Flamingo Reader vs HackerWeb
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Flamingo Reader
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Flamingo is a minimalist reader for Hacker News. You can check the sources of this app on Github : https://github.com/kirualex/Flamingo Contributors : - Alexis Creuzot - David Bonnet
HackerWeb
A clean and readable client for Hacker News, designed with iOS guidelines in mind. It offers intuitive navigation for stories and comments, automatic dark mode, and code syntax highlighting.
- Dual Web and Comments tabs
- Revolutionary comments thread UI
- Automatic Dark mode
- Smart indentations and formatting
- Automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks
- Upvoting and replying
- Comment's 'Thread view'
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HackerWeb is a super-clean Hacker News app built for maximum readability and has a lean set of features to optimize the reading experience. It’s created specifically with iOS design guidelines in mind, so it feels native and blends well with the operating system. It has a simple set of features that are usually invisible: - Dual Web and Comments tabs for easy switching between the story’s web page and the list of comments - Revolutionary comments thread UI for easy navigation, with smart collapsing to prevent being overwhelmed by too many comments - Automatic Dark mode, respecting the system’s appearance settings. - Smart indentations and formatting for comments, complementing the existing limited formatting from Hacker News. - Automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks in comments, with best-effort programming language detection. - Allow interactions like upvoting and replying, which opens up web view with login information and sessions stored in itself, instead of the app. - Comment’s “Thread view” to list all parent comments of a comment, on a flat list, for easy reading instead of manually drilling down the nested comments. - “Share as Image” for comments, which allows sharing of a specific comment, optionally including the parent comments and/or story, as an image. HackerWeb is an unofficial Hacker News client, built with React Native and Expo. This is a passion side project for learning and experimenting ideas. Since 2012. Open-sourced: https://github.com/cheeaun/hackerweb-native-2
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Flamingo Reader at Free against HackerWeb's $2.99. Flamingo Reader also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 26.0). HackerWeb's advantage is update cadence (every 5 months vs every 17 months) and chart position (#39 vs unranked). On ads, in-app purchases and device support 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
Flamingo Reader is free to download; HackerWeb costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Flamingo Reader ships an update every 17 months, HackerWeb every 5 months. The most recent releases landed on August 15, 2026 and September 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Flamingo Reader | HackerWeb |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $2.99 |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (10 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 85.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 10 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 17 months | Every 5 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | — | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #39 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 29 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Alexis Creuzot | Chee Aun Lim |
In-app purchases
Flamingo Reader
No in-app purchases
HackerWeb
No in-app purchases









