Comparison

AVSub vs NaviBeat

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

Head to head
About

AVSub

Access and stream your entire music and video library from your SubSonic server. Enjoy offline playback, multi-format support, and seamless casting to various devices. Features include playlist management, enhanced media information, and a user-friendly interface.

Highlights
  • SubSonic server integration
  • Multi-format audio and video streaming
  • Offline caching for playback
  • Playlist support
  • CarPlay and Apple Watch integration
  • Casting support (Chromecast, FireTV)
  • Enhanced media information
Features
Read full description

AVSub is a fully featured, multi-language music and video streaming (after in-app purchase) app for SubSonic. With multi-format (including FLAC) support, quick & easy browsing, caching for offline listening or viewing, playlist support and a great user interface, accessing your media is fast and simple. With full Bluetooth Audio, Apple Watch, CarPlay, Chromecast & Airplay support too, you can have your media with you anywhere, anytime. Connect AVSub to your licensed SubSonic server and you'll have access to your entire media collection. AVSub supports any audio format that SubSonic supports and SSL. AVSub's user interface is familiar and easy to use. Optimized views for both portrait & landscape orientations make the most of your device. AVSub has full Bluetooth Audio support - stream to any Bluetooth device (car stereo, amplifier, speaker, headphones) with superb quality. Bluetooth remote-control is fully supported. AVSub also fully suports CarPlay. The AVSub Apple Watch extension is the easiest way to get your Subsonic playlists and cached albums onto your watch. The extension supports full background playback. You can take your music with you even without your phone! AVSub supports offline caching so you can listen to your music or watch video even when you're not connected to the Internet. AVSub will intelligently cache what you listen to in the background, or you can choose to download tracks, albums or videos direct to the cache for quick pre-loading. Cache size is configurable, along with options such as cache reading & writing and the ability to control direct-downloading over a mobile/cellular network. AVSub supports Subsonic playlists and will intelligently cache tracks on your device. AVSub can be used on both WiFi or a mobile/cellular connection (3G/4G/5G). Audio caching ensure smoother playback. AVSub shows enhanced information for your media, recognising movies, TV, artists and giving bio information, top tracks and similar artists. With AVSub you can access your full media library by browsing, selecting from the most recently added, most recently played, most frequently played or highest rated tracks, or search over your entire library. AVSub also supports multiple SubSonic top-level music folders, allowing you to select an individual top-level folder, or your entire collection. You can browse by folder structure or ID3 tags. AVSub Features: - Universal app for iPhone & iPad - MP3/AAC/FLAC/MP4/ALAC/Vorbis/Opus/WAV/DSD - High-resolution digital audio output via CCK up to 24bit/192kHz - CarPlay - TMDb integration for full movie & TV posters and details - VLC integration - 10 band Equaliser - Mini player - AVCast support - Google Cast audio and video (after in-app purchase) - Supports all modern video codecs - Portrait and landscape - Video streaming with caching (in-app purchase) - Subsonic Jukebox (in-app purchase) - Home screen & Notification center widget with recent items - 3D Touch quick action shortcuts - Internet radio - Crossfade - SSL support, including self-signed certificates - Caching for all media - Folder & ID3 mode - Multi-disc album support - Artist Radio/Similar Songs - Intelligent Bookmarks - Podcasts - Gapless playback - Track seeking - Subsonic playlist support - Streams over 3G/4G/5G/WiFi - Maximum streaming bitrate control - Bluetooth Audio/Airplay support - Remembers your playlist from the last session - Streams from any licensed SubSonic server (v4.0 and up) - Browse/search music collection - Browse most recently added, recently played, frequently played, highest rated - Random albums/songs - Shuffle and repeat - Album cover art - Lock-screen integration - Documentation & guides available at the AVSub website

About

NaviBeat

Access your personal music library across all your Apple devices with a single purchase. This app connects to your self-hosted server, offering a beautiful, native experience for streaming and offline listening.

