Orvik vs Seek
Orvik or Seek: paying for the half that was never alive
Orvik is our app and Seek is free, so this page has to earn its argument rather than assert it. Seek is genuinely excellent and for a large share of readers it is the right answer on its own. The gap is specific and structural, and it is worth stating precisely rather than vaguely.
Seek for anything alive, and it is hard to argue with: free with no in-app purchases, no account, identification on the device with nothing uploaded, and it works with no signal. Orvik covers the half Seek does not — rocks, fossils, coins and made objects — because naturalist apps are built on taxonomies of life.
Which should you pick?
- Seek You photograph living things, you want it free with nothing attached, you are handing the phone to a child, or you are somewhere with no signal.
- Orvik You also photograph rocks, fossils, coins and objects, or you want ranked near-misses rather than a stop at genus.
Side by side
| Orvik | Seek | |
|---|---|---|
| Published by | Vast Flow, an independent studio | iNaturalist, a non-profit joint initiative |
| Cost | Free tier plus subscription | Free outright |
| Rating | Not yet rated | 4.8 (30,894) |
| Works offline | No | Yes |
| Human verification | No | No |
| Download size | 160 MB | 212 MB |
| Languages | 14 | 30 |
| Last updated | 2026-06-25 | 2026-07-27 |
| Plants | Yes | Yes |
| Insects | Yes | Yes |
| Animals | Yes | Yes |
| Birds | Yes | Yes |
| Rocks | Yes | — |
| Collectibles | Yes | — |
| Food | Yes | Yes |
| Nature | Yes | Yes |
What each one costs
| App | Download | In-app purchases | Cheapest | Dearest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orvik | Free | 2 tiers | $4.99 | $29.99 |
| Seek | Free | None | — | — |
What Seek does better than us
Four things, and they are not concessions for form's sake.
It is free with nothing to buy. On 2026-09-03 its listing carried no in-app purchases at all; ours carried 2 between $4.99 and $29.99.
It identifies on the device. Nothing is uploaded, so there is no server-side record of what you photographed or where. We identify server-side and cannot make that claim.
It works with no signal. A canyon, abroad without data, a plane. We stop.
It has 31,000 ratings at 4.8, against our 0. That is real evidence and we do not have an equivalent yet.
The gap, stated precisely
Seek, iNaturalist and PlantNet are built on taxonomies of living things — databases organised by biology and populated by naturalists. A rock has no taxonomic position. Neither does a coin, a piece of pottery, a tool or an arrowhead. Fossils are the interesting edge case: once alive, now mineral, and covered by none of them.
This is not a gap somebody could close with more training data. It is what those apps are, and it is the correct scope for what they are for.
The consequence is that the free, institution-backed option which exists so well for plants, birds and insects has no equivalent for the mineral and made-object half of what people photograph. There is no Cornell Lab of geology shipping a free scanner. That absence is the honest argument for a general identifier.
Stopping at genus, or showing the shortlist
Seek refuses to guess below its confidence threshold, showing kingdom, then class, then order, then family as its certainty rises, and stopping there. For a classroom that is exactly right — a confident wrong name is worse than none for a child.
Orvik returns a ranked shortlist with the near-misses visible. The reasoning is the same one PlantNet applies: identification errors cluster on look-alike pairs rather than scattering, so seeing that the second candidate is close is what tells you to check a diagnostic character.
Neither is right in general. If you would rather be told less than the model knows, Seek. If you would rather see the model's uncertainty and resolve it yourself, a shortlist.
What we would actually recommend
Install Seek. It costs nothing, it is excellent, and for a large share of what people point cameras at it is the complete answer. Add PlantNet, also free, if wild plants matter to you, and Merlin, also free, if birds do.
Consider a general identifier only if you regularly photograph the non-living half — stones on a beach, fossils in a quarry, coins in a drawer, a mark on the base of a jug. That is a real population of people and it is who we built for.
And before any of that, the 28 free tools on this site need no app at all: keys for minerals, tracks, eggs and fossils, plus field calculators, free in a browser with no account.
Privacy, honestly
Seek identifies on the phone, so the photograph never leaves it. That is a genuine architectural advantage and it is worth naming clearly on a page comparing it with a server-side app like ours.
If nothing-leaves-the-device is a requirement for you, this comparison is already decided, and the two apps that satisfy it are Seek for living things and Merlin for birds. No general identifier we know of runs on-device across eight subject domains, ours included, because the models involved do not fit in a phone yet.
Where these figures come from
Every price, tier, rating, version, size and update date is read from each app's US App Store listing on 2026-09-03 through Apple's Lookup API and product pages — ours included, which is why our review count appears as it does.
Why nobody runs eight domains on the device
Seek identifies on the phone and we do not, so the constraint is worth explaining rather than leaving as a shortcoming.
An on-device model has to fit in phone memory and run on phone silicon, which caps how many classes it can distinguish. Seek spends that budget on living things and accepts stopping at genus as the price. Merlin spends it on birds, which is why its regional packs are large downloads and why you need the right one for where you are.
Covering plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food and natural phenomena at useful depth does not fit in that budget today — not for us and not for anyone else we are aware of. Server-side identification is the trade that makes breadth possible, and the cost is a connection and a photograph leaving the device.
That is a real trade rather than an oversight. If the privacy side of it matters more to you than the breadth, Seek is the correct choice and this page has said so.
Questions people ask
Is Seek free?
Completely. Its US App Store listing carried no in-app purchases at all on 2026-09-03, with no account and no advertising, published by a non-profit joint initiative. Identification runs on the device, so photographs are never uploaded.
Why would I pay for Orvik when Seek is free?
Only for the half Seek does not cover. Seek, iNaturalist and PlantNet are built on taxonomies of living things, so rocks, fossils, coins and made objects sit outside all of them by definition. If you never photograph those, Seek is the better answer and we would say so.
Can Seek identify rocks or coins?
No. It is a naturalist tool built on a taxonomy of life, and stone was never alive. Neither can iNaturalist or PlantNet. Minerals are decided by streak, hardness and cleavage anyway — properties no camera measures — which is why our free mineral key asks you to test them.
Does Orvik work offline?
No. Identification runs on our servers, so it needs a connection. Seek identifies entirely on the device and works with no signal, which is a real advantage it has over us and over almost every other identifier.
Which is better for children?
Seek, without qualification. No account, no advertising, no in-app purchases, no chat, no uploads, and a badge system designed for that audience. Its refusal to guess is a child-safety feature as much as an epistemic one, because a wrong confident name is what a child would remember.
Why does Orvik show several answers instead of one?
Because identification errors cluster on look-alike pairs rather than scattering randomly, and seeing the runner-up is what prompts you to check a diagnostic character. It is the same instinct PlantNet has. Seek takes the other route and refuses to answer below its threshold, which is equally defensible.
Or skip the choice and carry one app
Orvik covers plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food and natural phenomena in a single camera. Free to download, and the near-misses stay visible so you can check the call.
Keep reading on Orvik
Other comparisons
Where these figures come from
- Prices, in-app purchase tiers, ratings, versions, download sizes and update dates are read from each app’s US App Store listing on 2026-09-03 using Apple’s own Lookup API and product pages. Nothing on this page is a figure somebody typed from memory, and the build fails if one appears.
- Apple does not publish billing periods next to in-app purchase names, so where two tiers share a name they are usually the same subscription billed over different terms. Check the current price in the App Store before you buy anything.
- Scope and behaviour — what each app identifies, whether it works offline, whether a human confirms the result — come from the apps’ own listings and from using them.
- Orvik is our app. We have tried to be specific about where these competitors are better, because a comparison that never concedes anything is not worth reading.