HN Reader vs HNR
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- Offline reading
- Today widget integration
- Background refresh
- Save to Safari Reading List
- Read comments
- Open source
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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.
HNR
Access and read stories from the popular tech news website Hacker News. Browse top or latest articles, save your favorites, share content, and search for specific topics. Offers customizable color themes including dark and light modes.
- Browse top/latest stories
- Save favorite articles
- Share stories
- Search functionality
- Customizable color themes
- Dark/light mode support
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A convenient way to read stories from the tech news website Hacker News (HN). Features: - Browse 100 top or latest stories - Save favorites - Share - Search - Customizable color with dark/light mode support
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: HNR at 5.0 against HN Reader's 1.8. HN Reader's advantage is update cadence (every 2 months vs every 11 months) and iOS requirement (8.0 vs 15.2). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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.
HNR holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 1.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 5 and 2 respectively.
HN Reader ships an update every 2 months, HNR every 11 months. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | HN Reader | HNR |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 1.8 (5 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 46.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 5 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 11 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 8.0 — better | 15.2 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 12 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Thomas Ricouard | Michael Hsieh |
Customer experience
HN Reader
HNR
In-app purchases
HN Reader
No in-app purchases
HNR
No in-app purchases
