LondonLore vs Explore London
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
LondonLore
Explore London's rich history by discovering over 800 blue plaques. This app offers an audio-guided, interactive walking tour that adapts to your interests and mood, allowing you to collect legends and delve deep into the stories of famous figures who once lived in the city. It's a unique way to experience London, even from afar.
- Discover 800+ blue plaques
- Audio-guided interactive walks
- Mood-based route generation
- Collect historical legends
- Ask unlimited questions
- Offline functionality
- Plan walks from anywhere
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LOOK UP. THEY WERE HERE. George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf kept house at the very same Fitzroy Square address, missing one another by a polite twenty years. Handel and Jimi Hendrix were Mayfair neighbours, two centuries and a single garden wall between them. One composing Messiah, the other Purple Haze, practically within earshot. Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx, T.S. Eliot, Gandhi, Florence Nightingale, Bob Marley and some 800 others all left their fingerprints on the same handful of square miles. Most of us stroll straight past, eyes on our phones, never once looking up. Well. Time to look up. This isn't textbook history. It's an introduction. An encounter. A story that, rather thrillingly, includes YOU. LONDON'S LARGEST OUTDOOR MUSEUM 800+ blue plaques, every one with something to confess. An audio-guided wander between them, except nothing is scripted and no two walks are ever the same. Your guide responds to where you're standing, what you're curious about, and whatever you fancy asking next. WALK YOUR MOOD A pub crawl through Soho. A literary saunter round Bloomsbury. The musicians of Mayfair, the rogues of Westminster, the women who quietly rewrote science. Tell your guide the mood and it builds the route in seconds. COLLECT LEGENDS Every plaque you visit joins your private gallery of greats. Watch your collection grow as you roam: Shaw, Wollstonecraft, Turing, Nightingale, Marley. History you've actually met, rather than the kind you merely revised for an exam. ASK, AND KEEP ASKING The plaque gives you a name and a date. Your guide gives you everything after that. What was Mozart doing in London aged eight, and where on earth were his parents? Why did Agatha Christie keep so many addresses across the city? Each answer opens another door, and you can keep walking through them. This is the conversation a tour group of forty never gets to have: yours alone, going precisely as deep as your curiosity takes it. Ask about Christie and you might learn her second husband was an archaeologist, which she reckoned was the ideal match: the older she got, the more interested in her he became. GOOD FOR THE SOUL (AND THE STEP COUNT) Free to use, and it has the audacity to get you outdoors. Squeeze a walk in between meetings, after dinner, on the amble home. London becomes a city you discover rather than merely navigate. BETTER WITH COMPANY Send a walk to a friend. Plan a date around the great writers of Bloomsbury. Introduce someone to a poet, a scientist, or a thoroughly disreputable politician. WANDER FROM YOUR ARMCHAIR Best enjoyed on London's pavements, but browse the map, plan walks and fall into the stories from anywhere on earth. Ideal for plotting your next visit, your morning commute, or a fond trip down memory lane. WORKS OFFLINE At home, in a hotel, on a plane, or rattling through the Underground, everything's stored on your device, so it's always there. Private, and gratifyingly snappy. BRING YOUR OWN KEY For unlimited walk-planning and AI features, pop your own Anthropic API key into Settings. We never see it. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No ads. No third-party trackers. Visited plaques live in your own iCloud, syncing quietly between your devices and nobody else's. For tourists. For Londoners who are quite sure they know the place. For history lovers and accidental wanderers, and for anyone who's ever passed a small ceramic disc and wondered, just for a moment, who once lived there. Look up. They were here.
Explore London
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Explore London is a practical city guide made by London taxi drivers. Find hand-picked places across the capital, from restaurants, pubs and museums to parks, markets, nightlife, shopping, wellness, historic places and local curiosities. Each category is shown on an easy map with clear pins, filters and useful place details. Features include: Driver-picked London recommendations Interactive map with category pins Restaurants, pubs, attractions, museums, parks, nightlife and more Filters by type, location or category where available Place details to help you decide where to go Offline-ready map support for smoother use on the move Optional location use to show where you are on the map Explore London is designed for visitors, Londoners and taxi drivers who want a fast, practical way to discover places worth knowing about. Location permission is optional and is used only to show your position on the map when you choose to use location features.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Explore London at every 11 days against LondonLore's every 3 weeks. Explore London also leads on device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
LondonLore ships an update every 3 weeks, Explore London every 11 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | LondonLore | Explore London |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 11 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 178 MB | 170 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Liz Myers | MARCIN KLICH |
In-app purchases
LondonLore
No in-app purchases
Explore London
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is LondonLore free?
Is Explore London free?
Do LondonLore or Explore London have ads?
Which is updated more often, LondonLore or Explore London?
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