Early Reader
Shares rank 3 of 4 educational software by recommenders
Free open-source app that teaches early reading with phonics, working offline once installed. Caveat: it handles only English phonemes, and some reviewers found it rushed.
Free open-source app that teaches early reading with phonics, working offline once installed. Caveat: it handles only English phonemes, and some reviewers found it rushed.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
Other educational software people recommend
The three most recommended other educational software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GCompris | 9 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| Lathoa math app for kids | 9 | 3 | 75% | 2 | — | — |
| Early ReaderThis page | 6 | 1 | 86% | 2 | — | — |
| i-Ready | 6 | 10 | 38% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it seems rushed. It's got potential but I wouldn't show it to my child in this state”
“The points you mentioned at are easily fixable”
“It uses only a single phoneme / sound for single letters, regardless of the actual phoneme used in the word.”
“Looks nice, on my iPhone (and maybe my iPad too?) I don't hear a voice at all.”
“Too bad it only handles English phonemes, as it would be very valuable for teaching other languages.”
“the app bundle is about 340MB for the first download but once you have it on your phone it will always work offline and load all assets instantly”
“I actually went through your repo on GitHub and really like the local-first approach with SQLite and pre-generated assets.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.