Comparison

HB Phonological Awareness vs Sounds Essentials

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

HB Phonological Awareness

This educational app helps students improve listening and phonological awareness skills through interactive sound-based activities. Students learn to segment, blend, and manipulate sounds to build a virtual rock band, with a multi-level program that gradually increases in difficulty.

Highlights
  • Targets nine phonological awareness skills
  • Systematic sound segmentation and blending
  • Multi-level program with increasing difficulty
  • Monitors progress and provides feedback
  • Teaches listening skills for reading
  • Customizable program settings
Features
Read full description

HearBuilder is available for all users—families, educators, therapists, schools, and districts. Anyone with a HearBuilder subscription can access the full program. HearBuilder Phonological Awareness gives students a systematic, engaging way to build phonological awareness and listening skills. As they learn to segment, blend, and manipulate sounds, students earn instruments and band members to form the rock group The Phonemix, turning skill practice into a fun musical adventure. Program Features • Targets nine essential phonological awareness skills: Sentence Segmentation, Syllable Blending, Syllable Segmentation, Rhyming, Phoneme Blending, Phoneme Segmentation & Identification, Phoneme Deletion, Phoneme Addition, and Phoneme Manipulation • Multi level activities that gradually increase in difficulty • Builds foundational listening and sound awareness skills needed for early reading • Supports learners at a wide range of skill levels • Tracks progress and provides frequent feedback to keep students motivated HearBuilder Online (my.hearbuilder.com) • Access all four HearBuilder programs: Following Directions, Phonological Awareness, Auditory Memory, and Sequencing • Monitor progress and track student performance • Individualize each student’s settings and difficulty levels • Add adjustable background noise to increase challenge • Customize and print detailed reports

About

Sounds Essentials

This app helps children develop sound recognition and listening skills through engaging activities. It's designed for early learners to improve auditory discrimination and memory, making learning fun and interactive.

Highlights
  • Sound recognition activities
  • Auditory discrimination training
  • Auditory memory building
  • Matching objects and sounds
  • Categorized sound games
  • Multiple user support
Features
Read full description

Sounds Essentials is a speech therapy app designed and developed to increase sound recognition and listening skills in children. The app has 4 engaging and beautiful activities, each of which is used to develop Auditory Discrimination skills in children. Sounds essentials is a perfect blend of education with entertainment. This edutainment application can be used by SLPs and speech therapies during therapy sessions to enable children build auditory memory and recognition skills. The fun and engaging interface of the app makes it enjoyable for toddlers all the way from preschoolers to kindergarten. The App features exciting activities for children to explore thousands of objects by swiping left or right and listen to their sounds. Sounds Essentials enables young learners to differentiate between sounds of different objects. This function which is commonly known as “Auditory Discrimination” helps in building sound or “Auditory Memory” among students. The app has separate activities for both the functions enabling better sound recognition and listening skills. Children having problems in sequencing the sounds they hear during speech therapy sessions such as articulation & writing can benefit from the content based on Auditory Sequencing within the app. This app is designed in collaboration with speech therapists, parents and teachers who are looking to expand children’s listening & sound discrimination skills. This app is intended for children of ages 2-8 years old. With different Sound games children improve their skills by matching objects and their associated sounds. WHY PARENTS AND TEACHERS LOVE THIS APP • The app is fun, super easy to use for kids of all ages and all abilities • Explore different sounds through flash cards containing real life images of everyday items and learn their sounds and appearance • Different Sound games improve skills by matching objects and their associated sounds. • You can turn individual features in different activities, ON or OFF and introduce features differently. • Sounds are grouped into 6 selectable categories Animals, Machines, Nature, Actions, Transport and Instruments. • Wrong answers do not interfere with gameplay. The app has 4 engaging and beautiful activities: * Know the Sound * Match the Sound * Find the Sound * Sound Hunt Other features * Timer * Multiple Users * Leader board Please share your suggestions & feedback on feedback@soundsessentials.com Google+ : https://plus.google.com/u/0/107302410009075383713 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/articulationessentials Twitter: https://twitter.com/articulationess OR via Reviews Below

Screenshots

HB Phonological Awareness4 screens
Sounds Essentials4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: HB Phonological Awareness at 3.4 against Sounds Essentials's 1.0. HB Phonological Awareness also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 1) and ratings volume (24 vs 1). Sounds Essentials's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 2 months) and iOS requirement (9.0 vs 15.0). On price, ads, monetization model 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Sounds Essentials sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. HB Phonological Awareness asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

HB Phonological Awareness holds the better App Store score, 3.4 against 1.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: HB Phonological Awareness has 24 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

HB Phonological Awareness ships an update every 2 months, Sounds Essentials every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 5, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
HB Phonological Awareness versus Sounds Essentials: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHB Phonological AwarenessSounds Essentials
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.4 (24 ratings) — better1.0 (1 ratings)
Positive reviews66.7% of reviews—
Number of ratings24 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.09.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size239 MB65 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSuper Duper PublicationsNabeel Ahmed Khan

Customer experience

HB Phonological Awareness

All ratings24 ratings
Positive62.5%
Neutral0.0%
Negative37.5%
Written reviews9 reviews
Positive66.7%
Neutral0.0%
Negative33.3%

Sounds Essentials

All ratings1 ratings
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%

In-app purchases

None

HB Phonological Awareness

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Sounds Essentials

One-time1
  • Sounds Essentials Full Access$1.99

Questions

Is HB Phonological Awareness free?
HB Phonological Awareness is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Sounds Essentials free?
Sounds Essentials is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, HB Phonological Awareness or Sounds Essentials?
HB Phonological Awareness is rated higher. HB Phonological Awareness averages 3.4 out of 5 from 24 ratings, while Sounds Essentials averages 1.0 from 1 ratings.
Do HB Phonological Awareness or Sounds Essentials have ads?
Neither HB Phonological Awareness nor Sounds Essentials shows ads.
Which is updated more often, HB Phonological Awareness or Sounds Essentials?
HB Phonological Awareness ships an update every 2 months, and Sounds Essentials every 2 days. Most recently, HB Phonological Awareness was updated on November 5, 2026 and Sounds Essentials on November 2, 2026.

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