FishRadar and Fishing Points look similar at first glance — both forecast fishing conditions, both show tides and solunar data, both let you log catches and identify fish from a photo. But they answer the "when should I fish?" question in fundamentally different ways. This comparison shows what each app actually does and who should pick which.
FishRadar scores any coast, lake, or river 0–100 using live environmental data — satellite sea-surface temperature, bathymetry, currents, wind, waves, and barometric pressure — refreshed hourly. The score reflects what conditions are doing right now at that exact spot.
Fishing Points predicts best fishing times primarily from solunar theory and tide timing — moon phases, sun events, and tidal movement — presented as a calendar of feeding windows, with weather, wave, and tide forecasts shown alongside. It's also a strong spot-keeping and navigation tool: saved locations, trolling paths, and GPS guidance back to your marks.
Put simply: Fishing Points tells you when the solunar calendar says fish should feed. FishRadar tells you what the water is actually doing today.
| Feature | FishRadar | Fishing Points |
|---|---|---|
| Scoring approach | Live ocean + weather data + AI model, 0–100 spot score | Solunar theory + tides feeding-time calendar |
| Forecast data | Satellite SST, bathymetry, currents, wind, waves, pressure, moon/solunar, tides | Solunar, tides, weather, wind, waves, sun/moon |
| Planning horizon | Hourly conditions, short-range forecast | Up to 3 months of tide/solunar calendars (Premium) |
| Saved spots & navigation | Favorites + zone scoring; no route-back navigation | Saved locations, trolling paths/trotlines, GPS/compass navigation, KMZ/KML/GPX import |
| Fish sound detection | Yes — Ear can detect the calls some fish species make (on-device) | No |
| Rod watch / strike alarm | Yes — Sentry Mode watches your rod and saves strike video | No |
| AI fish ID | Yes — from photo | Yes — from photo |
| Catch logging | Simple private log with conditions | Private logbook with automatic weather/tide data |
| Fishing regulations | GPS-linked regulations reference | Fish rules for select US states |
| Maps | Global bathymetry overlays, offline regions | Worldwide nautical charts (Premium), satellite layers, offline NOAA charts, 50,000+ boat ramps |
| Community features | None — individual use | None — individual use |
| Ads on free tier | No ads | Yes (ad-free is a Premium feature) |
| Price (yearly) | $19.99 Pro / $24.90 Captain | Premium subscription, monthly or yearly, 7-day trial |
| Platforms | iOS + Android | iOS + Android + web forecast pages |
Fishing Points builds its fish activity forecast on solunar theory and tides. That has real advantages: it's predictable months ahead (Premium extends best-times, tide, and sun/moon calendars up to 3 months), which is genuinely useful for planning a trip weeks out. The weakness is that a solunar calendar can't see today's water — a perfect moon window means little when a cold front just killed the bite or the current went slack.
FishRadar starts from the same solunar and tide inputs but layers live data on top: satellite sea-surface temperature, current speed and direction, wind, waves, and pressure trends, refreshed hourly and scored 0–100 per spot. It's built to answer "is this spot good today?" rather than "what does the calendar say?"
Advantage: Fishing Points for long-range trip planning; FishRadar for knowing whether conditions are actually worth fishing right now.
Fishing Points is the stronger spot-management tool, and it's fair to say so plainly. You can save locations, record trolling paths and trotlines, navigate back to them with GPS and compass, import waypoints from KMZ/KML/GPX files, and sync across devices. Premium adds worldwide nautical charts, river heights and flows, rain radar, and advanced map layers. The free tier currently caps saved locations at a handful; Premium removes the limit.
FishRadar shows global bathymetric depth overlays and downloadable offline regions, and its Captain tier adds boat features (AIS fleet overlay, routing, anchor alarm). But it has no waypoint import, no trolling-path recording, and no navigate-back-to-spot flow. If your workflow revolves around a library of marked spots and paths, Fishing Points fits better.
Advantage: Fishing Points for spot libraries and getting back to your marks. FishRadar for scoring which of those spots is worth visiting today.
Two FishRadar features have no equivalent in Fishing Points:
Ear — fish sound detection. Many fish species make real, documented sounds — drumming, croaking, spawning choruses. FishRadar's Ear feature listens through your phone and can detect and name some of these calls on-device, with a live spectrogram. It has honest limits — whether anything is detectable depends on the species, the water, and your setup — and the educational side (which fish make sounds, what they sound like) is free for everyone.
Sentry Mode — rod watch. Point your phone at a rod tip (or let it feel strikes in a rod holder), and it alarms on movement and saves the moment as a video clip. It detects movement, never a fish — but it means you stop staring at a rod for hours, and you keep the strike on video.
If neither matters to your fishing, ignore them. If you soak baits on passive rods or fish waters with vocal species, no other mainstream app offers either.
FishRadar:
Fishing Points:
Both use a freemium subscription model. Fishing Points' free tier is a genuinely usable daily-forecast app; FishRadar's free tier is a genuinely usable 3-zone scorer. Fishing Points gates its planning horizon and map depth behind Premium; FishRadar gates forecast depth and boat features behind two clearly separated tiers.
Advantage: roughly even — FishRadar's tiering is more granular; Fishing Points offers a free trial and an ad-supported free tier with broader map tooling.
Choose FishRadar if you:
Choose Fishing Points if you:
These two apps overlap less than their feature lists suggest. Fishing Points is a spot manager and solunar planner — excellent at remembering where you fish and telling you the calendar-best times far in advance. FishRadar is a live-conditions forecaster — built to score what the water is doing right now and to add sensing tools (Ear, Sentry) no other mainstream app has.
Plenty of anglers would be well served by both: Fishing Points to plan the trip and hold the waypoints, FishRadar to pick the day and the spot when conditions actually line up. If you only want one, choose by workflow: calendar-and-waypoints → Fishing Points; live-score-and-go → FishRadar.
FishRadar is free on iOS and Android — 3 free zones, global coverage, no ads. Upgrade to Pro or Captain anytime.
Fishing Points is free on iOS and Android, with a Premium subscription (7-day trial) for the full planning horizon and nautical charts.
Try both on the same water for a week — one will match the way you actually fish.
Get the FishRadar app
Live scores update through the day. Get the full forecast, bite windows, and your own saved spots in the FishRadar app.