BetterNews vs Hack Alerts
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- Personalized Home feed
- Keyword alerts
- Built-in reader
- Customizable themes and text size
- Cross-device sync
- Search stories and comments
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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.
Hack Alerts
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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
Verdict
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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | BetterNews | Hack Alerts |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 5 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 23 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Steven Truong | ROWSHIP VENTURE STUDIO LLC |
In-app purchases
BetterNews
No in-app purchases
Hack Alerts
No in-app purchases









