HN Reader vs Native Reader for Hacker News
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.
Native Reader for Hacker News
Explore Hacker News with advanced filtering and customizable text sizes. Share articles easily and hide unwanted stories with a swipe. Enjoy an ad-free reading experience with dark mode options.
- Filter stories by Rank, Points, or Comments
- Responsive text sizes
- Share articles to social platforms
- Swipe to hide stories
- Ad-free reading
- Dark mode
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Experience Hacker News like never before with our new app! Take full advantage of your iOS device to: * Explore the Top 100 Hacker News stories in innovative ways: filter by Rank, Points, or Comments. * Enjoy fully responsive text sizes that cater to your reading comfort. * Share the articles that resonate with you across all your favorite social platforms. * Quickly hide stories from your feed with a simple swipe to the left! * Immerse yourself in ad-free reading with built-in reader mode. * Switch to dark mode for comfortable reading day or night.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Native Reader for Hacker News at 4.2 against HN Reader's 1.8. Native Reader for Hacker News also leads on update cadence (every 2 days vs every 2 months). HN Reader's advantage is review sentiment (47% vs 20%) and iOS requirement (8.0 vs 16.4). 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.
Native Reader for Hacker News holds the better App Store score, 4.2 against 1.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 5 and 5 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 47% of HN Reader's written reviews are positive against 20% of Native Reader for Hacker News's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
HN Reader ships an update every 2 months, Native Reader for Hacker News every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on September 19, 2026 and October 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | HN Reader | Native Reader for Hacker News |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 1.8 (5 ratings) | 4.2 (5 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 46.7% of reviews — better | 20.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 5 | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 8.0 — better | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 12 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Thomas Ricouard | Cristian Monterroza |
Customer experience
HN Reader
Native Reader for Hacker News
In-app purchases
HN Reader
No in-app purchases
Native Reader for Hacker News
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is HN Reader free?
Is Native Reader for Hacker News free?
Which has better reviews, HN Reader or Native Reader for Hacker News?
Do HN Reader or Native Reader for Hacker News have ads?
Which is updated more often, HN Reader or Native Reader for Hacker News?
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