iDamage vs BlitzortungLive
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
iDamage
Receive real-time push notifications for severe weather events, including detailed damage reports from trained spotters and emergency responders. Customize alerts by location and weather type, and view storm data on an interactive map. Includes wildfire reports and detailed weather outlooks.
- Push notifications for storm events
- Configurable location and weather filters
- Map view with color-coded storm pins
- List view of storm events
- Integration with Maps app for directions
- Convective weather outlooks and discussions
- Wildfire thermal anomaly and report maps
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iDamage pushes thunderstorm damage reports originating from trained spotters, emergency responders, and members of the public to your iPhone or iPad. If you chase tornados, hail, or high winds for a living, or volunteer to assist your community during severe weather events, or just want to improve your situational awareness on days when storms might pop up, iDamage is the app for you. Here are its features: - Push notification of storm events, oftentimes including very specific damage reports. Coverage area includes the entire Contiguous (Lower 48) United States. - User-configurable filters allow you to receive notifications for the entire Contiguous US, an entire state, a local area, and/or for specific types of severe weather (tornado, hail, high wind). Use the auto-location feature of your mobile device to set a filter if you are traveling and not sure of your general location. - Filter push notifications by hail size - Optional alternate push alert sound for hail events - Map of storm events with color coded pins. Timeframes are 3-hr, full day, or archival (back to 29 Feb 2004). Touch any pin for access to details. WiFi-only iPad users, data from your last view is cached for off-line use. - Filter Map View by event type and hail size - List of storm events in table form. Touch any cell in the table for a single pin street or hybrid map view. - Link to the "Maps" app on your home screen so you can get directions to the approximate location of severe weather events. - Storm reports may be e-mailed in an external email app. - 24 hour (with CONUS radar animation + watch boxes), 2-day, 3-day, and 4-8 day convective (thunderstorm) outlook with probability maps and technical discussion. - Mesoscale discussions with maps - Convective weather watches with maps. - Local hazardous weather products (including watches and warnings), selectable by touching a location on a map or via auto-location. - Local animated radar with warning boxes *** NOTE: Watches and warnings are NOT pushed. iDamage only pushes reports of thunderstorm (convective) events. Tropical and extratropical systems may not generate reports. - 9 pm - 9 am silence switch in Settings view. Push notifications will visually display, but alert tones are silenced. - iDamage has wildfire capability! Get a map of satellite thermal anomaly detections plus public wildfire reports. All weather data presented by iDamage is from the National Weather Service and not subject to copyright protection. homedatasheet.com, Inc. is not affiliated with the National Weather Service.
BlitzortungLive
Monitor lightning strikes in near real-time on a map. Receive push alerts for detected strikes in a customizable area. Supports multiple languages and displays historical strike data.
- Live lightning strike display
- Historical strike visualization
- Customizable push alerts
- Multi-language support
- Real-time map view
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See thunderstorms the moment they happen. BlitzortungLive shows lightning strikes from the worldwide Blitzortung.org community network on the map in near real time – now together with precipitation radar, thunderstorm forecasts and wind, so you can see at a glance where a storm is, how strong it is and where it is heading. LIVE LIGHTNING • New strikes appear within seconds and fade from yellow to red as they age • Lightning map with the strikes of the last hours (lightningmaps.org) • Strike counter for the visible area • Optional sound for new strikes WEATHER RADAR & FORECAST • Precipitation radar for Germany and neighbouring regions, updated every 5 minutes • Animated timeline: the last two hours plus a 2-hour nowcast • Forecast images are clearly marked – you always know whether you see measured or predicted data • Satellite cloud images and animated wind THUNDERSTORMS • Current and forecast thunderstorm areas across Europe • Thunderstorm tracks in Germany with direction, speed and warning level • Lightning density map • Instability (Lifted Index) shows where thunderstorms can develop LOOK BACK • Scroll back through the last two hours of radar – each image shows the lightning the app received at that time while it was open THUNDERSTORM ALERT • Push notification when lightning is detected near you • Choose the alert area on the map or use your location, radius from 1 to 300 km (0.6 to 186 mi) MADE FOR TODAY'S IPHONE AND IPAD • Completely redesigned for iOS 17 and later • Smooth map with GPU rendering – zoom and pan without waiting • Dark Mode, Dynamic Type, VoiceOver and Reduce Motion support • 12 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil) and Russian FREE – NO ADS, NO TRACKING BlitzortungLive is free and contains no advertising and no tracking. ABOUT BLITZORTUNG.ORG BlitzortungLive is an additional service of the Blitzortung.org project, a community network of volunteers operating lightning detection stations all over the world. Coverage and accuracy depend on the stations in each region. For general questions about Blitzortung.org or to join the network with your own station, please visit www.blitzortung.org and read the documentation and FAQ first. DATA SOURCES Weather data: Deutscher Wetterdienst (CC BY 4.0), satellite data EUMETSAT. Instability: NOAA GFS (model data). Lightning: Blitzortung.org. BlitzortungLive is not an official warning service. In case of danger, follow the warnings of your national weather service.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: BlitzortungLive at Free against iDamage's $2.99. BlitzortungLive also leads on rating (4.5 vs 3.4) and in-app purchases (none vs 5). iDamage's advantage is ads (none vs shown) and chart position (#47 vs unranked). On review sentiment, update cadence 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
BlitzortungLive is free to download; iDamage costs $2.99 up front. iDamage sells 5 one-off in-app purchases. BlitzortungLive asks for nothing beyond the download.
BlitzortungLive holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: BlitzortungLive has 673 ratings behind it against 37, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 68% of iDamage's written reviews are positive against 75% of BlitzortungLive's.
iDamage ships an update every 4 months, BlitzortungLive every 6 months. Both last shipped on October 24, 2026.
| Parameter | iDamage | BlitzortungLive |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 3.4 (37 ratings) | 4.5 (673 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 67.6% of reviews | 75.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 37 | 673 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months — better | Every 6 months |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Ad-supported — better |
| Best chart rank | #47 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | homedatasheet.com, Inc. | Marco Bauer |
Customer experience
iDamage
BlitzortungLive
Bugs and requests
iDamage
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
BlitzortungLive
Reported bugs
4 issues- Crashes on startup
- Delayed or missing strike notifications
- Inaccurate location of strikes
- Issues with map updates
Requested features
5 requests- Customizable alert radius
- Historical lightning data
- Weather radar integration
- Ability to report missing strikes
- Option to remove ads
In-app purchases
iDamage
- 2022 Location-based eventsFree
- 2023 Location-based eventsFree
- 2025 Location-based eventsFree
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- 2024 Location-based eventsFree
- 2026 Location-based events$1.99
BlitzortungLive
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is iDamage free?
Is BlitzortungLive free?
Which has better reviews, iDamage or BlitzortungLive?
Do iDamage or BlitzortungLive have ads?
Which is updated more often, iDamage or BlitzortungLive?
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