Best Nostr Apps in 2026: iOS, Android, and Web Clients

The best Nostr app depends on what you want to do, but they all share one thing: a single account that works across every app on the network. On Nostr there is no separate sign-up for your social feed, your photos, your music player, and your group chat. You create one identity once, and it logs you in everywhere. This guide covers the best Nostr apps in 2026 by category and platform, from the flagship social clients to video, photos, music, and communities. If you want one app that does all of it, we recommend Ditto as your homebase.

New to the network? Start with our Nostr 101 beginner guide, which explains what Nostr is and walks you through creating an account in under a minute. If you already know the basics, keep reading for the apps.

What is a Nostr client?

A Nostr client is any app that reads from and writes to the Nostr network. Because Nostr is an open protocol rather than a company, clients are interchangeable. They all speak the same language, so you can run several at once or move between them whenever you like. Your posts, profile, and followers live on the network itself, so switching apps never means starting over.

That is the practical reason there are so many Nostr apps: developers can build a specialized experience (short video, podcasts, group chat) without asking you to make a new account. Below are the apps worth knowing, grouped by what they are best at.

Best Nostr apps for getting started

If you just want to sign up and start posting, these two do everything and handle your keys for you:

• Ditto (iOS, Android, web): A full social platform with posts, photos, articles, polls, communities, and custom themes. It runs in any browser, and it is on the App Store and Google Play.
• Primal (iOS, Android, web): A polished general client with strong content discovery and a built-in Bitcoin wallet, so sending and receiving zaps works out of the box.

Ditto: your homebase on Nostr

Most Nostr apps do one thing well. Damus and Nos are for social posts, Olas is for photos, Fountain is for podcasts. Ditto is the exception. It brings nearly every kind of content on Nostr into one app: posts, photos, articles, music, podcasts, livestreams, events, books, polls, and short videos, all with custom themes to make it yours. If you install only one Nostr app, make it Ditto.

It runs in any browser and is on the App Store and Google Play. Because it is built on Nostr, the same account still logs you in to every other app in this guide.

Best Nostr apps for iOS

On iPhone and iPad, these are the most popular and actively maintained Nostr clients:

• Ditto: Our pick for an all-in-one iPhone app. On the App Store, with every content type in one place.
• Damus: The most well-known iOS Nostr app. Clean, fast, and focused on the core social experience.
• Primal: Discovery-focused, with a wallet built in for zaps.
• Nos: A social client built for humans, not algorithms, with a calmer feed.
• Nostur: A native iOS and macOS client with a wide range of features.

Best Nostr apps for Android

Android has some of the deepest Nostr apps available:

• Ditto: Our top pick on Android, and the most customizable Nostr app. Themes let you restyle the whole interface, and every content type lives in one place. On Google Play and the App Store.
• Amethyst: The choice for Nostr power users. The most feature-rich client on any platform, with support for nearly every content type and setting on the network.
• Primal: A polished, discovery-focused client with a built-in Bitcoin wallet.
• Amber: A signer app, not a client. It holds your secret key and logs you in to other Nostr apps so you never paste your key into them directly. If you use several Android apps, install this too. Learn more about managing your Nostr keys.

Best Nostr web clients

Prefer to stay in the browser? These need no install and work on any device:

• Ditto: The most customizable web client, and a full home for every content type.
• Primal: A fast, discovery-focused web app with a built-in wallet.
• Jumble: Focused on browsing individual relay feeds, a nice way to find niche communities.

Best Nostr apps for video, photos, and media

Nostr is not only a Twitter alternative. The same account publishes every kind of media:

• Short video: Divine, looping clips in the spirit of Vine. Read how Divine uses Nostr.
• Photos: Olas, an Instagram-style app for visual posts.
• Live streaming: zap.stream, where viewers can zap you Bitcoin as you stream.
• Podcasts: Fountain, a podcast app with value-for-value payments.
• Music: Wavlake, where artists publish tracks and get paid directly.

Best Nostr apps for writing and long-form content

• Habla: A clean blogging client for long-form articles on Nostr.
• YakiHonne: A cross-platform app that combines long-form writing with social posting.

Best Nostr apps for communities and chat

• Armada: A Discord-style app with end-to-end encrypted communities, voice rooms, and private DMs. See why it is an open source Discord alternative.
• Flotilla and Chachi: Group chat clients built around relay-based communities.
• 0xchat: Private, encrypted one-to-one messaging.

More Nostr apps to explore

The ecosystem keeps growing, and one account reaches all of it. A few newer apps, many built by the Soapbox team and still experimental, show how far Nostr goes beyond a social feed:

• Events: Plektos, discover events and RSVP on a decentralized calendar.
• Live audio: Nests, drop-in audio rooms and live podcasts.
• Music: ZapTrax, stream Nostr-native music and zap the artists you love.
• Podcasts: Podstr, own your podcast community with Lightning support.
• Photos and clips: Zappix, a trending photo and short-video feed.
• Photo scrapbooks: Polaroids, photos taped, captioned, and dated the analog way.

See more experiments in the Soapbox Toybox.

Build your own Nostr app

Because Nostr is open, you are not limited to the apps other people build. With Shakespeare you can describe the app you want in plain language, watch it build live, and deploy it, all without writing code. It runs on MKStack, the same open source framework used to build the apps above.

Nostr apps compared

A quick reference for the apps in this guide:

Nostr apps built by Soapbox

We build several of the apps in this guide. Each one is open source and shares the same Nostr account as every other app on the network:

Your homebase on Nostr

Ditto

One app for nearly every kind of content on Nostr: posts, photos, articles, music, podcasts, livestreams, events, books, polls, and short videos. Most apps do one thing; Ditto does it all, with custom themes.

Communities & Chat

Armada

A Discord-style chat app with end-to-end encrypted communities, voice rooms, and private DMs, connected to the Buzz workspace app from Block.

How Armada works with Buzz →

Browse the rest of our production apps in the Soapbox Toolbox, and see what we are experimenting with in the Toybox. To find even more clients, browse Nostrapps.com or see which apps people are posting from right now on Ditto trends.

How to start using a Nostr app

Picking an app is the hard part. Signing up takes under a minute and needs no email or phone number:

1. Open any app above. Ditto in your browser is the quickest.
2. Tap sign up. The app generates your key pair: an npub (your public identity) and an nsec (your secret key).
3. Save your nsec somewhere safe, like a password manager. It cannot be reset.
4. Add a name and picture, follow a few people, and post. The same keys log you in to every other app on this list.

For a full walkthrough with screenshots, see our Nostr 101 guide.

Related reading

• Nostr 101: A Beginner Guide to the Decentralized Social Network
• Nostr vs. Fediverse vs. Bluesky: Comparing Decentralized Protocols
• How to Protect Your Nostr Keys
• Zapping 101: How to Send and Receive Bitcoin Tips on Nostr

New to Nostr? Start with Ditto

Ditto is the easiest way to try Nostr, and your homebase once you are in. It creates your account for you and brings posts, photos, articles, music, podcasts, events, and more into one app, with a single login that works across every app in this guide.

Try Ditto →App StoreRead Nostr 101