Aussie Bird Count vs BirdNET
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Aussie Bird Count
Participate in a nationwide citizen science event by counting local birds. Spend 20 minutes observing and recording avian species in your chosen outdoor location. The app assists with bird identification and contributes valuable data to conservation efforts.
- Citizen science bird counting
- Local bird observation
- Bird identification tool
- Data contribution to conservation
- Outdoor nature connection
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Join the Aussie Bird Count! BirdLife Australia’s Aussie Bird Count is one of Australia’s biggest citizen science events. Every October, join tens of thousands of Australians of all ages and experiences in getting outdoors and having fun getting to know your local birds – while helping BirdLife Australia collect information about the birds around us. To take part, register as a counter at aussiebirdcount.org.au and download the Aussie Bird Count app. Then, during the Count, simply spend 20 minutes at a time watching, counting and recording the birds you see in the app. You can count from anywhere: from home, at school, in your backyard or a nearby park or any outdoor space of your choosing. Each count takes just 20 minutes, and it’s a great excuse to get outdoors and connect with nature. The app even has a handy built-in Bird Finder tool to help you identify birds you’re unsure of.
BirdNET
Identify bird species by their sounds using AI. Record audio with your device and discover the birds around you. Contribute to conservation research by submitting your recordings.
- AI-powered bird sound recognition
- Identify common North American and European species
- Record audio with internal microphone
- View probable bird species identification
- Contribute to conservation research
- Learn about local birds
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How can computers learn to recognize birds from sounds? The BirdNET research project uses artificial intelligence and neural networks to train computers to identify nearly 3,000 of the most common species of North America and Europe. You can record a file using the internal microphone of your iOS device and see if BirdNET correctly identifies the probable bird species present in your recording. Get to know the birds around you and help us to collect observations by submitting your recordings. BirdNET is a joint project of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Chemnitz University of Technology.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Aussie Bird Count at 5.0 against BirdNET's 4.0. BirdNET's advantage is ratings volume (212 vs 2) and update cadence (every 3 months vs every 12 months). 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Aussie Bird Count holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: BirdNET has 212 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 50% of Aussie Bird Count's written reviews are positive against 66% of BirdNET's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Aussie Bird Count ships an update every 12 months, BirdNET every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Aussie Bird Count | BirdNET |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | 4.0 (212 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | 66.5% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 212 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 12 months | Every 3 months — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 13.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 70 MB | 98 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | BirdLife Australia Ltd. | Stefan Kahl |
Customer experience
Aussie Bird Count
BirdNET
Bugs and requests
Aussie Bird Count
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
BirdNET
Reported bugs
5 issues- Crashes when trying to access observation history
- Recordings disappearing after app updates
- Inability to start a new recording without exiting the app
- Microphone not working on certain devices
- Incorrect or missing bird species in regional databases
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to manually select frequency ranges for analysis
- Option to delete individual observations or recordings
- Import/export functionality for recordings and observations
- Improved handling of background noise and interference
- More detailed feedback when multiple birds are detected
In-app purchases
Aussie Bird Count
No in-app purchases
BirdNET
No in-app purchases
