Swim Guide vs NCTrees
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Swim Guide
Access up-to-date water quality information for thousands of beaches, lakes, and rivers worldwide. Easily find swimmable locations with clear indicators of water safety and detailed beach information. Discover new spots, get directions, and share your favorites.
- Real-time water quality status
- Beach amenity and parking information
- Map-based beach discovery
- Searchable beach database
- Directions to beaches
- Bookmark favorite beaches
- Share beach information
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** As seen on USA Today, CBC, CBC Radio, Radio Canada, Huffington Post, LA Times, Water Canada, ABC News, Men's Journal, National Post, and Mashable. ** Swim Guide is a website and smartphone app for iPhone®. Swim Guide delivers free up-to-date water quality information for over 8,000 beaches, lakes, rivers, and swimming holes in Canada, the U.S., Mexico, the Bahamas, Australia and New Zealand. Swim Guide provides you with current recreational water quality information for your favourite beaches and swimming holes. Every beach is marked with a Green or Red icon so you know when the water at your favourite beach is clean for swimming and when the water quality is failed to recreational water quality criteria. As of 2019, Swim Guide is the most popular beach information service in the world, with over 4-million all time users. Finding a beach with clean, swimmable water for you and your family is easy with Swim Guide: - Find the cleanest closest beaches to you by browsing the map or by searching - Beach descriptions tell you about amenities, lifeguards, where to park, and everything else you need to know to enjoy a day at the beach. - Green icon tells you your beach passed water quality tests - Red icon tells you the water quality failed water quality test - Date/time stamp tells you when a water quality status was last updated in Swim Guide - Historical status tells you percentage of time that a beach passed water quality tests in the last year - Source information section tells you who samples the water at each beach and what recreational water quality guidelines apply - Discover a wide variety of beaches, ranging from city parks to remote lakes ideal for camping - Get directions to the beach of your choice - Bookmark your favourite beaches for easy access - Use the app to share beaches with your friends and family - Original descriptions of 8,000+ different beaches, so you can learn a bit of history and geography as you explore Get involved! Use the Swim Guide to report pollution, support your local water organizations, and learn about the issues facing your homewaters. Swim Guide is the only charity app of its kind, made by Swim Drink Fish Canada (formerly Lake Ontario Waterkeeper). Visit us online for more info: www.theswimguide.org
NCTrees
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The North Channel is the water between Manitoulan Island and the north shore of Lake Huron in Ontario. The area stretches from Sault Ste. Marie in the West to Killarney in the East. This application provides a guide to identifying the various trees you may encounter on both the shoreline and in the water.
Screenshots
Verdict
Swim Guide and NCTrees 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Swim Guide | NCTrees |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.6 (39 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 62.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 39 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 64 MB | 30 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Swim Drink Fish Canada | Brian Stewart |
In-app purchases
Swim Guide
No in-app purchases
NCTrees
No in-app purchases






