SchoolGuard vs Birdathon
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SchoolGuard
This app provides K-12 school staff with an immediate panic button for emergencies. Upon activation, it alerts law enforcement, school personnel, and nearby protected schools, while displaying the alert's location.
- One-tap panic button for emergencies
- Alerts law enforcement and school staff
- Sends location data
- Notifies nearby schools
- Listed in AT&T FirstNet App Catalog
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SchoolGuard is a mobile panic button app for K-12 school staff. In the event of an active school shooting emergency, a teacher or school staff member presses the main SchoolGuard panic button. As the app is dialing 911, an alert is immediately sent to the smartphones of all federal, state and local, ON and OFF duty, law enforcement officers who are in close proximity to the school and who belong to the Hero911 Network. Additionally, an intra-school alert is simultaneously sent to the smartphones of all school staff and a mapped location of the initial alert is displayed (mapping depends on cell coverage). SchoolGuard also alerts all other protected schools within a 5 mile radius of the initial alert. SchoolGuard is also listed in the AT&T FirsNet App Catalog as an emergency app for first responders. Please be aware that continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.
Birdathon
This app helps birdwatchers create and organize detailed checklists of their observations. It automatically records time and location, allowing for easy editing and customization. Users can visualize their sightings on maps, add field notes, and export data for sharing or further analysis.
- Observation-centric checklists
- Automatic time and location recording
- Customizable maps with boundary overlays
- Field notes for additional observations
- Multiple checklist sorting options
- Data export to CSV and other formats
- Create checklist templates
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Birdathon is an observation-centric tool for creating birding checklists. It helps you organize your checklists and share them with others. Use Birdathon in the field to quickly record whether and where a bird is seen or heard and the number observed. The time and location of each observation is automatically recorded. You can adjust the location, time entries and the count of birds observed at any time to ensure your records are accurate. You can add breeding codes to your observations. Checklist maps display the locations of your observations. You can overlay county boundaries for every US state. You can add a range circle such as a 5MR (5-mile Radius) to your maps. You can import and overlay custom kml/kmz files onto your maps. An Overview feature lets you see your combined observations for any time period, and displays a map showing any boundaries you have selected, so you can utilize the map feature even when you are not actively checklisting. You can export Overview data into a csv text file or create a new checklist template from the Overview. Your checklists can be viewed in taxonomic order, alphabetically, by rarity or as a timeline of species. You can enrich your checklist with field notes and add observations such as mammals, butterflies, wildflowers, etc., to make it a more complete record of your experience. You can organize your checklists into categories such as Day List, Year List, County List, Life List, etc., and assign color themes to your lists. Bird species may be added and deleted from your lists at any time. You can create new checklist templates from your previous lists or import templates created by others. You can change which template is being used. You can import text files into Birdathon, making them into templates or new checklists. Different export options for your checklists allow you to import into eBird or another copy of Birdathon. The bird species source data and other resources used in this app come from the following sources: AviList, a unified global checklist of birds, is the core data set used for Birdathon. https://www.avilist.org. Some data has been integrated from the following sources: The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world (https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/), the American Ornithological Society's (AOS) Checklist of North and Middle American Birds (https://checklist.americanornithology.org), and the American Birding Association's (ABA) checklist of North American Birds (https://www.aba.org/listing-taxonomy/) Alpha codes come from The Institute for Bird Populations’ Standardized 4- and 6-letter Bird Species Codes. https://www.birdpop.org/pages/birdSpeciesCodes.php. County boundary data is from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) TIGER/Line 2019 Shapefiles found on the United States Census Bureau's website at https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.2019.html. Boundaries should be used as general guidelines and not be considered precise. Note especially where county boundaries follow creeks, rivers, ridge lines and other natural features, and so are of much finer resolution than can be shown on Birdathon’s maps. California breeding bird atlas blocks come from the California Bird Atlas, https://www.californiabirdatlas.org. California Bird Atlas logo and breeding code descriptions used with permission.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: SchoolGuard at none against Birdathon's 4. SchoolGuard also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.7) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 16.1). Birdathon's advantage is review sentiment (100% vs 71%) and ratings volume (15 vs 4). On price, update cadence, ads and monetization model 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. Birdathon sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. SchoolGuard asks for nothing beyond the download.
SchoolGuard holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 4 and 15 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 71% of SchoolGuard's written reviews are positive against 100% of Birdathon's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
SchoolGuard ships an update every 6 months, Birdathon every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on June 24, 2026 and September 19, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | SchoolGuard | Birdathon |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better | 4.7 (15 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 71.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 4 | 15 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | Every 4 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 16.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 58 MB | 192 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Guard911, LLC | Barry Langdon-Lassagne |
Customer experience
SchoolGuard
Birdathon
In-app purchases
SchoolGuard
No in-app purchases
Birdathon
- Good Tip$0.99
- Great Tip$1.99
- Amazing Tip$2.99
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- Incredible Tip$4.99






