Comparison

Big Year Birding ABA vs eBird Alert!

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

Head to head
About

Big Year Birding ABA

Easily record bird sightings in the field with location, date, and time automatically captured. Discover local birds, view recent sightings nearby, and export your data. Works offline and includes a comprehensive database of North American species.

Highlights
  • Automatic GPS location, date, and time recording
  • Comprehensive database of North American birds
  • Discover local birds by location and month
  • View and navigate to recent nearby sightings
  • Offline functionality
  • Create eBird upload files
  • Add personal photos and notes
Features
Read full description

Big Year Birding gives birders—from beginners to serious listers—a fast, easy way to record, organize, explore, and share their bird sightings. Whether you’re doing a Big Year, participating in a Christmas Bird Count, traveling to a new birding destination, or simply keeping track of the birds in your backyard, Big Year Birding makes logging your sightings quick and easy. **A Vastly Improved Birding Experience** Big Year Birding features a completely updated and vastly improved user interface designed to make recording birds in the field faster and more intuitive than ever. Spot a bird? Tap Add Sighting and Big Year Birding can automatically record the date, time, and GPS location, including city, state, and country. Your sightings can be displayed on a map or browsed in sortable lists. Start typing a bird’s name and quickly select the species you’ve seen. Add a count, comments, identification by ear, sex, public or private location, and other useful details. **Built for eBird** Big Year Birding works seamlessly with eBird. Import species information from eBird and easily export your sightings in an eBird-compatible format, making it simple to move observations from Big Year Birding into your eBird account. You can also explore recent eBird sightings near your current location or another location you choose. Browse nearby reports by species, location, or date, see sightings plotted on a map, and get directions to where a bird was reported. **Designed for Birding in the Field** Big Year Birding continues to be useful even when you’re birding in remote areas without an internet or cellular connection. The app includes North American bird species recognized within the ABA region, along with numerous rare and accidental species and birds added with the expansion of the ABA Area to Hawaii. Each species can include a reference photo, and you can add your own photographs to your sightings. Links to resources such as Cornell and Wikipedia provide additional information when an internet connection is available. **Your Lists, Your Way** Big Year Birding is highly customizable. View and organize your sightings by date, location, or species. Filter your records to show particular dates or locations, or display unique species only. With just a few taps, you can review your: • Life List • Year List • State List • Previous years • Individual locations and trips • Complete sighting history You can also export sightings—or selected subsets of sightings—to another device running Big Year Birding, making it convenient to use an iPhone in the field and an iPad at home or to share lists with family and friends. Share your sightings through text, email, social media, or export them to eBird. Created by birders for birders, Big Year Birding puts your sightings, lists, maps, local bird information, and eBird tools together in one place—so you can spend less time managing your records and more time birding.

About

eBird Alert!

Discover rare bird sightings in your vicinity based on community-submitted checklists. Customize your search by distance, recency, and location. Access identification details and photos to aid your bird spotting.

Highlights
  • Find nearby rare bird sightings
  • Customize sighting proximity and recency
  • Filter by county or view all local birds
  • Open sighting locations in maps
  • View sighting comments
  • Access bird identification details and photos
Features
Read full description

eBird Alert! shows rare bird sightings in your area, found from the checklists your fellow birders have submitted to eBird -- a global online database of bird records used by hundreds of thousands of birders around the world. Features - Select how nearby and how recent the sightings can be. - Select which nearby county in which to find birds. - See rarities or all local birds. - Open a sighting location in Apple or Google Maps. - See all sighting comments for a particular location. - Get identification details and photos to help you spot the bird,. - If you spot it, add it to your checklist in the eBird app. Privacy - eBird Alert! requires your location to find nearby birds. It will never upload your location, or any other data, to any server.

Screenshots

Big Year Birding ABA4 screens
eBird Alert!4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: eBird Alert! at 4.8 against Big Year Birding ABA's 4.0. eBird Alert! also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 67%) and monetization model (free vs ad-supported). Big Year Birding ABA's advantage is iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.2). On price, ratings volume, update cadence and ads 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.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

eBird Alert! holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 4 and 8 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 67% of Big Year Birding ABA's written reviews are positive against 100% of eBird Alert!'s.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Big Year Birding ABA ships an update monthly, eBird Alert! every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Big Year Birding ABA versus eBird Alert!: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBig Year Birding ABAeBird Alert!
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.0 (4 ratings)4.8 (8 ratings) — better
Positive reviews66.7% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings48 — better
Update frequencyMonthlyEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationAd-supportedFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better18.2
Further details — not scored
Size95 MB12 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperPVI Maine LLCColin Rafferty

Customer experience

Big Year Birding ABA

All ratings4 ratings
Positive75.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative25.0%
Written reviews6 reviews
Positive66.7%
Neutral0.0%
Negative33.3%

eBird Alert!

All ratings8 ratings
Positive87.5%
Neutral12.5%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Big Year Birding ABA

No in-app purchases

None

eBird Alert!

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Big Year Birding ABA free?
Big Year Birding ABA is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is eBird Alert! free?
eBird Alert! is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Big Year Birding ABA or eBird Alert!?
eBird Alert! is rated higher. Big Year Birding ABA averages 4.0 out of 5 from 4 ratings, while eBird Alert! averages 4.8 from 8 ratings.
Do Big Year Birding ABA or eBird Alert! have ads?
Neither Big Year Birding ABA nor eBird Alert! shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Big Year Birding ABA or eBird Alert!?
Big Year Birding ABA ships an update monthly, and eBird Alert! every 3 weeks. Most recently, Big Year Birding ABA was updated on October 31, 2026 and eBird Alert! on October 30, 2026.

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