# iNaturalist 52 Hacker News commenters recommended iNaturalist and 18 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 6 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Free app and website for identifying and recording wildlife, with community experts confirming IDs; critics find location privacy hard to find and the interface confusing. ## Why people recommend it - Identifies plants and animals well (4 comments): "I have found great value in assistive tools Merlin and Seek/iNaturalist for bird and plant identification." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200119)) "I use it to ID cool insects I come across, I get responses within few minutes to hours." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46549915)) "it's great, it really helped me learn about my local fauna" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47629879)) - Data useful for science and research (4 comments): "The fact that a citizen science platform accidentally produced one of the most important biodiversity ML datasets is kind of remarkable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47631425)) "It's a massive dataset. There's nothing quite like it. The way people collaborate and verify information on iNat is invaluable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46549854)) "It's a living biodiversity record. That kind of data has had an impact on things like" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46549496)) - Easy to use, good usability (3 comments): "I really like how easy it is to use, the various views on the data (incl. geofenced projects and places), the fact you can export it all back out again" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47632920)) "in terms of usability it's uncommonly good compared to most biodiversity platforms" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630320)) "it does everything Seek does, but better and it’s generally also faster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550584)) - Fun, like Pokémon for wildlife (3 comments): "iNaturalist [1] is kind of "gamified". Has a rather large "bird" taxon observation amount." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45892526)) "the app is great, feels like pokemon for animals in chicago" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47641209)) "It's the closest thing to real-life Pokemon I know of." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634734)) ## What people warn about - Exposes home locations by default (4 comments): "it's also a significant doxxing risk especially for the large number of non-technical users" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630205)) "a fair number of users add enough detail to make me think that they don't realize that their info is so public" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630593)) "I do agree, and on iNat I can clearly see my house and the house of a few other people in the neighborhood." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47644098)) - Models and process not open (4 comments): "as they don't publish their models or model-building-process, it's non-replicable, so in my view it's not Science" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47642097)) "it's not capital-S Science unless they make the model build path open and others can replicate and test it freely" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47648176)) "They should publish their models and build process. If it's not available for replication, it's not science." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630035)) - Location privacy controls hard to find (2 comments): "It has options to hide or obscure the location, which I use whenever I'm anywhere near my house, but it should be a little better about prompting users to use that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630479)) "There's an option to obscure the exact location of plants, but it's not obvious." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630468)) - Confusing interface and buttons (2 comments): "the little infographic that shows "how it works" looks like the cloudflare warning when cloudflare can't connect to the host" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630563)) "iNaturalist confuses even me about what buttons I'm supposed to be pressing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47644417)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Flora Incognita](https://hackerapproved.com/p/flora-incognita.md): 6 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.inaturalist.org/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "iNaturalist", https://hackerapproved.com/p/inaturalist/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).