Stacks vs think
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Stacks
A distraction-free reader for newsletters, blogs, and podcasts that downloads content for offline access. Enjoy your favorite content anywhere, even without an internet connection, with smart automatic downloads and a clean interface.
- Fully offline content access
- Smart automatic downloading
- Distraction-free reading interface
- Built-in podcast player
- Fast full-text search
- Private by design, no account needed
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Stacks is a calm, fully offline reader for the newsletters, blogs, and podcasts you already follow. Add any Substack or RSS feed and Stacks downloads the full articles, images, and podcast episodes to your iPhone so you can read and listen anywhere, even with no signal. On a plane, on the subway, off the grid: nothing buffers, nothing reloads. WHY YOU'LL LIKE IT • Truly offline — full article text, images, and audio are stored on your device for reading and listening with no connection. • A clean, distraction-free reader with adjustable text size, light and dark themes, and a built-in podcast player. • Smart automatic downloading keeps your latest posts ready and manages storage for you. • Fast full-text search across everything you've saved. • Collapsible comment threads, when you want them. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Stacks has no servers of its own, no account, and no analytics. Everything it downloads stays on your device and goes nowhere else. No tracking, no ads. No account is required: just add a feed and pull to refresh. ——— Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Substack Inc.
think
This news app offers a focused reading experience by presenting one story at a time, free from distractions like auto-playing media or infinite scrolling. Users can customize their news sources by selecting topics, publishers, or adding custom RSS feeds, with all data stored locally for privacy.
- One story at a time reading
- Customizable publisher selection
- Add custom RSS/Atom feeds
- Bookmark stories for later
- No account or tracking
- Offline data storage
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think renders news the way e-ink renders a page: soft greys, a serif headline, dithered photographs, nothing that blinks, auto-plays, or refreshes itself while you're looking at it. ONE STORY AT A TIME No infinite scroll, no feed to doomscroll through. Each story fills the screen — headline, photo, publisher, and a read-time estimate. Swipe up for the next one, swipe right (or tap) to open the full article in-app. When you've seen everything your topics have to offer, the feed says so and stops, instead of padding itself out with filler. PICK YOUR PUBLISHERS, SKIP THE ALGORITHM There's no engagement-driven ranking deciding what you see. Choose your topics, and think shows you a curated catalog of publishers behind them — 208 publishers across 32 topics at last count. Vote a story up or down to tune the mix, or mute a publisher outright. Want a source that isn't in the catalog? Paste any site's RSS or Atom feed URL and think adds it to your list. SAVE FOR LATER Bookmark anything you don't have time for now. Saved stories are grouped by topic and stay in your list until you clear them. NO ACCOUNT, NO TRACKING There's no sign-in and no user id. think has no analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting SDK, and no server of its own — it only talks to your chosen publishers' RSS feeds and their image hosts. Your topics, your publishers, your votes, and your saved stories live on your device only, and are deleted when you delete the app. Available in English and Vietnamese. Requires iOS 15 or later.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Stacks at daily against think's fortnightly. think's advantage is device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Stacks against 5.0 for think. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 1 respectively.
Stacks ships an update daily, think fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and October 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Stacks | think |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Daily — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 24 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Richard Russell | Khanh Trinh Le Ba |
Customer experience
Stacks
think
In-app purchases
Stacks
No in-app purchases
think
No in-app purchases









