Comparison

Astrelia vs UnivMap

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

Head to head
About

Astrelia

Features
Read full description

Raise your phone toward the sky and Astrelia shows you what is actually up there: stars, planets, the Moon and the Sun, placed for your exact location and this exact instant. Tap anything and it tells you everything it knows. POINT AT THE SKY Around 8,900 naked-eye stars, sized and coloured the way the eye sees them. Constellation lines, the ecliptic with the live planets, and a Sun and Moon computed with topocentric parallax and atmospheric refraction, so they sit where you can genuinely see them. Pinch to zoom and more names appear. Tap any star to identify it. Scrub time twelve hours forward or back and watch the whole sky move. Aim at something bright and align, and the compass error that ruins most sky apps is cancelled out. TONIGHT One screen for what is happening: the Moon's phase, sunrise and sunset, which planets are up right now and which are below the horizon, meteor showers near their peak, and what is coming โ€” eclipses, oppositions, solstices, greatest elongations. All of it searched out of the live ephemeris, not read from a hardcoded list. NUMBERS THAT MEAN SOMETHING Every object opens into real astrophysics: distance, spectral class, temperature, luminosity, derived radius, orbital elements. Next to them, plain language โ€” the year the light you are looking at left that star, how many Suns it would take to match it, what you would weigh on that planet, where the star falls on the HR diagram, and a one-line biography of its life. Anything unfamiliar has a glossary entry a tap away. THE GALAXY MAP Leave Earth entirely and free-fly a 3D map built from real data: about 25,000 catalogued stars at their true distances, the Milky Way as its real barred spiral, and deep-sky landmarks at their real positions, distances and sizes. Twenty-seven nebulae are built from public-domain telescope photographs, so their shape and colour are the ones the telescope saw โ€” fly into them and they hold up in three dimensions. Fly to a star and its confirmed exoplanets are there, orbiting it. At the galactic centre, Sagittarius A* is rendered by tracing light through curved spacetime: the galaxy behind it genuinely bends around it. CONSTELLATIONS All 88 IAU constellations, plus asterisms, historical figures and cultural skies, each drawn over its real stars. Open any of them in 3D and the familiar shape falls apart into deep space, because a constellation is a line of sight rather than a thing. Astrelia computes all of it on your device from catalogs that ship inside the app. No account, no subscription, no ads, no tracking, and no network needed to use it. Every dataset, algorithm and image behind it is credited in About โ†’ Sources. Astrelia has a sister app, Selenia, which reads the same real sky the astrological way.

About

UnivMap

Features
Read full description

UnivMap is a navigation app. Search for places, get directions, and check your estimated time of arrival. -Search Type in where you want to go. Alpha Centauri, the Orion Nebula, or that black hole at the center of the galaxy. -Directions Starting from your current location, UnivMap works out the distance and arrival time โ€” and kindly routes you around interstellar pirates and high-radiation zones. To Voyager 1: 25.599 billion km, about 23 hr 43 min at the speed of light. It never stops moving, so we time it just right โ€” it reaches the destination to meet you the moment you arrive. -Choose how you travel Rocket, car, bike, or on foot โ€” take your pick. Drive to Mars and the route card will warn you it's uphill the whole way. -Save your places Set your Home and Work, and get directions home with a single tap. -Reviews Every place has ratings and reviews. The Moon currently holds 5.0 stars across three reviews โ€” one visitor wrote: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." -Works offline No connection required. No data collected. -Search galaxies, get directions, check your ETA. The nearest neighbor is over four years away โ€” pack snacks.

Screenshots

Astrelia4 screens
UnivMap4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: UnivMap at 15.0 against Astrelia's 26.0. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard1 real difference ยท 5 level
Astrelia versus UnivMap: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAstreliaUnivMap
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyโ€”Every 9 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod โ€” better
Requires iOS26.015.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size41 MB31 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperElysia Munozๅฎ‡่ผ่ณ‡่จŠๆœ‰้™ๅ…ฌๅธ

In-app purchases

None

Astrelia

No in-app purchases

None

UnivMap

No in-app purchases

Questions

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

Other comparisons