Highlights
  • Universal Purchase across Apple devices
  • Connects to self-hosted Navidrome server
  • Full library browsing
  • Voice and text search
  • Offline listening
  • Gapless playback
  • Lossless streaming
Features
Currently charting
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NaviBeat brings your own music library to every Apple device you own: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch, plus CarPlay, as a single Universal Purchase. Pay once. No subscriptions. No ads. No tracking. No NaviBeat cloud. Your music stays on your own server, exactly where you put it. NaviBeat just plays it, beautifully. ABOUT NAVIDROME NaviBeat is a client for Navidrome, the free and open-source self-hosted music server. Run Navidrome on a NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a VPS or any machine you control, and NaviBeat streams your collection to every Apple device. Airsonic-Advanced, Gonic and any OpenSubsonic server work too. ON iPHONE & iPAD - Browse artists, albums, playlists and genres - Voice and text search with live results - Now Playing with synced lyrics - Background audio, Control Center, AirPlay, Lock Screen and Home Screen widgets - Offline: keep a song, an album, a playlist or a whole artist on the device - Listening Stats: a 24-hour clock, a weekday heatmap, your top artists and songs - Smart Playlists you write yourself, from rating, genre, year, play count and more, kept current and synced across your devices - Start on one device and carry on with another. The device you left pauses itself IN THE CAR - Full CarPlay support, included in the same purchase - Your library, playlists, downloads and Now Playing on the car screen - Voice search that resolves the play command against your own library, not a streaming catalogue, in all 12 of the app's languages ON MAC - A real Mac app, not a phone app in a window - A Mini Player that pins over any window - Keyboard shortcuts, multi-window and directory browsing, desktop widgets - NaviSyncRock: sync your library to a Rockbox player. Your server does the transcoding, art is re-encoded so it renders, and plays sync back. A separate one-time in-app unlock. ON APPLE TV - Cinema-scale artwork and discovery shelves - Recently Played, Most Played, Rediscover, On This Day, Because You Listened To - Voice search via the Siri Remote - Full-screen Now Playing with synced lyrics ON APPLE WATCH - Now Playing complications on any watch face - Music stored on the watch and played from it, so you can run without your iPhone - Downloads pulled straight from your server over Wi-Fi AUDIO - Selectable high-fidelity playback engine - 10-band equalizer with presets - ReplayGain volume normalisation, per track or per album - Gapless playback - Streaming quality set separately for Wi-Fi and cellular, in Opus, AAC and MP3 tiers, or send the original file untouched - Internet radio YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR WAY - Multi-library Navidrome support: All Libraries, a single library, or any subset, filtered on the server - Star ratings synced to your server - Classical music: automatic work and movement grouping - Optional Last.fm and ListenBrainz integration. Scrobbles route through your own server, never directly from the app. - Server Health diagnostics: server type, version, OpenSubsonic extensions, scan status REACHING YOUR SERVER Built for a locked-down homelab. Custom HTTP headers for Cloudflare Access and Authelia, mTLS client certificates, and access over Tailscale all work, on every platform, with no third-party relay in between. TWELVE LANGUAGES English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, with an in-app language picker on every platform. REQUIREMENTS NaviBeat requires a running Navidrome server (v0.50 or later, free and open source) accessible from your Apple device. Self-host it on a home NAS, a Raspberry Pi, a VPS, or any machine you control. See navibeat.app for setup. NaviBeat is a third-party client, not affiliated with the Navidrome project. PRIVACY NaviBeat collects zero data. There is no NaviBeat backend, no analytics, no telemetry and no third-party SDKs. Your credentials live in your device's Keychain. Your listening history stays on device. See navibeat.app/privacy.

Screenshots

AVSub4 screens
NaviBeat4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: NaviBeat at 4.5 against AVSub's 3.8. NaviBeat also leads on review sentiment (83% vs 60%) and update cadence (weekly vs monthly). AVSub's advantage is price ($3.99 vs $5.99). On 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

AVSub costs $3.99 and NaviBeat $5.99 up front. AVSub sells 5 one-off in-app purchases and NaviBeat sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

NaviBeat holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 3.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 64 and 34 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 60% of AVSub's written reviews are positive against 83% of NaviBeat's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

AVSub ships an update monthly, NaviBeat weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard8 real differences · 3 level
AVSub versus NaviBeat: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAVSubNaviBeat
Price$3.99 — better$5.99
Rating3.8 (64 ratings)4.5 (34 ratings) — better
Positive reviews59.8% of reviews82.6% of reviews — better
Number of ratings64 — better34
Update frequencyMonthlyWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases — betterPaid
Best chart rank—#26 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple WatchiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size159 MB90 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperRichard LevyNenad Jokic

Customer experience

AVSub

All ratings65 ratings
Positive70.8%
Neutral4.6%
Negative24.6%
Written reviews82 reviews
Positive59.8%
Neutral9.8%
Negative30.5%

NaviBeat

All ratings32 ratings
Positive87.5%
Neutral3.1%
Negative9.4%
Written reviews46 reviews
Positive82.6%
Neutral6.5%
Negative10.9%

In-app purchases

5 purchases

AVSub

One-time5
  • Jukebox mode$0.99
  • Video Playback$1.99
  • Chromecast Video/Audio$2.99
Show 2 more
  • Fire TV support$2.99
  • Google Cast and Fire TV Support$4.99
2 purchases

NaviBeat

One-time2
  • Library Doctor$3.99
  • NaviSyncRock$4.99

Questions

Is AVSub free?
AVSub costs $3.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Is NaviBeat free?
NaviBeat costs $5.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, AVSub or NaviBeat?
NaviBeat is rated higher. AVSub averages 3.8 out of 5 from 64 ratings, while NaviBeat averages 4.5 from 34 ratings.
Do AVSub or NaviBeat have ads?
Neither AVSub nor NaviBeat shows ads.
Which is updated more often, AVSub or NaviBeat?
AVSub ships an update monthly, and NaviBeat weekly. Most recently, AVSub was updated on October 26, 2026 and NaviBeat on October 25, 2026.

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