TalkKing vs Pigeon
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
TalkKing
Connect with friends from your address book through live chat and messaging. Share text, photos, and even offline messages that are delivered when your friends are online. It offers a free alternative for instant communication.
- Live chat with friends
- Send text messages
- Share photos
- Offline message delivery
- Add friends from address book
- Free SMS invitations
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TalkKing is a live-chat application that allows you to add friends from your address book into the app. It is also named as TalkKing,Talk King,齐聊,齊聊,乜都傾,SMS,Instant Message,Whatsapp,WeChat,Facebook,LINE,Skype,MSN,Telegram. With TalkKing, you can send text messages, photos, and even offline messages to your friends. Whenever your friends open TalkKing, they can receive your offline messages or directly have a live chat with you! To receive the validation code when registering, please use your mobile phone number. An alternative to WhatsApp. 1. Free SMS 2. Send photos 3. Add friends from your phone's address book 4. Send invitation to your friends by Free SMS 5. Receive live message and notifications
Pigeon
This app offers end-to-end encrypted messaging with a focus on extreme privacy and security. It utilizes local Bluetooth mesh and federated relays for message delivery, ensuring no intermediary can read your communications.
- End-to-end encryption
- Bluetooth Low Energy mesh
- Federated zero-knowledge relays
- Local message exchange
- Open-source codebase
- Extreme privacy focus
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Pigeon is an end-to-end encrypted mesh messaging app for iOS. Pigeon's goal is extreme privacy and security across multiple delivery methods. The entire codebase is available on GitHub. Please note that Pigeon has not undergone an independent audit, but is built on top of an audited encryption library, vodozemac. Peers can exchange messages locally over a Bluetooth Low Energy mesh, or use federated zero-knowledge relays when they are out of local range. Messages are end-to-end encrypted regardless of how they travel; no transport, relay, or mesh hop can read them.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Pigeon at 5.0 against TalkKing's 4.3. Pigeon also leads on update cadence (every 9 days vs every 3 weeks). TalkKing's advantage is ratings volume (4 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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.
Pigeon holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 4 and 1 respectively.
TalkKing ships an update every 3 weeks, Pigeon every 9 days. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | TalkKing | Pigeon |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (4 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 10.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 4 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 9 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 12 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Reasonable Software | ISAIAH RUSSELL HARVILLE |
Customer experience
TalkKing
Pigeon
In-app purchases
TalkKing
No in-app purchases
Pigeon
No in-app purchases
