Comparison

HN Reader vs HACK for Hacker News YC Reader

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

Head to head
About

HN Reader

Access Hacker News articles and comments offline with background refresh and a convenient Today widget. Save articles to Safari Reading List for later viewing. Open source and developed in Swift.

Highlights
  • Offline reading
  • Today widget integration
  • Background refresh
  • Save to Safari Reading List
  • Read comments
  • Open source
Features
Read full description

HN Reader is made for iOS 8 and entirely developed in Swift. Never miss a news again, HN Reader feature a useful today widget which is refreshed every time you pull down the notification center. You can quickly read the latest titles and open Safari from there. Apart from that, HN Reader fully works offline, the news feed is refreshed in background using the iOS background refresh feature and provide some solid caching mechanisms. You can also save the article to the Safari Reading List with a simple cell swipe. The Safari Reading List is a powerful tool because each article added is saved for offline reading. In the future you'll be able to automatically send latest articles to the Safari Reading List. Like any good Hacker News client HN Reader let you read the comments for any item. It works on both iPhone & iPad with the same set of features. At the moment HN Reader doesn't allow you to login with your Hacker News account, it's a read-only app. But this feature alongside some others will be added soon! The applications is also totally open source, so if you want to add some features or speedup the development of some others, you can! The goal when I decided to begin the development of HN Reader was to create a new application from nothing entirely in Swift tailored for iOS 8. With the less amount of code possible. In future updates I want to stay true to this statement.

About

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader

This app offers a beautiful and intuitive way to read tech, startup, and STEM news from Hacker News. It provides advanced features like push notifications, threaded comments, and powerful search, with extensive customization options for a personalized reading experience.

Highlights
  • Ad-free and subscription-free reading
  • Push notifications for replies
  • Nested threaded comments with collapse
  • Swipe to upvote and favorite
  • Submit new posts and drafts
  • Powerful Algolia-powered search
  • Customizable themes, fonts, and layout
Features
Read full description

HACK for YC's Hacker News is the most beautiful and easy way to read about the latest tech, startup and STEM news. - No Ads. No subscriptions. - Login or Register your Hacker News account - PUSH NOTIFICATIONS for Hacker News replies to comment or post - Supported on iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Setting to block AI posts on HN. - Comments are presented in nested threads - Tap a comment to collapse that thread - Swipe left or right on stories and comments to upvote and favorite - Ability to submit new posts including drafts - Long press a story, link or comment to share - iPad supports split view - On iPads, you can drag a story / comment / story's image (link) to open it in safari in split view. This is useful for when you are viewing the app in split view / multitasking and like opening the link / story / comment in a browser side by side. - Landscape and Portrait support - 3D touch for peek, pop support - Home screen 3D touch shortcuts - Hide posts from the feed - Tap the bottom button to scroll to the next root comment in the thread. Long press it to go to the previous one - All known hacker news endpoints - News, front page, Ask HN, Show HN, Show HN Newest, classic, active, best stories, best comments, new stories, new comments, noob stories, noob comments, jobs, over 100-500 points - Submit posts, reply, comment using your HN account - Browse top 100 leader accounts - Browse stories from a specific site, user or date - Search in comments and usernames! Search is case and diacritic insensitive and ignores punctuations. Search uses an CONTAINS, OR operation if multiple words are typed. - Can select / highlight the comment/post title text for lookup/copy/translate etc iOS native operations. - Powerful search (powered by Algolia API) - use @date to sort by date, #story to filter for stories, #comments to filter for comments, #author_username to filter by user etc. These tags can be separated by commas. Refer to https://hn.algolia.com/api for more tags. - Dark mode - both pure black and gray mode - Low contrast text mode to make the text not be pure white - Many color choices & color picker for customization - App icons in variety of colours for light and dark mode - Font choices - Ability to change font sizes, padding etc to make the layout as compact as you like! - Threaded comments with color bar to maintain visual orientation - Articles open in Safari view with setting to automatically open in "readability" mode - Tap the domain in a story to see all stories from that site - Tap the username in a story or comment to go to the user profile - Browse your submitted stories and comments, favorited stories and comments, upvoted stories and comments - Archive: View an archive of the post website. archive.is, archive.org & google cache. - Share comment as image - Articles can be opened in built in safari or 3rd party browsers. Supports Brave, Firefox, Firefox Focus, Orion, Opera Touch, Dolphin, DuckDuckGo, iCab Mobile, Microsoft Edge and Chrome. Go to settings > Disable the "Use in-app Safari" setting > tap that row to change the default browser. All stories and comments are via Algolia API and Hacker News API: https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/api https://github.com/HackerNews/API Profile picture robots lovingly delivered by Robohash.org I am a small indie developer and need your help keep the lights on. I offer an ad and analytics free and beautiful app for the absolute best experience for my users. I need to run my own server for caching high quality favicons shown in the app plus for push notifications for replies to hacker news posts. If you can afford it, please support me by purchasing the one-time-only in-app-purchase or giving me a tip. No subscriptions. You can also leave a review on the App Store as that really helps me get the word out. Thank you for choosing HACK. If you have a programming job or have feedback, contact me at: pran@pranapps.com

