Native Reader for Hacker News vs HackerWeb
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
HackerWeb
A clean and readable client for Hacker News, designed with iOS guidelines in mind. It offers intuitive navigation for stories and comments, automatic dark mode, and code syntax highlighting.
- Dual Web and Comments tabs
- Revolutionary comments thread UI
- Automatic Dark mode
- Smart indentations and formatting
- Automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks
- Upvoting and replying
- Comment's 'Thread view'
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HackerWeb is a super-clean Hacker News app built for maximum readability and has a lean set of features to optimize the reading experience. It’s created specifically with iOS design guidelines in mind, so it feels native and blends well with the operating system. It has a simple set of features that are usually invisible: - Dual Web and Comments tabs for easy switching between the story’s web page and the list of comments - Revolutionary comments thread UI for easy navigation, with smart collapsing to prevent being overwhelmed by too many comments - Automatic Dark mode, respecting the system’s appearance settings. - Smart indentations and formatting for comments, complementing the existing limited formatting from Hacker News. - Automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks in comments, with best-effort programming language detection. - Allow interactions like upvoting and replying, which opens up web view with login information and sessions stored in itself, instead of the app. - Comment’s “Thread view” to list all parent comments of a comment, on a flat list, for easy reading instead of manually drilling down the nested comments. - “Share as Image” for comments, which allows sharing of a specific comment, optionally including the parent comments and/or story, as an image. HackerWeb is an unofficial Hacker News client, built with React Native and Expo. This is a passion side project for learning and experimenting ideas. Since 2012. Open-sourced: https://github.com/cheeaun/hackerweb-native-2
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: HackerWeb at 86% against Native Reader for Hacker News's 20%. HackerWeb also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.2) and chart position (#36 vs unranked). Native Reader for Hacker News's advantage is price (Free vs $2.99) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 5 months). On ratings volume, 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
Native Reader for Hacker News is free to download; HackerWeb costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
HackerWeb holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.2. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 5 and 10 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 20% of Native Reader for Hacker News's written reviews are positive against 86% of HackerWeb's.
Native Reader for Hacker News ships an update every 2 days, HackerWeb every 5 months. The most recent releases landed on October 3, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Native Reader for Hacker News | HackerWeb |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $2.99 |
| Rating | 4.2 (5 ratings) | 5.0 (10 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 20.0% of reviews | 85.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 5 | 10 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Every 5 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #36 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 29 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Cristian Monterroza | Chee Aun Lim |
Customer experience
Native Reader for Hacker News
HackerWeb
In-app purchases
Native Reader for Hacker News
No in-app purchases
HackerWeb
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Native Reader for Hacker News free?
Is HackerWeb free?
Which has better reviews, Native Reader for Hacker News or HackerWeb?
Do Native Reader for Hacker News or HackerWeb have ads?
Which is updated more often, Native Reader for Hacker News or HackerWeb?
Other comparisons
