Comparison

Stacks vs think

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

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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.

About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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

Stacks4 screens
think4 screens

Verdict

The call

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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Stacks ships an update daily, think fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and October 11, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Stacks versus think: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterStacksthink
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings2 — better1
Update frequencyDaily — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS17.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size7 MB24 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperRichard RussellKhanh Trinh Le Ba

Customer experience

Stacks

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

think

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Stacks

No in-app purchases

None

think

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Stacks free?
Stacks is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is think free?
think is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Stacks or think?
Stacks and think are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 2 and 1 ratings respectively.
Do Stacks or think have ads?
Neither Stacks nor think shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Stacks or think?
Stacks ships an update daily, and think fortnightly. Most recently, Stacks was updated on September 21, 2026 and think on October 11, 2026.

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