Comparison

BetterNews vs Hack Alerts

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

Head to head
About

BetterNews

A modern reader for Hacker News, offering enhanced features not found on the original site. It provides personalized feeds, keyword alerts, and a built-in reader with customizable themes and text sizes.

Highlights
  • Personalized Home feed
  • Keyword alerts
  • Built-in reader
  • Customizable themes and text size
  • Cross-device sync
  • Search stories and comments
Features
Read full description

BetterNews is a modern reader for Hacker News, with the features the site never gave you. WHAT YOU GET • Top, Time, and New feeds, plus the classic HN view • Threads with collapse rails, new-comment highlighting, and comment permalinks • Follow keywords and people, and get a personalized Home feed • Keyword alerts the moment a matching story lands • Daily email digests, on your schedule and timezone • Favorites, read-state, and preferences synced across all your devices • Search across stories, comments, and people • Direct messages with verified HN users • A built-in reader, light and dark themes, adjustable text size, and multiple typefaces Signing up is free and takes one tap. No passwords.

About

Hack Alerts

Features
Read full description

Security alerts for major hacks, exploits, crypto and DeFi incidents, CVEs, and cloud outages - filtered for signal, not noise. Hack Alerts gives you a clean public feed of high-confidence incidents from trusted security, cloud status, and vulnerability sources. Use it to track major crypto exploits, DeFi protocol hacks, wallet-draining campaigns, actively exploited CVEs, and cloud infrastructure incidents without living inside noisy social feeds. What you get: - Push alerts for major public security incidents - A filtered feed focused on hacks, exploits, CVEs, DeFi, web3, and cloud outages - Clear incident details including project, severity, topic, impact, source, and detected time - Source links so you can verify the original report - Notification preferences for severity and topics Hack Alerts is an informational security alert feed. It is not financial advice, trading advice, incident response tooling, or a guarantee of complete coverage. Always verify critical incidents with primary sources before making operational or financial decisions.

Screenshots

BetterNews4 screens
Hack Alerts3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Hack Alerts at 15.1 against BetterNews's 17.0. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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.

Scorecard1 real difference · 8 level
BetterNews versus Hack Alerts: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBetterNewsHack Alerts
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (5 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings5 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS17.015.1 — better
Further details — not scored
Size5 MB23 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperSteven TruongROWSHIP VENTURE STUDIO LLC

In-app purchases

None

BetterNews

No in-app purchases

None

Hack Alerts

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is BetterNews free?
BetterNews is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Hack Alerts free?
Hack Alerts is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do BetterNews or Hack Alerts have ads?
Neither BetterNews nor Hack Alerts shows ads.

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