Seeing AI vs Cuebird
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Seeing AI
This free app uses AI to narrate the visual world for individuals who are blind or have low vision. It describes people, text, and objects, assisting with daily tasks like reading documents, identifying products, and recognizing faces.
- Read text and documents
- Describe photos and objects
- Scan product barcodes
- Recognize people and currency
- Identify personal objects
- Augmented reality environment exploration
- Identify colors and light levels
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Seeing AI is a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed with and for the blind and low vision community, this ongoing research project harnesses the power of AI to open up the visual world by describing nearby people, text and objects. Seeing AI provides tools to assist with a variety of daily tasks: • Read - Hear text as soon as it appears in front of the camera. Document alignment provides audio cues to capture a printed page and recognize the text along with its original formatting. Ask Seeing AI about the contents to easily find the information you need. • Describe - Take photos to hear a rich description. Ask questions to focus on the information you care about. Explore photos by moving your finger over the screen to hear the location of different objects. • Products - Scan barcodes and Accessible QR codes using audio beeps to guide you; hear the product name and package information when available. • People - Save photos of friends and coworkers so you can recognize them later. Get an estimate of their age, gender, and expression. • Currency - Recognize currency notes. • Find My Things - Teach Seeing AI to recognize your personal objects and follow the audio cues to find them later. • World - An Audio Augmented Reality experience to explore an unfamiliar environment, including hearing objects announced around you with Spatial Audio (requires a device with a LiDAR, and iOS 14+). • Colors - Identify colors. • Light - Hear an audible tone corresponding to the brightness of your surroundings. • Photos and Videos in other apps - Just tap “Share” and “Recognize with Seeing AI” to describe media from Mail, Photos, WhatsApp, and more. • Browse Photos - Hear descriptions of photos and videos saved on your device. Seeing AI continues to evolve as we hear from the community, and AI research advances. Visit http://SeeingAI.com for more details. Questions, feedback or feature requests? Email us at SeeingAI@Microsoft.com.
Cuebird
This app helps users manage daily routines with visual and auditory cues, breaking them down into timed, color-coded steps. It supports shared routines for households and adapts to individual timing to ensure tasks are completed on schedule.
- Timed, color-coded routine steps
- Shared household routines
- Visual time bar for routine overview
- Auditory cues and voice recordings
- Proportional routine compression
- Real alarms, not notifications
- Adaptive timing based on actual usage
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See the time, hear your next step, walk out the door on time. Cuebird turns any routine (morning, lunch break, bedtime) into small, timed, color-coded steps and moves you through them automatically. Built for neurodivergent adults. Kind to every brain. HOUSEHOLDS Link the people you live with into a household. Start a routine and everyone gets a gentle offer to jump in, landing where you already are, not back at step one. Joining is one tap, and sitting one out is free: nobody is ever told either way. Be in more than one household at once, your own and the one at your mum's, and every routine says which one it came from. It is all end-to-end encrypted. DO IT TOGETHER In the same room, run a routine in step. Everyone starts on a shared 3, 2, 1, and pause, skip, or a minute back move for the whole group at once, so nobody is left behind. Near each other it is instant. Apart, it stays in sync across your household. Want your own timing? One tap, and your routine keeps going on its own. INVITE BY TEXT, OR BY QR Send someone a link. They tap it and they are in, even if your phone is closed. Together in person? Show the code on your screen for them to scan. Either way, one tap and they are in the household. TIME YOU CAN SEE While a routine runs, the whole screen becomes the current step's color. From across the room, mid-shower, without reading: blue means shower, amber means coffee. A color bar of the steps shows the shape of your time before you start. OUT THE DOOR ON TIME Set when a routine starts and when you have to be done. Cuebird shows the window, adds up your steps, and tells you plainly whether they fit. Running late? One control compresses the routine so you still walk out on time. HEAR YOUR NEXT STEP A chime marks every transition, or let Cuebird speak: "Next: Shower, 10 minutes." A 30-second heads-up warns before longer steps end. Prefer quiet? Silent mode keeps it to haptics. You can also record any step in your own voice. Recordings stay on your device and never sync. REAL ALARMS, NOT NOTIFICATIONS Give a routine a start time and days, and it rings with the system's full-screen alarm: through silent mode, through Focus, even with the app closed. Tap Start and you are already in it. BUILT THE WAY YOUR WEEK ACTUALLY WORKS One routine can ring at several times, each with its own days: weekdays at 7:00, weekends at 9:00. Your list sorts itself around today, and the Schedule view shows everything that will ring this week. IT LEARNS YOUR REAL TIMING Cuebird records every run and shows how long your routine ACTUALLY takes versus what you planned: "Morning really takes 42 minutes, not 35." Then it updates your plan with one tap. STARTING IS ONE TAP Every routine has a play button right on its card, no menus between you and momentum. For the times you do not need a whole routine, Quick Timer and Ring Me At are one tap away. NO SHAME BUILT IN Pause says "no rush." Skipping is a first-class button, and if you skip by mistake you can undo it. Need a minute back? Take one. Finishing celebrates every run, and one missed day never breaks your streak. That is what the habit-formation research actually says. Cuebird never scolds you. EVERYWHERE YOU NEED IT - Lock Screen and Dynamic Island Live Activity: glance without opening the app - Home Screen widget: start a routine in one tap - Apple Watch: your step and countdown on your wrist; pause, resume or skip from there - Siri and Shortcuts: "Start Morning in Cuebird," or run routines from your automations - Mac: runs on Apple silicon Macs too ONE PURCHASE COVERS YOUR FAMILY Family Sharing is on, so up to six family members get it with one purchase. You can also send any routine as a link, ready for their own times. ONE-TIME PURCHASE Buy it once. No subscription, no ads, no accounts, no analytics, no data collection. Your own routines sync through your private iCloud, no login ever. Households stay end-to-end encrypted, and Cuebird has no servers and cannot read any of it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Seeing AI at Free against Cuebird's $0.99. Seeing AI also leads on ratings volume (632 vs 2) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). Cuebird's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.3) and review sentiment (100% vs 69%). On 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
Seeing AI is free to download; Cuebird costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Cuebird holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Seeing AI has 632 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 69% of Seeing AI's written reviews are positive against 100% of Cuebird's.
Seeing AI ships an update every 2 months, Cuebird daily. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Seeing AI | Cuebird |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 4.3 (632 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 68.6% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 632 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Daily — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 309 MB | 10 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Microsoft Corporation | Michael Petrillo |
Customer experience
Seeing AI
Cuebird
Bugs and requests
Seeing AI
Reported bugs
3 issues- Barcode scanning not working consistently
- Document reader sometimes fails to load or process documents
- Frequent crashes or app becoming unresponsive
Requested features
6 requests- Add support for more languages, including Arabic and Chinese
- Improve accuracy of color and facial recognition
- Allow users to read digital displays like clocks and appliances
- Integrate with screen readers like VoiceOver for better accessibility
- Add an offline mode for using the app without an internet connection
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- Provide more customization options for voice settings
Cuebird
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Seeing AI
No in-app purchases
Cuebird
No in-app purchases









