Comparison

Network vs Network Hamster

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

Head to head
About

Network

Features
Read full description

Network Doctor finds out why your home network feels slow — and shows the evidence behind every conclusion. WHAT IT MEASURES Every check runs a fixed, deterministic sequence: idle latency, latency under load in both directions (bufferbloat), request loss, time-boxed saturation download and upload throughput, and server-assisted path MTU — which detects the reductions typical of DS-Lite and PPPoE lines. ROUTER INTELLIGENCE, NO CREDENTIALS NEEDED Network Doctor auto-detects FRITZ!Box, Telekom Speedport, Vodafone Station/EasyBox, O2 HomeBox, and any UPnP-capable router. It classifies your line as native dual stack, DS-Lite, carrier-grade NAT, or double NAT from the WAN address, reads the line sync rates, and compares them with the Wi-Fi throughput it actually measured: your line delivers 100, your WLAN delivers 31. FRITZ!BOX DEEP EVIDENCE (OPTIONAL) With optional credentials — strictly read-only — Network Doctor maps your mesh: which repeater serves your phone, the backhaul medium and its bottleneck rate (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or Powerline, including devolo), 100-Mbit cable detection, channel utilization, and topology loops. FINDINGS YOU CAN CHECK Every finding names the measurements behind it and states a confidence. Typical findings: weak mesh backhaul, bufferbloat, congested channel, recurring evening losses, double NAT. GUIDED A/B TESTS Is it your home network or your provider? Compare WLAN against cellular. Is it coverage? Compare where you are against next-to-router. SAFE REMEDIATION Every suggested change comes with a preview and a rollback path, is confirmed explicitly, and is validated by the next measurement: resolved, improved, unchanged, or regressed. Router access is strictly read-only — Network Doctor never changes router settings. HISTORY AND TRENDS Every check is stored locally, with trends and per-room sparklines. History-based rules catch patterns a single check misses, such as losses that recur every evening. PRIVACY Local-first by design: no account, no tracking, no third-party SDKs, and a privacy manifest. Optional cloud analysis (Claude) is off by default, never sends network names or addresses, and the exact payload can be previewed in the app before anything leaves your device. A support report can be exported via the share sheet. A NOTE ON LANGUAGE Network Doctor is developed German-first. The user interface is available in English, but the diagnostic finding texts currently appear in German. Requires iOS 18 or later. For iPhone and iPad.

About

Network Hamster

Diagnose internet issues with a real-time visual indicator and detailed diagnostics. Understand your network's performance, identify bottlenecks like bufferbloat, and generate shareable reports to prove problems to your ISP.

Highlights
  • One-tap network diagnosis
  • Bufferbloat grading and fixes
  • Live ping, jitter, packet loss monitoring
  • Speed test with history
  • Router vs. internet fault isolation
  • Advanced tools like MTR and Ping Lab
  • Shareable diagnostic reports
Features
Read full description

Your internet is acting up. Is it your Wi-Fi? Your router? Your ISP? Network Hamster tells you — in plain English. A helmeted hamster pedals a bicycle in real time, matched to your actual latency. Fast connection, fast pedaling. Congested network, and he grinds to a crawl. It's the most honest status indicator you'll ever install. Behind the mascot is a genuinely serious diagnostic toolkit. ONE-TAP DIAGNOSIS Tap Diagnose and get eight checks in under a minute: interface, captive portal, your router versus the internet, NAT topology, DNS, web response time, and latency under load. Then a verdict in words you can act on — "Local network is healthy, high latency is upstream. Your router is not the problem." BUFFERBLOAT GRADING The reason your video calls stutter when someone downloads something. Network Hamster measures how much your latency balloons under load and grades it A+ through F, then tells you exactly how to fix it. FIND OUT WHERE YOU STAND • Live ping, jitter, packet loss, and p95 latency across six rotating servers • Speed test with download, upload, and bufferbloat, plus saved history • Router vs. internet isolation — know instantly whose fault it is • CGNAT, double NAT, and symmetric NAT detection • DNS benchmarking against Cloudflare, Google, and Quad9 ADVANCED TOOLS • Monitor Mode — ping every second for hours, graph the whole session, get alerted the moment your connection drops, and export CSV • MTR traceroute with per-hop whois, reverse DNS, and a map of where your packets actually travel • Ping Lab — test with different packet sizes to expose MTU and queueing problems • Buffer Probe — detects undersized modem buffers that quietly cost you the bandwidth you pay for • Wireless Health — tells you whether jitter is born on your Wi-Fi or upstream • Wi-Fi Guard — catches repeated forced disconnects • Inbound Watch — spots unusual traffic arriving at your device • Cellular coverage mapping and DNS record lookup PROVE IT TO YOUR ISP Every diagnosis exports as a shareable report: latency per server, packet loss, traceroute, bufferbloat grade, and a timestamped event log. Stop arguing from memory. Paste the evidence. BUILT HONESTLY Some things iOS simply does not allow — Wi-Fi signal strength, raw packet capture, cell tower identity. Network Hamster never fakes them. Where a limit exists, the app says so and does the most useful thing that is actually possible. No account. No tracking. No data collection. Just a hamster who is very concerned about your ping.

Screenshots

Network4 screens
Network Hamster4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Network Hamster at Free against Network's $4.99. On ads, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement 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

Network Hamster is free to download; Network costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard1 real difference · 8 level
Network versus Network Hamster: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterNetworkNetwork Hamster
Price$4.99Free — better
Rating—5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—1 — better
Update frequency—Every 3 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS18.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size1 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperKonrad KernHarborViewIT, LLC

In-app purchases

None

Network

No in-app purchases

None

Network Hamster

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Network free?
Network costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Network Hamster free?
Network Hamster is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Network or Network Hamster have ads?
Neither Network nor Network Hamster shows ads.

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