Thorium vs BirdNET
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Thorium
Explore the potential of thorium as an energy source. This educational app uses videos to explain nuclear fission and contrast thorium-based reactors with current energy technologies like solar and wind.
- Thorium energy transformation explained
- Nuclear fission concepts
- Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) comparison
- Contrast with current energy sources
- Educational video series
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"Thorium" app details how thorium can be transformed into energy. Nuclear bonds contains a million times the energy of chemical bonds. Thorium is abundant. Thorium can be converted into energy through nuclear fission. When doing so, thorium produces far less long-lived nuclear waste than fissioning uranium in today's reactors. A series of educational videos first introduce thorium and the concept of fission, then contrast the use of thorium in a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) against today's reactors, solar and wind.
BirdNET
Identify bird species by their sounds using AI. Record audio with your device and discover the birds around you. Contribute to conservation research by submitting your recordings.
- AI-powered bird sound recognition
- Identify common North American and European species
- Record audio with internal microphone
- View probable bird species identification
- Contribute to conservation research
- Learn about local birds
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How can computers learn to recognize birds from sounds? The BirdNET research project uses artificial intelligence and neural networks to train computers to identify nearly 3,000 of the most common species of North America and Europe. You can record a file using the internal microphone of your iOS device and see if BirdNET correctly identifies the probable bird species present in your recording. Get to know the birds around you and help us to collect observations by submitting your recordings. BirdNET is a joint project of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Chemnitz University of Technology.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Thorium at 4.5 against BirdNET's 4.0. Thorium also leads on iOS requirement (8.2 vs 13.0). BirdNET's advantage is ratings volume (212 vs 2). On price, review sentiment, update cadence and ads 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Thorium holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: BirdNET has 212 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 67% and 66% positive.
Thorium ships an update every 2 months, BirdNET every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on September 25, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Thorium | BirdNET |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (2 ratings) — better | 4.0 (212 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews — better | 66.5% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 212 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 8.2 — better | 13.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 98 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | YoctoPlay | Stefan Kahl |
Customer experience
Thorium
BirdNET
Bugs and requests
Thorium
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
BirdNET
Reported bugs
5 issues- Crashes when trying to access observation history
- Recordings disappearing after app updates
- Inability to start a new recording without exiting the app
- Microphone not working on certain devices
- Incorrect or missing bird species in regional databases
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to manually select frequency ranges for analysis
- Option to delete individual observations or recordings
- Import/export functionality for recordings and observations
- Improved handling of background noise and interference
- More detailed feedback when multiple birds are detected
In-app purchases
Thorium
No in-app purchases
BirdNET
No in-app purchases
