Comparison

Serin vs Bug Detector

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

Head to head
About

Serin

This app acts as a personal privacy scanner, detecting nearby smart glasses, hidden cameras, and Bluetooth trackers. It offers guided sweeps for rooms and travel, and a digital mirror to see your own device broadcasts. Privacy is prioritized with no account required and data syncing only via iCloud.

Highlights
  • Detects smart glasses and wearables
  • Flags Bluetooth trackers
  • Scans networked cameras
  • Infrared reflection scanning for hidden lenses
  • Guided room and travel sweeps
  • Digital mirror for device broadcasts
  • Privacy-focused with no account needed
Features
Read full description

Serin turns your iPhone into a personal privacy scanner. It looks for the devices that watch you — smart glasses, hidden cameras, and Bluetooth trackers — and tells you what is nearby. CANARY MODE A single glanceable status orb. Green means your surroundings are clear of known recording devices. Amber and red mean something worth a look. WHAT SERIN FINDS • Camera glasses and AI wearables — smart glasses, Spectacles, AI pins, and similar recording hardware • Bluetooth trackers — anonymous tags that stay near you across time are flagged after sustained proximity • Networked cameras — IP cameras, streaming devices, and smart-home hardware on the WiFi you are connected to • Hidden lenses — infrared reflection scanning to spot camera optics in a room ROOM SWEEP & TRAVEL SWEEP Guided walkthroughs for hotel rooms and rentals. Serin steps you through each zone, records what it finds, and produces a shareable report. DIGITAL MIRROR See what your own devices broadcast to everyone around you. PRIVACY BY DESIGN No account. No sign-up. Detections stay on your device and sync only through your private iCloud. Serin never uploads location or scan history. SERIN PRO — ONE PURCHASE, NO SUBSCRIPTION • Infrared camera finder • Full travel sweep with PDF export • Deep network scanning • Live Activities on the Lock Screen • Personal insights and trends • Unlimited detection history • No ads IMPORTANT Serin detects wireless signals and visible optical reflections. It cannot find devices that are powered off, hardwired without wireless, or shielded. Signal strength indicates rough proximity, not exact distance. Serin is an awareness tool, not a tool for confrontation, investigation, or emergency response.

About

Bug Detector

Features
Read full description

Stakeout is a listening stakeout. You put the phone down, walk away, and come back to a timestamped tape of the steady tones it heard in the near-ultrasonic band — the range above ordinary hearing that a phone microphone can still sample. WHAT IT ACTUALLY DOES There is no live spectrum in this app. No waterfall, no decibel meter, no needle to watch. That is deliberate. A meter tells you about the instant you happen to be looking at it; a tape tells you what happened while you were not in the room. The running screen is a session clock and a log, and the output is evidence with timestamps. TEST YOUR OWN PHONE FIRST Before a session, run the self-test. Stakeout plays 16, 18, 20 and 21 kHz through the speaker, measures what your microphone returns, and prints the measured response for each one. Not a spec sheet copied from somewhere — your handset, in your room, at your volume. Microphone response above 20 kHz varies enormously between phones, so the honest thing is to measure it and show you, rather than promise a flat response nobody can guarantee. THE TAPE Every row is one event: the wall-clock time it started, the frequency, how long it held, and how far above the room's own noise it sat. Times are zero-padded and absolute — never "3 minutes ago" — because a log you might act on needs real timestamps. Tones that stop and restart are folded into one row with a count, so a pulsing source reads as one finding rather than forty. A tone has to hold for at least two seconds to be logged at all. That single rule removes almost everything a room throws at a microphone: a chair scraping, a door, a cough, a passing car. THE UNVERIFIED BAND The region above 20 kHz is drawn differently and labelled unverified, because that is the truth: it sits where phone microphones start to roll off and where your particular handset may hear nothing at all. The self-test is what tells you which side of that line you are on. WHAT YOU GET FREE - The full near-ultrasonic detector, 15 to 22 kHz - Sessions up to 15 minutes - Three saved tapes - The loopback self-test, unlimited - Steady tones in the audible band logged as events WHAT PRO ADDS - Sessions with no time limit, running all night - Every tape kept, not only your last three - Export a tape as plain text, timestamps and all - Detection strictness: loose, standard or strict BEING HONEST ABOUT THE LIMITS A phone cannot scan the radio spectrum. It cannot detect an analogue transmitter, and it cannot find a wired or fully passive microphone — those things emit nothing a microphone can hear. Any app claiming otherwise is selling you a feeling. What a phone can do is listen very carefully, in a band you cannot. A tone in your tape is something worth explaining. It is not, on its own, proof of surveillance — ultrasonic tones also come from motion sensors, some televisions, rodent repellers, cleaning equipment and a surprising number of ordinary appliances. The app gives you the evidence and the timestamps; the conclusion is yours. PRIVACY No account, no sign-up, no analytics and no tracking. Audio is analysed live on the device and is never recorded, saved or uploaded — the tape holds numbers, not sound. The only connection the app makes is the subscription check with the App Store. SUBSCRIPTION Stakeout Pro is $3.99 per week with a 3-day free trial, or $17.99 per year. Payment is charged to your Apple ID at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions renew automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the end of the current period. You can manage and cancel your subscription in your App Store account settings. Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when you buy a subscription. Privacy Policy: https://leomarston.github.io/manycode-legal/privacy.html Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Serin4 screens
Bug Detector4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: Bug Detector at none against Serin's shown. On price, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement 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. Serin sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Bug Detector sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per 7 days. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

Scorecard1 real difference · 7 level
Serin versus Bug Detector: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSerinBug Detector
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (4 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings4 — better—
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhoneiPhone
Requires iOS18.217.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size12 MB15 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSummit Veil LLCEmine Saridogan

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Serin

One-time1
  • Serin Pro$5.99
2 purchases

Bug Detector

Subscriptions2
  • Weekly3 Days trial$3.997 Days
  • Yearly$17.991 Year

Questions

Is Serin free?
Serin is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Bug Detector free?
Bug Detector is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Serin or Bug Detector have ads?
Serin shows ads; Bug Detector does not.

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