Comparison

stdout. vs Gather

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

Head to head
About

stdout.

Features
Read full description

stdout. is a native iOS client for Hacker News, built from the ground up with SwiftUI. It goes far beyond content aggregation — offering a rich, interactive experience designed around how you actually read. DUAL THEMES Switch between two handcrafted visual modes. Zen offers warm, editorial typography with Georgia serif headlines. Terminal transforms the app into a retro green-on-black CRT aesthetic, complete with monospaced type and animated scanlines. OFFLINE-FIRST WITH SWIFTDATA Stories and comments are cached locally so the app loads instantly on launch. When your connection drops, you keep reading seamlessly with a subtle offline indicator. HOME SCREEN WIDGETS Add a Top Stories widget to your home screen in Small or Medium size. The widget updates every 30 minutes and matches your in-app theme. Tap any story to jump straight to it. NATIVE INTERACTIONS Long-press any story to save it to Favorites, share the link, or hide it from your feed. Pull-to-refresh and save actions are accompanied by haptic feedback for a tactile, responsive feel. IN-APP READING Story links open in a themed Safari View Controller with optional Reader Mode — no context switching to external apps.

About

Gather

This app provides a calm, local-first RSS reader to follow trusted publications and read clean full articles. It offers customizable reading experiences, offline access, and privacy-focused features without requiring an account.

Highlights
  • Local-first RSS reader
  • Offline article reading
  • Customizable reading views
  • No account required
  • On-device processing
  • OPML export
  • Optional article translation
Features
Read full description

Read what you choose, without turning every subscription into another inbox. Gather is an RSS and Atom reader built around your sources. Follow trusted publications, blogs, and independent sites. No Gather account is required. A feed that fits you Use Browse for a relaxed chronological stream and Keep up for the few sources you want to finish. Group coverage of the same story, discover new sources, and organize focused views. Comfortable reading Open clean reader views when available or switch to the publisher’s live page. Adjust type and appearance, save favorites, search downloaded articles, and prepare a reading queue for offline use. Listen to articles and translate supported text on your device after a language pack downloads. Summaries, your choice Get a plain title and five clear points in the standard summary style, or choose another summary voice. Optional cloud summaries send the article title and text through CodeNest’s service on Cloudflare and OpenRouter only after you explicitly allow them in Settings. Turn them off anytime. On-device summaries remain available with Apple Intelligence on supported iPhones or a downloaded model. Keep your data Subscriptions, reading history, and saved articles live on your device. Article titles, text, links, sources, searches, and topics are excluded from analytics. Import and export subscriptions with OPML, make a Gather backup, or use optional sync with iCloud. Core reading and offline tools do not require a subscription. A one-time purchase removes in-feed sponsored cards. Supporting Gather is optional and does not unlock core reading features. Publisher sites, paywalls, and JavaScript-heavy pages can limit extraction. Gather offers retries or a live-page fallback when a clean view is unavailable. Privacy: https://codenestllc.org/gather/privacy/

Screenshots

stdout.4 screens
Gather4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: stdout. at none against Gather's 1. Gather's advantage is update cadence (daily vs every 4 days). On price, ads, 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. Gather sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. stdout. asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

stdout. ships an update every 4 days, Gather daily. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 16, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
stdout. versus Gather: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
Parameterstdout.Gather
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyEvery 4 daysDaily — better
AdsYesYes
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
Monetization—Free with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS17.016.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size5 MB107 MB
Age rating17+12+
DeveloperHanshuo TanCodeNest LLC

In-app purchases

None

stdout.

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Gather

One-time1
  • Remove Ads$3.99

Questions

Is stdout. free?
stdout. is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Gather free?
Gather is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do stdout. or Gather have ads?
Both stdout. and Gather show ads.
Which is updated more often, stdout. or Gather?
stdout. ships an update every 4 days, and Gather daily. Most recently, stdout. was updated on October 8, 2026 and Gather on October 16, 2026.

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