Crest Browser vs OutSpan
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Crest Browser
Organize your online life with distinct browsing contexts for work, personal use, and private browsing. Each context has its own tabs, history, and data, ensuring a clean separation of your digital activities.
- Isolated browsing contexts (Spaces)
- Separate tabs, history, and cookies per Space
- Customizable Space identity
- Focused sidebar for tabs and history
- Peek for temporary link previews
- Optional iCloud sync
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Work, personal life, and everything between deserve their own Space. Crest is a native browser for iPhone and iPad that keeps your accounts separate, your tabs organized, and your browsing distinctly yours. KEEP YOUR ACCOUNTS SEPARATE Each Space has its own tabs, cookies, website data, history, passwords, and site permissions. Stay signed in to different accounts on the same website. Switch from work to personal browsing without carrying the wrong session with you. GIVE EVERY TAB A PLACE Pin the sites you use every day. Save pages in folders. Keep today's tabs close and completed work in the archive. Select and move tabs, folders, and Split View groups together. On iPhone, bring in the sidebar with a gesture; on iPad, keep it beside your page. MAKE IT YOUR OWN Start from Winter, Lion, or another template in Crest Studio, then choose a color for each part of the crest and the sidebar. Choose a crest, emoji, monogram, or symbol. Appearance settings adjust the window border, sidebar material, tab corners, borders, and default page zoom. KEEP RELATED PAGES TOGETHER Group two to four pages in Split View. On iPad, browse them side by side and resize the columns. On iPhone, swipe across the compact toolbar to move between pages in the group. Peek lets you check supported links without losing your place, then keep the page as a tab when you need it. TOOLS FOR EVERYDAY BROWSING Choose one default search for every Space and another for Private Browsing, or pick one for a single Space. Search from a new tab to find the pages and tabs you use most. Translate webpages on device with Apple's Translation framework. Read supported articles in Reader, find text on a page, adjust zoom, share links, and export pages. Content blocking and site permissions give you control over each Space. Language availability varies, and translation may require a language download. PRIVATE WHEN YOU NEED IT Private Browsing uses temporary website storage. Private tabs stay out of saved history, restoration, archive, and sync. Crest does not run an advertising SDK, collect browsing analytics, or require a Crest account. PICK UP ON ANOTHER DEVICE Optional iCloud sync keeps supported Space and tab organization available across your Apple devices through your private iCloud database. Crest is also available for Mac. Crest is free and open source, built with Apple's WebKit. Requires iOS 26.1 or iPadOS 26.1 or later. Some website features and integrations vary by device.
OutSpan
This utility expands web pages to fill the entire outer display of compatible phones when browsing in Safari. It also optimizes page layout when Safari shares the inner screen in Split View, ensuring content utilizes available space edge-to-edge.
- Full-width browsing on outer display
- Optimized Split View on inner screen
- Adjustable blur behind controls
- Persistent settings across sessions
- No account or tracking
- Built-in setup guide
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Use the whole outer display in Safari. When your iPhone Duo is folded, Safari keeps its controls in a strip along the side of the outer display, and web pages stop short of them. OutSpan widens pages into that space, so articles, images, and everyday browsing fill the screen. It does the same on the inner screen when Safari shares it with another app. Choose Wide to expand the page layout, or Off to restore the website's original layout. Your choice is remembered across websites, tabs, reloads, and Safari restarts. • Pages use the full width of the outer display • Works in Split View on the inner screen • Optional blur behind Safari's controls, with adjustable strength • Simple Wide and Off controls in Safari's page menu • One choice that follows you as you browse • No account and no tracking. Everything runs on your iPhone • A built-in guide to turn on the extension SPLIT VIEW Open your iPhone Duo and put Safari beside another app. Safari keeps its controls on the outer edge of its half of the screen, and OutSpan widens pages beneath them. The first time, choose which side Safari's controls are on in the OutSpan menu. Your choice is remembered. When Safari has the inner screen to itself, it shows its controls along the top, and pages already use the full width. FREE TRIAL AND UNLOCK Off is always free. Wide is free for 3 days from the moment you first turn it on. After that, Wide requires Full Unlock, a one-time in-app purchase. There is no subscription. REQUIREMENTS Requires iPhone Duo. On other iPhone models, Safari already uses the full screen width, so OutSpan has nothing to change. Turn on the extension in Settings > Apps > Safari > Extensions, and allow it on the websites you want to widen. Most websites widen cleanly. A few with unusual layouts may not, and Off restores them instantly. Safari's side controls stay on top of the widened page. Terms and Conditions: https://outspan.app/terms/ Privacy Policy: https://outspan.app/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Crest Browser at none against OutSpan's 1. OutSpan's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 2 weeks) and review sentiment (43% vs 25%). 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. OutSpan sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Crest Browser asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 3.9 for Crest Browser against 3.8 for OutSpan. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 16 and 10 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 25% of Crest Browser's written reviews are positive against 43% of OutSpan's.
Crest Browser ships an update every 2 weeks, OutSpan every 3 days. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | Crest Browser | OutSpan |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.9 (16 ratings) — better | 3.8 (10 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 25.0% of reviews | 42.9% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 16 — better | 10 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.1 — better | 27.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 73 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Paul Davis | Yaw Boamah |
Customer experience
Crest Browser
OutSpan
In-app purchases
Crest Browser
No in-app purchases
OutSpan
- Full Unlock$3.99









