DeadGraph vs The Dead Archive
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
DeadGraph
Explore over 2,250 Grateful Dead shows with detailed soundboard, audience, and matrix recordings. Ask natural language questions to find specific songs, guest appearances, or show details, and then play the selected performance. Enjoy visualizers and seamless playback across devices.
- Access 2,250+ Grateful Dead shows
- Natural language AI querying
- Detailed recording information
- Interactive show vault map
- Eight built-in visualizers
- CarPlay and AirPlay support
- Offline downloads (Pro)
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The shows. The songs. 1965-1995. 2,250+ Grateful Dead shows, with their soundboards, audience tapes and matrixes, straight from the Internet Archive. DeadGraph is a player for them, and a way to ask questions about them in plain language. ASK, DO NOT SEARCH "Longest Dark Star in 1972." "Shows where Branford sat in." "What did they open with at Cornell." Type it the way you would say it to a friend who knows, or just ask Siri: "Play Cornell 77 on DeadGraph." DeadGraph reads setlists, transitions, guest sit-ins and run histories, and answers with the show, then plays it. RECORDINGS, HONESTLY LABELED Many nights survive in several versions. DeadGraph lists the ones it has for each night with the source, the taper or transferer credit and the community rating, so you can pick the Miller transfer or the Betty board on purpose rather than by accident. THE VAULT, AT A GLANCE Thirty one rings, one per year, each show in DeadGraph a mark on its ring. Touch a year to go there. It is a map of the thing rather than a list of it. A LIGHT SHOW Eight visualizers built to be watched, not to fill space: liquid light, mandalas, prism folds, wormholes. Build your own color palettes, let it cycle through them on a timer, or leave it running on its own with no music at all, as a decoration. Works on the TV through AirPlay. BUILT FOR HOW PEOPLE ACTUALLY LISTEN CarPlay. AirPlay and Bluetooth output switching without leaving the app. Playlists. Background playback. Lock screen and Now Playing controls. iPhone, iPad and Mac, including landscape on the couch. FREE, AND MEANT TO STAY WORTH USING Browsing, listening, playlists and the whole light show are free. Free accounts get five AI questions a day. Pro raises that to five hundred and adds offline downloads, plus more playlists and chat threads, at 7.99 a month or 79.99 a year. Recordings are streamed from archive.org, where the taping community has kept them for decades. DeadGraph is not affiliated with the Grateful Dead or Rhino Entertainment. Terms of Use: https://deadgraph.com/terms Privacy Policy: https://deadgraph.com/privacy
The Dead Archive
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Every Grateful Dead concert from 1965 to 1995: setlists, community-ranked best versions, and streaming straight from Archive.org's live music collection. Browse by era, year, or venue. Read the setlist for any night, see where a song debuted and where it peaked, and play full shows with background audio, lock-screen controls, AirPlay, and Bluetooth in the car. On This Day surfaces the shows the band played on today's date. Heady Picks collects the versions the community voted best. Tributes adds Jerry Garcia Band and other related acts. Sign in to save shows and songs, keep listening history, and join the board: a shared feed of comments on shows, songs, and exact moments in a recording. Notifications are optional and off by default. Audio streams from Archive.org, home of the band's taper-friendly live collection. The app hosts no recordings.
Screenshots
Verdict
DeadGraph and The Dead Archive are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
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.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | DeadGraph | The Dead Archive |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days | Every 2 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 54 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Myron Koch | John D'Attoma |
In-app purchases
DeadGraph
No in-app purchases
The Dead Archive
No in-app purchases