Screenshots

HN Reader4 screens
HACK for Hacker News YC Reader4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: HACK for Hacker News YC Reader at 93% against HN Reader's 47%. HACK for Hacker News YC Reader also leads on rating (4.7 vs 1.8) and update cadence (every 3 days vs every 2 months). HN Reader's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 6) and iOS requirement (8.0 vs 15.0). On price, ads, monetization model 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. HACK for Hacker News YC Reader sells 6 one-off in-app purchases. HN Reader asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 1.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: HACK for Hacker News YC Reader has 1.6K ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 47% of HN Reader's written reviews are positive against 93% of HACK for Hacker News YC Reader's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

HN Reader ships an update every 2 months, HACK for Hacker News YC Reader every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on September 19, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
HN Reader versus HACK for Hacker News YC Reader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHN ReaderHACK for Hacker News YC Reader
PriceFreeFree
Rating1.8 (5 ratings)4.7 (1.6K ratings) — better
Positive reviews46.7% of reviews93.4% of reviews — better
Number of ratings51.6K — better
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better
Requires iOS8.0 — better15.0
Further details — not scored
Size12 MB28 MB
Age rating17+9+
DeveloperThomas RicouardPranoy Chowdhury

Customer experience

HN Reader

All ratings5 ratings
Positive20.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative80.0%
Written reviews15 reviews
Positive46.7%
Neutral6.7%
Negative46.7%

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader

All ratings1,580 ratings
Positive91.5%
Neutral2.5%
Negative5.9%
Written reviews197 reviews
Positive93.4%
Neutral2.5%
Negative4.1%

In-app purchases

None

HN Reader

No in-app purchases

6 purchases

HACK for Hacker News YC Reader

One-time6
  • Nice Tip$3.99
  • Kind Tip$6.99
  • Generous Tip$9.99
Show 3 more
  • Amazing Tip$12.99
  • Hack Premium$14.99
  • Godzilla Tip$19.99

Questions

Is HN Reader free?
HN Reader is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is HACK for Hacker News YC Reader free?
HACK for Hacker News YC Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, HN Reader or HACK for Hacker News YC Reader?
HACK for Hacker News YC Reader is rated higher. HN Reader averages 1.8 out of 5 from 5 ratings, while HACK for Hacker News YC Reader averages 4.7 from 1.6K ratings.
Do HN Reader or HACK for Hacker News YC Reader have ads?
Neither HN Reader nor HACK for Hacker News YC Reader shows ads.
Which is updated more often, HN Reader or HACK for Hacker News YC Reader?
HN Reader ships an update every 2 months, and HACK for Hacker News YC Reader every 3 days. Most recently, HN Reader was updated on September 19, 2026 and HACK for Hacker News YC Reader on October 15, 2026.

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