Medium vs Hacker Pulse
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Medium
Access a vast collection of human stories, expert advice, and inspiring insights. Discover new topics, follow your interests, and connect with a global community of readers and writers. Publish your own work and reach a wide audience.
- Distraction-free reading
- Curated content on tech, culture, news
- Unlimited story access with membership
- Personalized reading library
- Community engagement (claps, comments)
- Publishing platform for writers
- Audio versions of stories (Member feature)
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Welcome to Medium, your home for human stories, useful advice, and inspiring insights. Immerse yourself in a world of wisdom with writing from renowned figures, passionate experts, and fresh voices. Make reading and writing a daily ritual by following your fascinations, discovering new rabbit holes, and reaching readers of your own. Medium is simple social publishing for everyone. + Find your focus with distraction-free reading about everything from taking better pictures to what it’s like to scale a startup. + Stay current with stories about emerging technology, culture, and firsthand accounts of front-page news. + Become a member for unlimited access to millions of stories from our global community of the curious. + Assemble your own personal library by highlighting passages, bookmarking stories, and following writers who share your passions. + Join a community of readers, writers, and thinkers who clap for what they love, respond with insightful comments on thought-provoking stories, and collaborate to create popular publications. + Reach a wider audience by publishing your stories on a platform that serves more than 100M idea-loving people. + Establish a professional presence on a trusted platform, alongside academics, leaders, and experts. + Join the Medium Partner Program to earn money from your writing. + Enjoy a continuous reading experience across your iPhone, iPad, and desktop. + Listen to audio versions of any story on Medium (Member feature). __ Medium Terms of Service: https://policy.medium.com/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f Privacy Policy: https://policy.medium.com/medium-privacy-policy-f03bf92035c9 Support: https://help.medium.com
Hacker Pulse
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Hacker Pulse is a Hacker News reader built for reading — the article and the discussion, together, beautifully. THE ARTICLE, RE-TYPESET Every story is fetched, parsed and laid out natively — no web view, no reader-mode shortcut, no external service. Set your type size, and with Premium the typeface, line height, margins, spacing and paper colour; images, code blocks, tables, quotes and lists all survive the trip. The discussion continues below the article in the same scroll, and your place in a long read is remembered. BUILT FOR LONG THREADS The whole discussion arrives at once. Fold a subtree, step between conversations with the navigator, pull a deep reply's ancestors into view, open any comment on its own screen, or search inside the thread. Hold a comment to copy, share, translate, block or report. YOURS TO KEEP Read state, saved stories and reading positions live on your device, and a mis-swipe can be undone. With Premium, a saved story is downloaded whole — article and discussion — and stays readable offline until you remove it. TRANSLATE ON DEVICE With Premium, on iOS 26 and later, articles and comments translate entirely on your device. Nothing is sent to a server. The interface itself speaks nine languages — English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, Français, Deutsch, Русский and العربية — including full right-to-left layout. TWELVE LISTS, A WIDGET, AN iPad LAYOUT Top, New, Best, Ask HN, Show HN and Jobs from the official API, kept on disk so a cold launch is instant; Active, Classic and the front page from any day back to 2007; three score thresholds; and two lists of comments rather than stories. A widget in three Home Screen sizes — four on iPad — and one for the Lock Screen follows the list you choose. On iPad, a real two-column layout — list beside reader. TAKE PART, IF YOU WANT TO Reading needs no account. Sign in with your own Hacker News account and you can also upvote, downvote, reply, submit a story, and edit or delete your own comments — without leaving for a browser. Your password is never saved; only the session, in your keychain, until you sign out. QUIET BY DESIGN Block users, and with Premium mute title keywords or whole sites. No analytics, no tracking, no ads; the one server of ours the app ever talks to hands out reader-engine updates and learns nothing about you. Your reading habits are nobody's business — including ours. FREE TO READ, ONE PURCHASE FOR THE REST Every list, every discussion, search, profiles, your account and the reader itself are free, with no ads and no time limit. One purchase — no subscription — unlocks Premium: your own type and paper, saved stories kept offline, iCloud sync and library import, on-device translation, read aloud, automatic archive lookup, discussion detail, hiding read stories, four more colours with their icons, and keyword and site filters. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac, and Family Sharing shares it. AN HONEST NOTE Hacker News publishes no API for signing in, voting, replying or submitting, so Hacker Pulse does those the only way the site allows: by posting its own web forms, exactly as a browser does. They work today and could be broken by a redesign tomorrow. Hacker News itself has no downvote for stories, and it allows editing and deleting only for a couple of hours after posting. Hacker Pulse first shipped in 2012. Version 2.0 is a complete rewrite that keeps the original's look — the same rust-and-orange chrome, the same pulse — and the same two-finger flick to switch between light and dark. Hacker Pulse is an independent app, not affiliated with or endorsed by Y Combinator. Story and comment data come from the public Hacker News and Algolia APIs.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is chart position: Medium at #16 against Hacker Pulse's unranked. On price, 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
Both are free to download. Medium sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Hacker Pulse sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
| Parameter | Medium | Hacker Pulse |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (157K ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 62.5% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 157K — better | — |
| Update frequency | Weekly | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Best chart rank | #16 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 242 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | A Medium Corporation | S. Smart Rabbit LLC |
Bugs and requests
Medium
Reported bugs
5 issues- Frequent app crashes and freezes
- Login and authentication issues
- Syncing and data loss problems
- Compatibility problems with newer OS versions
- Unreliable push notifications
Requested features
5 requests- Offline reading mode
- Better organization and navigation of content
- Improved personalization and recommendation system
- Integration with other platforms and services
- Enhanced writing and publishing tools
Hacker Pulse
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Medium
- Medium Membership1 Month trial$4.991 Month
- Medium Membership$4.991 Month
- Friend Membership$14.991 Month
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- Medium Membership1 Year trial2 variants$49.991 Year
- Friend Membership$149.991 Year
Hacker Pulse
- Small Tip$1.99
- Hacker Pulse Premium$4.99
- Tip$4.99
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- Generous Tip$9.99









