playback speed
  • Spotlight search indexing
Features
Read full description

Start listening in seconds — search for any show, follow it, and get a clean list of episodes ready to play. Share episodes and shows with anyone, whether or not they have the app. iPhone and iPad users get an App Clip that drops them straight into playback. Tap the share button to invite your friends and loved ones. Lysten is a lightweight podcast player. Sign in with your email to keep your followed shows, episodes, and listening progress in sync across all your devices — iPhone, iPad, and CarPlay. Features: - Sync your library and listening progress across devices with a simple email sign-in - Interactive widgets showing your feed and unfinished episodes — catch up where you left off with a tap - Sidebar on iPad with cover art and grouped sections - CarPlay support, including a Continue Listening carousel - Download episodes to listen offline — long press an episode and select Download - Sleep timer, set, enjoy & sleep - Adjustable playback speed - Podcasts and episodes indexed in Spotlight - SharePlay support — listen to episodes with friends and family - Extremely lightweight If you run into any trouble or have any questions, please reach out: - E-mail: support@ambi.se - X (Twitter): @ambiApps - Mastodon: @ambiApps@mastodon.social Privacy policy: https://ambi.se/privacy Terms of use: https://ambi.se/terms

About

Tidings

Features
Read full description

Tidings is an RSS reader built for people who want to read, not manage software. Add a feed by pasting any site's URL — it finds the feed for you. Your articles land in one inbox, oldest first, and you triage them: read now, keep for later, star what matters, or sweep the rest away. Nothing is recommended to you, nothing is ranked by an algorithm, and nothing arrives that you didn't ask for. READS BEAUTIFULLY Articles are stripped to their text and images — no popups, no cookie banners, no newsletter modals. Adjustable type, light and dark, and it remembers exactly where you stopped reading, even after you change the font. WORKS OFFLINE Articles are downloaded and cached, so a subway ride or a flight is just reading time. Images come along too. SYNCS PRIVATELY Your feeds and reading state sync across your iPhone and iPad through your own iCloud account. There is no server in the middle, because there is no server at all. BRINGS YOUR FEEDS WITH YOU Import an OPML file from any other reader, and export yours whenever you like. Your subscriptions are yours to take. FEATURES • Automatic feed discovery — paste a site URL, not a feed URL • RSS, Atom, JSON Feed, and YouTube channels • Distraction-free reader with full-text extraction • Offline reading with cached text and images • Inbox, Read Later, and Starred — triage with swipe gestures • Mark Above as Read for fast sweeping • Remembers your place in every list and article • iCloud sync across your devices • OPML import and export • Full VoiceOver and Dynamic Type support • iPhone and iPad FREE FOR UP TO 10 FEEDS Everything above is included — the reader, offline articles, iCloud sync, YouTube feeds, OPML import and export. Nothing is crippled, nothing expires, and there's no trial countdown. If you outgrow 10 feeds, Tidings Premium removes the limit for a single one-time payment. That's the only thing it changes. NO ADS. NO TRACKING. NO ACCOUNT. NO ANALYTICS. NO SUBSCRIPTION. Tidings has no way to know what you read — it has no server to tell.

Screenshots

Lysten4 screens
Tidings4 screens

Verdict

The call

Lysten and Tidings are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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. Lysten sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month and Tidings sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Lysten versus Tidings: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLystenTidings
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.4 (10 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews80.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings10 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 months—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size44 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAmbi Studio ABHongyu Zhang

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Lysten

Subscriptions2
  • Lysten+3 Days trial$1.991 Month
  • Lysten+ Yearly7 Days trial$19.991 Year
1 purchases

Tidings

One-time1
  • Tidings Premium$9.99

Questions

Is Lysten free?
Lysten is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Tidings free?
Tidings is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Lysten or Tidings have ads?
Neither Lysten nor Tidings shows ads.

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