Comparison

BetterNews vs think

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

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

BetterNews4 screens
think4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ratings volume: BetterNews at 5 against think's 1. think's advantage is iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, rating, update cadence 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 BetterNews against 5.0 for think. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: BetterNews has 5 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

BetterNews ships an update every 2 weeks, think fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 11, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
BetterNews versus think: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBetterNewsthink
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (5 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings)
Number of ratings5 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterFortnightly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS17.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size5 MB24 MB
Age rating12+17+
DeveloperSteven TruongKhanh Trinh Le Ba

Customer experience

BetterNews

All ratings5 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

think

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

In-app purchases

None

BetterNews

No in-app purchases

None

think

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is BetterNews free?
BetterNews 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, BetterNews or think?
BetterNews and think are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 5 and 1 ratings respectively.
Do BetterNews or think have ads?
Neither BetterNews nor think shows ads.
Which is updated more often, BetterNews or think?
BetterNews ships an update every 2 weeks, and think fortnightly. Most recently, BetterNews was updated on October 20, 2026 and think on October 11, 2026.

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