Start with the one fact that shapes every recommendation below: there is no official mempool.space app for iOS. The mempool.space team ships a website and an Android app, so on iPhone you choose between the web experience and a native third-party app. Here's an honest look at your options, sorted by what you actually want to do.
The one thing to know first
Search the App Store for "mempool" and you'll find plenty of apps, but none of them is the official mempool.space app, because that doesn't exist on iOS. mempool.space maintains the canonical web explorer and an official Android app, while iPhone users are pointed at the website. The full background is in our guide on whether there's an official mempool app for iPhone.
The upside: because mempool.space exposes a clean, public, no-account API, independent native apps can build a genuine iOS experience on top of the same data. That's the landscape you're choosing from.
How to pick by use case
"Best" depends entirely on the job. A few honest questions to narrow it down:
- Do you want one app for everything? Mempool, fees, a block explorer, charts and wallets in a single place point you toward an all-rounder.
- Do you mostly look up transactions and blocks? A dedicated block-explorer app, or just the website on a big screen, may be enough.
- Do you only care about fees? A lightweight fee-alert app can ping you when sat/vB drops.
- Do you live on your Home Screen? Widget-focused apps specialise here, though several lean on subscriptions.
Pricing across these categories drifts, so treat any number you read online with caution and check the App Store for current pricing before you commit.
Best free all-rounder: Bitcoin Insight
If you want a single native app that covers most of what people open mempool.space for, Bitcoin Insight is our recommended free all-rounder, and yes, we're the publisher, so weigh that accordingly. It's a native iOS app (iOS 17+) that pulls live data from the public mempool.space API, with a CoinGecko fallback for pricing, and folds it into one calm dashboard.
- Live dashboard, price with a 24h sparkline, mempool size, low/medium/high sat/vB fees, block height, hashrate, difficulty, Moscow time, supply, halving countdown and Lightning stats.
- Built-in block explorer, search any transaction, block or address, with a live latest-blocks feed and read-only address lookup.
- Interactive charts, finger-scrubbable price history reaching back to around 2011, plus network metrics.
- Watch-only wallets, track an xpub, ypub or zpub or a single address; private keys are rejected, derivation happens on-device, and keys live in the Keychain behind Face ID, Touch ID or Optic ID.
- 14 widgets, Home and Lock Screen widgets in 19 fiat currencies.
It's free and open source under the MIT license, with no accounts, no ads and no tracking. The only paid item is a one-time unlock for the widgets, there's no subscription. Bitcoin Insight is independent and not affiliated with mempool.space or Apple; the code is on GitHub if you want to read it.
The reference data source: mempool.space
No roundup is honest without it: mempool.space is the reference Bitcoin explorer that most native apps, including ours, build on. It's web-based, works in any browser, and can be installed as a PWA on your Home Screen. On a desktop or a tablet, the full website is hard to beat for deep exploration.
The trade-off on iPhone is that a saved-to-Home-Screen website isn't a true native app: no real WidgetKit widgets, weaker offline behaviour, and navigation that never feels quite as fluid as native. For glanceable, everyday use on a phone, that's exactly where a native app earns its place. If you're new to the data itself, start with how to read the Bitcoin mempool.
Other categories of apps
Beyond an all-rounder and the website, the App Store has a few recurring styles. We'll describe them in general terms rather than naming and ranking individual apps, since features and pricing change often.
Dedicated block-explorer apps
These focus on lookups: paste a transaction ID, block or address and read the details. They can be clean and fast for that single job, but often skip charts, watch-only wallets or widgets. Good if exploration is all you need.
Fee-alert apps
Lightweight tools built around one question, what are fees doing right now? Some add push notifications when sat/vB crosses a threshold. Handy if timing a transaction is your only concern; less useful as a full network dashboard.
Widget-focused apps
These lead with Home and Lock Screen widgets and price tickers. They can look great, but several rely on recurring subscriptions to unlock the good widgets, so read the terms and check the App Store for current pricing before subscribing.
At-a-glance comparison
A general, category-level comparison, not a scorecard of specific products. Cells are intentionally hedged because capabilities vary within each category over time.
| Option | Native iOS | Block explorer | Watch-only wallets | Widgets | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin Insight | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free; one-time widget unlock, no subscription |
| mempool.space website / PWA | No (web / PWA) | Yes (reference) | No | Limited | Free |
| Dedicated block-explorer apps | Usually | Yes | Sometimes | Sometimes | Varies, check the App Store |
| Fee-alert apps | Usually | Rarely | Rarely | Sometimes | Varies, check the App Store |
| Widget-focused apps | Usually | Sometimes | Sometimes | Yes (focus) | Often subscription, check the App Store |
This is a general comparison of app categories, not a ranking of named competitors. Bitcoin Insight is the publisher of this guide, so please judge our recommendation on the verifiable facts above and try the alternatives yourself.
FAQ
What is the best mempool app for iPhone?
It depends on what you need, but for most people a native all-rounder is the best fit. Bitcoin Insight brings live mempool data, network fees, a block explorer, charts, watch-only wallets and widgets into one free iOS app with no accounts, no ads and no subscription. If you only want raw explorer data on a big screen, the mempool.space website is the reference source. For current pricing of any paid alternative, check the App Store.
Is there an official mempool.space iOS app?
No. mempool.space publishes an official Android app, but there is no official native mempool app for iOS. On iPhone you either use the mempool.space website or a third-party native app such as Bitcoin Insight, which is built on the public mempool.space API.
Is Bitcoin Insight free?
Yes. Bitcoin Insight is free and open source under the MIT license, with no accounts, no ads, no tracking and no subscription. The only paid item is a one-time unlock for the Home and Lock Screen widgets. Everything else, including the block explorer and watch-only wallets, is free.