Comparison

LifeScanner vs Terms

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

Head to head
About

LifeScanner

Explore and identify species worldwide using this app. Share your discoveries with friends and contribute to scientific research by submitting samples for DNA analysis. Help catalog the planet's biodiversity and understand the interconnectedness of life.

Highlights
  • Explore species globally
  • Share discoveries on social media
  • Submit samples for DNA analysis
  • Contribute to scientific research
  • Visualize sample data
  • Catalog biodiversity
Features
Read full description

Use LifeScanner to explore species anywhere across the world. This app allows you to educate and share with your friends and followers through social media the species you have found around you. When you use the LifeScanner kit in conjunction with the app, you transmit your sample's collection data to the scientists in the lab, allowing this data to become part of scientific research in the future. The biodiversity of this planet is comprised of all the living organisms on it. We see this biodiversity as an intertwined network of species that form the ecosystems and food webs we depend on. All the food we eat and the animals we interact with have a role in this web of life we call biodiversity. After 250 years of research in cataloging the species on the planet, we are nowhere near recording them all. Scientists have estimated that nearly 80% of the species on the planet have yet to be discovered. Many live in remote locations but most hide in plain sight, too small and uncharismatic to be noticed or too similar in physical appearance to other species to be discovered. We can't protect what we do not know - it is estimated that a third of the species on the planet will go extinct by the end of the current century. To solve this problem, DNA is being used to catalog each species. DNA can be used to get the identity of any species, much like a fingerprint. Using our sampling kit you can submit any whole insects, plant leaves, or uncooked meat. The kit contains everything you need to submit your sample for identification and contribution to the scientific database. Each kit comes with 4 vials for any organism you find. A kit will be delivered within a week of order. You put the organisms in the kit and send them back to us. Each sample kit has been carefully designed by our scientific team to enable us to extract and sequence the DNA within each sample. Once we've sequenced your sample, we'll send the results directly to your iPhone so that you can visualize and understand the data. Help us catalog the organisms around us.

About

Terms

Learn terminal commands through daily flashcards and a home-screen widget. It offers a placement test to start you at the right level and uses spaced repetition for effective practice. The app is designed to be calm and distraction-free, with no ads or account requirements.

Highlights
  • Daily command line flashcards
  • Home-screen widget for daily commands
  • Placement test for personalized learning
  • Spaced repetition for practice
  • Offline access
  • Library of 231 commands and concepts
Features
Read full description

You've seen the terminal. Your AI assistant practically lives in it. Time to actually read what it's typing. Terms teaches you real terminal commands the way a vocabulary app teaches words — one card at a time, a few a day, until they stick. THE WIDGET IS THE APP Add the home-screen widget and a new command appears next to your apps every day. Read it when you unlock your phone. No app open required. A FEED YOU CAN BINGE Full-screen flashcards drawn as terminal windows: the command, what it does, every flag explained piece by piece, and why you've seen it before — "agents use grep to locate where code lives." HONEST LEVELS A 60-second placement test deals you in at the right tier: on-ramp, daily driver, combos & power, or deep cuts. No fake progress, no flattery — the deck starts exactly where your knowledge ends. PRACTICE THAT STICKS Quick quizzes built from the cards you're learning, with spaced repetition scheduling the reviews. Tap "just got it!" or "alr knew it" — that's the whole ceremony. CALM BY DESIGN • One notification a day. Opt-in, at your time, hard cap two. • Free, offline, no account, no ads. • Dangerous commands carry the warning they deserve (looking at you, rm -rf). WHAT'S INSIDE 231 real commands and concepts at launch — ls, cd, grep, cat, lsof -i :3000, chmod, pipes, redirects, xargs, sed, awk, tar — tiered from total beginner to power user, searchable in the library, every one tracked to mastery. Built for everyone shell-adjacent: vibe coders shipping with AI, students, new developers, and anyone who has ever copy-pasted a command and prayed. The terminal is the first course. More languages of code are coming.

Screenshots

LifeScanner4 screens
Terms4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Terms at every 2 weeks against LifeScanner's every 2 months. LifeScanner's advantage is iOS requirement (8.0 vs 15.1). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

LifeScanner ships an update every 2 months, Terms every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
LifeScanner versus Terms: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLifeScannerTerms
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings—1 — better
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 2 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS8.0 — better15.1
Further details — not scored
Size12 MB39 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperUniversity of GuelphBen Little

In-app purchases

None

LifeScanner

No in-app purchases

None

Terms

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is LifeScanner free?
LifeScanner is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Terms free?
Terms is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do LifeScanner or Terms have ads?
Neither LifeScanner nor Terms shows ads.
Which is updated more often, LifeScanner or Terms?
LifeScanner ships an update every 2 months, and Terms every 2 weeks. Most recently, LifeScanner was updated on October 24, 2026 and Terms on October 25, 2026.

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