fingerCount vs READING MAGIC
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
fingerCount
This educational game helps young children learn numbers and letters in English and Spanish through interactive play. It enhances hand-eye coordination and spatial reasoning while encouraging creativity and interaction.
- Learn numbers and letters
- English and Spanish language support
- Interactive character movement
- Develops hand-eye coordination
- Encourages creativity and interaction
- Multi-touch interface integration
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FingerCount is a game for small children to learn numbers and letters in both English and Spanish. On the surface, fingerCount is eye and ear candy that allows your child to move characters around, providing visual and audio feedback which encourages extended play. On a deeper level, fingerCount is a learning tool that teaches children their numbers while at the same time using the multi-touch iPhone interface to integrate concepts of quantity. It can also be used by anyone to learn Spanish or English by teaching numbers and the alphabet in a fun way. In addition, fingerCount aids in hand-eye coordination and spatial relationships. Finally, you can use flexible nature of fingerCount to create games with your child to support creativity and encourage interaction with those around them.
READING MAGIC
This app makes learning to read an exciting adventure for young children. It focuses on CVC words and uses science-based phonics principles to build essential reading skills like blending and segmenting.
- CVC word focus
- Blending and segmenting practice
- Phonemic awareness building
- Phonological processing improvement
- Engaging games and activities
- Discourages picture guessing
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Unlock the Magic of Reading with READING MAGIC 1! Transform your child into a confident reader with READING MAGIC 1! This app makes learning to read an exciting adventure with interactive activities focused on short-vowel words, specifically CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words. Meticulously designed to provide an advanced boost to your child’s phonemic awareness, this app combines three foundational pillars of literacy science into one powerful, interactive ecosystem: Blending (Listening), Segmenting (Speaking), and Decoding (Reading). Grounded firmly in Science of Reading principles and utilizing University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) guidelines, READING MAGIC provides specific, precise training with extensive repetitions to help young brains bridge the gap between spoken sound units and complete words. IDEAL FOR BOTH BEGINNING PRE-READERS AND STRUGGLING READERS For Beginning Pre-Readers: A stress-free launchpad. By practicing words through pure sound sequences first, your child masters the internal mechanics of reading without cognitive overload. This keeps them from being frustrated by trying to learn separate, difficult skills at the same time. For Struggling or Remedial Readers: If your child's reading is hesitant or choppy, or if they guess at words, this app provides the targeted intervention recommended by modern reading science to help young brains bridge the gap. THREE CRITICAL SKILL-BUILDING PILLARS While many phonics programs completely overlook the auditory mechanics of reading, our program systematically guides your child through the complete progression of decoding: Skill 1: Blending (Listening): Interactive listening activities train your child’s neural processing ability to hear isolated sounds in words and join them together mentally. This builds the vital auditory runway required for future fluency. Skill 2: Segmenting (Speaking): True spelling and reading independence require the ability to pull spoken words apart into their individual sound units. These exercises build explicit awareness of the acoustic structure of language. Skill 3: Decoding (Reading): The ultimate bridge to literacy. Your child applies their mastery of blending and segmenting directly to text, smoothly moving from spoken sounds to visual words. STRUCTURAL SPACING & INSTRUCTION (Science-Backed Layout) Our app builds the actual findings of reading science directly into the user interface for maximum visual clarity: Anti-Crowding Design: Peer-reviewed research, including Marinus et al. (2016) and Wery & Diliberto (2017), demonstrates that generous letter spacing is critical for early decoding. By placing each letter on its own isolated card with distinct physical gaps, our layout eliminates visual crowding, allowing your child to isolate each sound unit cleanly. True Comprehension: The app strictly discourages picture guessing, forcing children to rely purely on their decoding skills to foster true comprehension and build lasting confidence. INDEPENDENT LEARNING & AESTHETIC SIMPLICITY Distraction-Free: Our minimalist design eliminates overstimulating audio-visual clutter, excessive sound effects, and animations to keep your child entirely focused on the mechanics of reading. Stress-Free Growth: Built-in natural feedback loops offer gentle corrections, nurturing self-discovery and independent learning at your child's own pace. EXPERT RESEARCH BACKING "Before a child can read fluently with their eyes, they must be able to blend fluently with their ears. Weakness in auditory blending is one of the strongest early predictors of later reading failure." — Dr. Joseph Torgesen, Florida State University. "Teaching students to blend and segment benefited their reading much more than did a multiple-skills approach... and teaching phonemic awareness with letters created effect sizes almost twice as large as teaching children without letters." — The National Reading Panel (NRP) Meta-Analysis.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: fingerCount at none against READING MAGIC's 1. fingerCount also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.6). READING MAGIC's advantage is ratings volume (42 vs 2) and review sentiment (62% vs 50%). 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. READING MAGIC sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. fingerCount asks for nothing beyond the download.
fingerCount holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: READING MAGIC has 42 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 50% of fingerCount's written reviews are positive against 62% of READING MAGIC's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
fingerCount ships an update every 5 months, READING MAGIC every 6 months. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | fingerCount | READING MAGIC |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | 4.6 (42 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | 62.2% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 42 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 5 months — better | Every 6 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 | 13.7 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 208 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | John Coddington | PRESCHOOL UNIVERSITY |
Customer experience
fingerCount
READING MAGIC
In-app purchases
fingerCount
No in-app purchases
READING MAGIC
- Deluxe Upgrade$3.99
Questions
Is fingerCount free?
Is READING MAGIC free?
Which has better reviews, fingerCount or READING MAGIC?
Do fingerCount or READING MAGIC have ads?
Which is updated more often, fingerCount or READING MAGIC?
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