Awful vs The Waiting Room
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Awful
Access and navigate the Something Awful forums with ease on your iPhone and iPad. Enjoy features like bookmarked threads, image uploads, private messages, and a dedicated smilie keyboard. This app offers a streamlined browsing experience for forum enthusiasts.
- Browse all forums and subforums
- Access bookmarked threads
- Built-in SALR functionality
- Smilie stickers and keyboard
- Image and picture uploads
- Private message access
- Favorite forums and rap sheets
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Browse the Something Awful forums nicely on your iPhone and iPad! • Every forum and subforum! • Quickly check your bookmarked threads! • Built-in SALR! • Smilie stickers and keyboard! • Upload images and pictures! • Private messages! • Favorite forums! • Rap sheets! • Excessive exclamation marks!
The Waiting Room
Create unique audio and video content by recording yourself speaking backward and then reversing it. Share your reversed creations with friends or export them to other applications.
- Record audio backward
- Reverse audio playback
- Create backward video effects
- Share creations with friends
- Export to other apps
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This is the waiting room. Would you like some coffee? Some of your friends are here. An unofficial fan app inspired by Twin Peaks. Record yourself to learn how your words sound backwards, then record your backwards pronunciation and listen to it in reverse. Or record creepy videos with backwards snaps and winks. Send your creations to friends or export to your favorite audio and video apps. !kcor s'teL
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Awful at Free against The Waiting Room's $0.99. Awful also leads on ratings volume (239 vs 7). The Waiting Room's advantage is review sentiment (100% vs 87%) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). On rating, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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
Awful is free to download; The Waiting Room costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Awful against 5.0 for The Waiting Room. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Awful has 239 ratings behind it against 7, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 87% of Awful's written reviews are positive against 100% of The Waiting Room's.
Awful ships an update every 8 days, The Waiting Room every 9 days. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Awful | The Waiting Room |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 4.9 (239 ratings) | 5.0 (7 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 86.6% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 239 — better | 7 |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days — better | Every 9 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 104 MB | 17 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Dale Stonall-Mellor | J Crowley |
Customer experience
Awful
The Waiting Room
Bugs and requests
Awful
Reported bugs
4 issues- Crashes when opening certain forums
- Inability to load images and media
- Freezing and lagging on older devices
- Sync issues between app and website
Requested features
4 requests- Add search functionality
- Implement dark mode option
- Improve thread navigation and bookmarking
- Integrate with other social platforms
The Waiting Room
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Awful
No in-app purchases
The Waiting Room
No in-app purchases
