Guide
The best birding apps in 2026, by the job you need done
There is no best birding app, because birding is three or four different jobs and no app does all of them well. This is the one we would pick for each — and, since we make one of them, which one that is and why.
To identify a bird: Merlin Bird ID
Our pick
Merlin Bird ID Free
From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the app that has brought more people into birding than any book. Three ways in: hold the phone up and Sound ID names what is singing, as it sings; give it a photograph; or answer three questions — size, colours, what it was doing — and get a shortlist for where you are. Download the pack for your region and all of it works with no signal.
What to know: Sound ID is a suggestion, not a verdict. It is confident, it is sometimes wrong, and the birds it names are the birds it heard, which are not always the birds you saw. Treat it as the friend who says “Swainson’s Thrush, I think” — and then look.
Audubon Bird Guide Free
A field guide in the pocket, from the National Audubon Society: more than 800 North American species with several photographs each, songs, and range maps that show season as well as place. This is the app to open when Merlin offers you two candidates and you need to read about both.
Sibley Birds v2 One-off purchase
David Sibley’s paintings, which show the field marks a photograph hides, with similar species side by side and the songs alongside. Worth paying for once you are past the beginner stage and find yourself arguing with photographs.
Collins Bird Guide One-off purchase
For Britain and Europe: the standard field guide with its plates and text intact. It is the app European birders reach for, and there is no free equivalent of its quality.
iBird Pro Subscription
The long-running North American guide, now sold as a subscription. Its strength is searching by what you can see — size, colour, where you are — which suits someone who does not yet know which page of a guide to turn to.
To keep the checklist: Bunting
The checklist is the job that outlasts the others. Identifying a bird takes a minute; the record of having seen it is something you keep for the rest of your life — what it was, how many, where you were standing, what the morning was like. Most apps treat this as data entry. We think it is a notebook, and that the best notebook is the one you can write in without looking down.
Our pick
Bunting Free
Hold a button and say the bird — “three mallards” — and it is in your checklist before you have lowered your binoculars. The speech recognition is built from the species catalogue rather than general dictation, so counts and regional names come through, and it runs on the phone, so it works with no signal at all. Every sighting is pinned to the GPS coordinates you were standing on when you said it, on a trail you can choose to record. The journal keeps outings by day, the life list keeps itself, and your eBird records come in and go out whenever you like.
What to know: Bunting does not identify birds. It listens for the name you say, not for the bird, and it is for people who already know what they are looking at — Merlin first, then Bunting. An account is needed so a journal survives a lost phone. iPhone on iOS 26 or later; Android 8.0 or later.
When to pick something else:
eBird Free
If you want your records to count for science, this is the database they need to end up in: every checklist submitted joins the largest bird dataset in the world, and the researchers who use it are real. It works offline once you have downloaded a pack, and its Explore tab is the best bird-finding tool there is. As a notebook it is a form: you look down, you type, and it is built around complete checklists with effort recorded, which is right for science and heavy for a walk. Bunting exports to eBird, so nobody has to choose.
Birda Free, with a paid tier
If the company is the point. Birda is the social one — follow friends, join challenges, see what is being logged near you — and it has been called the Strava of birding for a reason. A subscription unlocks the extras; the logging is free.
iNaturalist Free
If you record the dragonfly and the orchid as well as the warbler. Observations go to a community that helps identify them, and the confirmed ones feed the GBIF database. It is a naturalist’s app rather than a birder’s, which is exactly right for some people.
Merlin’s Life List Free
If a tally is all you want. Tap This is my bird after an identification and Merlin keeps a list of the species. There are no counts, no outings and no notes, so it is a list rather than a journal — but it is one tap, and it is already on your phone.
| App | Best for | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Bunting | The journal: voice logging, GPS on every sighting, works offline | Free |
| eBird | Records that count for science | Free |
| Birda | Company, challenges, following friends | Free, paid tier |
| iNaturalist | Everything that is not a bird as well | Free |
| Merlin Life List | A tally of species, nothing more | Free |
To find birds: eBird Explore, and BirdsEye
eBird Explore Free
Built into the eBird app and the website: hotspots near you, what has been seen at each this week, and bar charts of what to expect in any month. If you are going somewhere new, this is the first thing to open the night before.
BirdsEye Bird Finding Guide Free to install, membership by region
eBird’s sightings re-cut as a single question — what is around me right now that I have not seen? — with photographs, sounds and notes from regional experts. The membership earns its keep for travelling birders; at home, eBird Explore does most of the same for nothing.
BirdGuides Subscription
In Britain, the rare bird news service. A subscription gets you the alerts as they happen, which is the only way to be at the reservoir before the bird leaves.
Bunting has an Explore map of recent sightings from its own users. It is useful where they are and thin where they are not; for finding birds, eBird’s data is the one to trust.
To learn the songs: Larkwire and BirdNET
Larkwire Paid, by song pack
A game that teaches songs in groups of birds that sound alike, which is the way anyone actually learns them. Ten minutes a day for a month and the spring dawn stops being a wall of noise.
BirdNET Free
Sound identification from the Cornell Lab and Chemnitz University of Technology, built as a research app. Less polished than Merlin’s Sound ID and covering more of the world’s species; record a few seconds and it tells you what it thinks it heard. Good as a second opinion.
What we would install
Three apps, all free. Merlin to work out what you are looking at. Bunting to write it down without looking away. eBird if you want the record to count for something beyond your own list — and Bunting will hand your outings over. Add a paid field guide when you find yourself wanting to read rather than be told; add Larkwire when you decide to learn the songs properly.
If you keep only one, keep Merlin until you know what you are looking at. Then get a notebook, because the point of knowing is to remember.
Questions people ask
Do I need more than one birding app?
Two, at least: one to identify a bird and one to record it. Merlin does the first job; Bunting or eBird does the second. They are different jobs, and an app that tries to do both tends to do one of them badly.
Which birding apps are free?
Merlin Bird ID, eBird, the Audubon Bird Guide, iNaturalist, BirdNET and Bunting are free. Birda is free with a paid tier. Sibley Birds and the Collins Bird Guide are one-off purchases; iBird Pro, BirdsEye memberships and BirdGuides are subscriptions.
Which birding app works without a signal?
Merlin and eBird do once you have downloaded the pack for your region, and the field guide apps carry their content on the phone. Bunting works entirely offline: voice logging, species search and the journal all run on the phone, and entries sync whenever a connection turns up.
Should I use Bunting or eBird?
Both, if your records matter to you beyond your own list. Bunting is the journal you write on the walk, by voice; eBird is the database that science reads. Bunting imports your eBird history and exports your outings back to it.
