AstroShort vs EarthView
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
AstroShort
Explore the entire universe from your fingertips, flying between planets, moons, and even black holes. Dive deep into factual information sourced from NASA, with interactive real-world locations and animated scenes. Offers both an explorer and a kid-friendly mode for all ages.
- Interactive solar system exploration
- Detailed planet and moon information
- Real-world location exploration
- Animated scenes and landmarks
- Explorer and Kid modes
- Offline functionality
- User-submitted feature ideas
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Astro Explorer was built together — with curiosity, a sense of social connection, learning and education at its heart. It began as a gift from a dad to his kid, and grew into a hand-built universe for curious minds of every age. THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, BY TOUCH Fly between the Sun, all eight planets and the Moon. Zoom from a planet up close all the way out to the Milky Way — and the real black hole at its heart, Sagittarius A*, shown as the 2022 Event Horizon Telescope image. Nothing here needs reading to explore — a child who can't read yet can pilot the entire universe with a fingertip. DEEP FACTS ON EVERY PLANET Tap any planet — all eight, plus Pluto — to open its observation plate: its moons, its weather, the missions we've sent, and how it truly sizes up. The facts go deep, in plain language, and every one is sourced straight from NASA fact sheets and JPL. GO INSIDE REAL WORLDS Earth, Mars and the Moon aren't just spheres. Drill down to real places — the Grand Canyon, Olympus Mons, the Sea of Tranquility — meet animals, visit landmarks, and watch each place come alive with its own animated scene. Every fact carries its source, straight from NASA planetary fact sheets and the International Astronomical Union. TWO WAYS TO EXPLORE - Explorer mode (the default): a clean, premium look where grown-up facts, side-by-side planet comparisons and a daily discovery feed are one tap away. - Kid mode: a playful skin made for little hands — bigger buttons, a gentler pace, and deeper content tucked safely behind a parent hold-gesture. BUILT BY ITS EXPLORERS Here's the part we love most. Have an idea for the app? A child can simply say it out loud. Their words are turned into text right on your device, a grown-up reads it and decides whether to send it — anonymously, never any audio, never any account. On the Builders Board inside the app you can watch ideas from explorers around the world come together: what's being considered, what's being built, and what just shipped. Great ideas can become real features in days. This app is built by its explorers. HONEST BY DESIGN - Works fully offline — every planet, place and fact, with zero connection. - No accounts. No ads. No analytics. No tracking. Ever. - The only thing that ever touches the internet is the daily discovery feed: a single anonymous download of the same public file everyone gets, with no identifiers and no cookies. Offline, it shows the last feed with a visible date. - Facts are sourced and scale is honest: planets are stylized so small worlds stay visible, but the truths always hold — Jupiter is always the biggest, Mercury always closest to the Sun. Made for families. A friendly narrator reads names and facts aloud, so a pre-reader can explore and learn by ear. Safe for the youngest explorer to use alone, deep enough for the most curious adult.
EarthView
Experience the real Solar System with live NASA imagery and an AI guide. Watch Earth rotate, journey to other planets with narrated tours, and ask questions about what you see. It's a pocket-sized window to space, offering the overview effect.
- Live, auto-rotating Earth imagery
- Narrated AI-guided tours of planets
- Real NASA mission imagery
- Interactive AI guide for questions
- Live Sun and Earth time-lapses
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Most "space" apps show you renders, simulations, or a wall of data. EarthView does something different: it shows you the real Solar System — and gives it a voice. It opens on Earth, live. The natural-color imagery comes straight from NASA's EPIC camera aboard the DSCOVR satellite, a million miles away at the Sun–Earth L1 point, looking back at the fully lit face of our planet. The frames auto-play, so you watch Earth actually rotate through the day. No telescope. No CGI. The real planet, as it looked today. Then start the journey. A calm AI guide flies you outward through the Solar System — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — and the Sun, narrating each world as you arrive, in genuine NASA mission imagery. Pick a theme and it plans the route for you. Curious about what you're seeing? Ask the guide — it answers about the exact world on your screen. - A narrated, AI-guided tour — every world spoken as you arrive - Live, auto-rotating Earth from NASA DSCOVR·EPIC, refreshed daily - Live Sun and Earth time-lapses from real feeds (SDO, GOES) — not loops - Real Mars rover imagery and curated NASA stills for every planet - Ask the guide anything, grounded in what you're looking at - No account, no ads, no in-app purchases — opens straight on Earth EarthView isn't a data tool or a research app. It's a small, beautiful window on the real Solar System, with a guide in your ear — the overview effect, in your pocket. (Note: NASA's EPIC imagery publishes with a short delay, so "live" means the latest real captured set, refreshed daily — not a real-time video feed.) Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: AstroShort at every 3 weeks against EarthView's every 6 weeks. 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 AstroShort against 5.0 for EarthView. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
AstroShort ships an update every 3 weeks, EarthView every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | AstroShort | EarthView |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks — better | Every 6 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 117 MB | 16 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Edon Zogaj | Emre Gurbuzer |
Customer experience
AstroShort
EarthView
In-app purchases
AstroShort
No in-app purchases
EarthView
No in-app purchases









