Comparison

Anchor vs Network Tools

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

Head to head
About

Anchor

Features
Read full description

Use Anchor to keep important information visible at a glance: Calendar See the date and day without opening another app. Weather Check current conditions in a simple, quiet layout. Progress See how far you are through the day with a minimal progress view. Tasks Keep a short task list visible, with unfinished items kept clear and easy to scan. Notes Place a simple note on your Home Screen so you do not have to open an app just to remember it. Countdown Track the days until something important. Habit Keep one small habit visible and easy to check. Today A calm daily focus widget for the thing that deserves your attention now. Reminder A lightweight reminder widget for what you should not forget.

About

Network Tools

Features
Read full description

A network engineer's toolkit that runs entirely on your iPhone. Seventeen tools, no account, no server of ours, and nothing about you collected. THE TOOLS • Ping — ICMP latency and packet loss, with a live chart • Traceroute — the hop-by-hop path, each router named • LAN scan — every device on your subnet, named and identified: routers, NAS boxes, printers, Macs, phones • Port scan — TCP connect scan with banners and service names, from a handful of ports to all 65535 • DNS — your own wire-format resolver: every record type at once, any public resolver you choose, DNS-over-HTTPS, reverse lookups, and a comparison mode that queries five resolvers and flags the one that disagrees • HTTP check — status, redirect chain, the DNS/connect/TLS/TTFB split, security headers • TLS — the full certificate chain, expiry, SANs, cipher suite, and whether the system trusts it • WHOIS — the referral chain followed to the registrar that actually holds the record • Wi-Fi — link quality graded against local thresholds, and a walking survey that compares rooms • Speed test — download, upload, latency and jitter, against Cloudflare or a URL you name • iperf3 — throughput against your own iperf3 server, up or down, multi-stream • IP calculator — CIDR maths, masks, host ranges, binary, and subnet division including VLSM • MAC lookup — 39,000 vendor prefixes, bundled and fully offline • Wake on LAN — the magic packet, sent to every address that might reach a sleeping machine • Network interfaces — addresses, subnets, flags and live throughput • Telnet — a raw TCP terminal for switches, PDUs and console servers • SSH — see below A REAL SSH CLIENT Not a wrapper. The protocol is implemented in Swift, and it does the things you actually need from a phone: • Jump hosts — reach a machine behind one bastion or several, each hop with its own account, its own credential and its own host key to confirm • Port forwarding — bind a local port to a service on the far side, then open it in a browser inside the app: a router's web interface, a database, a dashboard listening only on the server's loopback • scp — send a file up or pull one down, straight to the Files app • ssh-copy-id — put your public key in a server's authorized_keys without a second terminal • Keys — generate ed25519 on the device, or import ed25519, ECDSA and RSA in OpenSSH or PEM form, protected or not. Private keys live in the Keychain and can be exported under a passphrase when you need them elsewhere • Snippets — the commands you always type, one tap above the keyboard • A proper terminal — a real VT/xterm emulator, so vim and htop work, with esc, ctrl, alt, arrows and F-keys on a row of their own

Screenshots

Anchor4 screens
Network Tools4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Network Tools at Free against Anchor's $3.99. Anchor's advantage is iOS requirement (16.4 vs 18.0). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Network Tools is free to download; Anchor costs $3.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Anchor ships an update monthly, Network Tools every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and October 19, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences Ā· 4 level
Anchor versus Network Tools: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAnchorNetwork Tools
Price$3.99Free — better
Update frequencyMonthlyEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.4 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size45 MB8 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developertaehyun kimPavel Khorenian

In-app purchases

None

Anchor

No in-app purchases

None

Network Tools

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Anchor free?
Anchor costs $3.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Network Tools free?
Network Tools is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Anchor or Network Tools have ads?
Neither Anchor nor Network Tools shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Anchor or Network Tools?
Anchor ships an update monthly, and Network Tools every 3 weeks. Most recently, Anchor was updated on October 12, 2026 and Network Tools on October 19, 2026.

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