Top Hat vs Y Combinator
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Top Hat
Enhance your learning experience with interactive resources, in-class participation tools, and dynamic digital textbooks. Engage with professors and peers, and test your knowledge with quizzes and polls to improve comprehension and retention.
- Follow lecture slides on your device
- In-class response system
- In-app discussions with peers and professors
- Dynamic, interactive digital textbooks
- Take polls and quizzes
- Access graded and non-graded homework
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Top Hat is the perfect companion app to our comprehensive assessment platform that helps you learn better before, during and after class. Top Hat makes learning fun and engaging (seriously!) and sets you up for success, helping you connect with your professors, your peers and the content you’re learning in and out of the classroom. Here’s what Top Hat offers you: Compelling resources, delivered on your smartphone or laptop: • Follow your prof’s lecture slides on your own device • Contribute in class with an easy-to-use response system that’s always with you • Participate with your profs and peers using in-app discussions Content tailored to your course: • Experience dynamic, interactive textbooks loaded up with images, videos, audio clips and more • Read your digital materials from anywhere and keep them forever Quizzes, tests and polls that improve learning comprehension: • Challenge yourself by taking polls and quizzes on your own devices • Improve your knowledge retention with interactive assessment elements • Check for gaps in your understanding with graded and non-graded homework and short quizzes Thanks for using Top Hat. As you experience the app, we’d love to get your feedback: support@tophat.com or follow us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook @TopHat
Y Combinator
Access Y Combinator's extensive library of startup content, including YouTube videos, podcasts, and essays. It also serves as a mobile client for Hacker News, offering the latest startup news for founders and programmers. Additional features are available for YC-funded founders.
- Organized YC YouTube videos
- Startup School content
- On-the-go podcast listening
- Hacker News mobile client
- YC founder-only knowledge base
- Access Bookface feed and messages
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The Y Combinator App is your home for all things YC. It organizes all of YC's YouTube videos, podcasts, and essays. It's also a mobile client for Hacker News, the best startup news source for programmers and technical founders. For founders who have been funded by YC, it has additional features. For everyone: - Organizes all of YC's YouTube videos - the world's best content on startups - All of the content from Startup School - Listen to YC podcasts on the go - Read Hacker News - the best news source for programmers and technical founders For YC founders: - Access the Bookface feed - Access Bookface messages - Read the YC founder-only knowledge base
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Y Combinator at 50% against Top Hat's 14%. Top Hat's advantage is ratings volume (23K vs 26) and rating (4.6 vs 4.3). On price, 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Top Hat holds the better App Store score, 4.6 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Top Hat has 23K ratings behind it against 26, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 14% of Top Hat's written reviews are positive against 50% of Y Combinator's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Top Hat ships an update fortnightly, Y Combinator every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 18, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Top Hat | Y Combinator |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (23K ratings) — better | 4.3 (26 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 14.4% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 23K — better | 26 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | #125 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 162 MB | 84 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Top Hat Monocle | Y Combinator |
Customer experience
Top Hat
Y Combinator
Bugs and requests
Top Hat
Reported bugs
3 issues- Answers not registering correctly
- Slides not loading properly on mobile devices
- Inconsistent performance across platforms
Requested features
3 requests- Add page numbers and search functionality to ebooks
- Improve syncing between mobile and web versions
- Allow more flexible location settings for attendance
Y Combinator
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Top Hat
No in-app purchases
Y Combinator
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Top Hat free?
Is Y Combinator free?
Which has better reviews, Top Hat or Y Combinator?
Do Top Hat or Y Combinator have ads?
Which is updated more often, Top Hat or Y Combinator?
Other comparisons
