Comparison

O'Reilly vs Instructional Design

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

Head to head
About

O'Reilly

Access a vast library of expert-led books, videos, and courses on business and technology trends. Learn online or offline, sync progress across devices, and personalize your reading experience. Discover and organize content with playlists for easy access.

Highlights
  • Offline access to books, videos, and courses
  • Cross-device progress syncing
  • Content discovery and playlist creation
  • Personalized text display and night mode
  • Search across all learning materials
  • External keyboard support
Features
Read full description

Build the skills you need for the job you have—or the one you want. With the O’Reilly app paired with a membership, you’ll get access to thousands of books, videos, and courses trusted by tech practitioners around the world. Whether you’re a developer, data professional, or technology leader, O’Reilly helps you stay ahead in a rapidly evolving industry. Here are just a few ways you can use the O’Reilly app to learn today’s most critical skills: • Explore the latest in programming, AI, cloud, DevOps, and cybersecurity, with content from the people actually putting the technology to work—plus in-depth content on leadership, soft skills, and much more. • Discover best-selling titles and early releases from leading publishers, all in one digital library built for technology professionals. • Listen to thousands of audiobooks to keep the learning going while you multitask. • Watch live events and training sessions, or dive into 5,000+ courses on-demand. • Use playlists to save and organize content you’re exploring, and share them with your friends and coworkers. • Learn on the go, anywhere, with downloadable content and progress syncing across devices. • Quickly find the resources that will help you solve the problems you encounter in your day-to-day work with AI-powered search, plus AI overviews (with citations) to get up to speed on the basics. Powerful tools to support your learning: • Recommendations based on your interests and history • Playlists to organize the content you want to learn • Deep search to find answers fast across 75K+ titles, 3.7K+ audiobooks, 30K+ hours of video, and much more • Highlights and notes to capture key ideas • Adjustable reading settings including font size and night mode • Playback speed controls for faster learning Get started with one of our most popular skills: • AI and machine learning • Software development and programming • Data engineering and data science • Cloud, DevOps, and infrastructure • Cybersecurity • Product management and leadership The O’Reilly app works best with a membership. Learn more at oreilly.com.

About

Instructional Design

This app guides learning professionals through a step-by-step process to quickly create a comprehensive needs analysis. It aligns with industry standards, prompts critical questions, tracks progress, and generates a shareable PDF report.

Highlights
  • Step-by-step needs analysis guide
  • Industry standard alignment
  • Progress tracking
  • Shareable PDF reports
  • Rapid creation tool
Features
Read full description

All great learning design starts with a needs analysis. This needs analysis creator guides learning professionals through a step by step process to rapidly create a brilliant needs analysis. Each step is aligned with instructional design industry standards and carefully crafted to prompt the right questions. The needs analysis creator also tracks your progress and publishes a beautiful PDF that can be shared with others. About IDC Instructional Design Central (IDC) was created to provide instructional design and learning related professionals access to resources, tools, and content so that they can be successful in their career and education. Instructional Design Central (IDC) is also a vibrant community that connects more than 18,000 of instructional design related professionals around the globe in more 20 countries worldwide.

Screenshots

O'Reilly4 screens
Instructional Design4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: O'Reilly at none against Instructional Design's 1. O'Reilly also leads on update cadence (fortnightly vs every 10 months) and ratings volume (34K vs 16). Instructional Design's advantage is review sentiment (60% vs 46%) and iOS requirement (11.4 vs 18.5). On price, ads 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Instructional Design sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. O'Reilly asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

O'Reilly holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: O'Reilly has 34K ratings behind it against 16, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 46% of O'Reilly's written reviews are positive against 60% of Instructional Design's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

O'Reilly ships an update fortnightly, Instructional Design every 10 months. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
O'Reilly versus Instructional Design: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterO'ReillyInstructional Design
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (34K ratings) — better4.4 (16 ratings)
Positive reviews46.0% of reviews60.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings34K — better16
Update frequencyFortnightly — betterEvery 10 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationSubscriptionFree with in-app purchases — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS18.511.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size64 MB18 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperO'Reilly Media, Inc.CodePro Studios

Customer experience

O'Reilly

All ratings33,893 ratings
Positive94.2%
Neutral2.5%
Negative3.3%
Written reviews354 reviews
Positive46.0%
Neutral13.8%
Negative40.1%

Instructional Design

All ratings16 ratings
Positive87.5%
Neutral0.0%
Negative12.5%
Written reviews5 reviews
Positive60.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative40.0%

Bugs and requests

O'Reilly

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Frequent crashes and freezes
  • Unreliable downloads and offline access
  • Login issues and loss of progress
  • Inconsistent behavior across updates

Requested features

4 requests
  • Improved bookmarking and note-taking
  • Customizable text formatting and layout
  • Better search and content discovery
  • Seamless sync across devices

Instructional Design

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

O'Reilly

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Instructional Design

One-time1
  • Unlimited PDF Exports$0.99

Questions

Is O'Reilly free?
O'Reilly is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Instructional Design free?
Instructional Design is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, O'Reilly or Instructional Design?
O'Reilly is rated higher. O'Reilly averages 4.7 out of 5 from 34K ratings, while Instructional Design averages 4.4 from 16 ratings.
Do O'Reilly or Instructional Design have ads?
Neither O'Reilly nor Instructional Design shows ads.
Which is updated more often, O'Reilly or Instructional Design?
O'Reilly ships an update fortnightly, and Instructional Design every 10 months. Most recently, O'Reilly was updated on October 25, 2026 and Instructional Design on October 24, 2026.

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