Seven internet radio apps for Mac and iPhone

For most people the choice comes down to how you want to pay. TuneIn and Simple Radio are free and carry ads. Eter and Broadcasts are free to try with a one-time unlock. Macdio costs $9.99 once for every Apple device with no ads and no subscription, and it is the only one of the seven that advertises recording. Radio Garden is the one to install for browsing rather than listening.

Where this comes from

I write Macdio, so read the section about it with that in mind. To keep the rest honest, every price, platform list and station count on this page was read from each app's own App Store listing in the United States store on 14 September 2026, not from memory and not from other review sites. Where a listing does not state something, the page says so instead of guessing.

That method has a limit worth naming. An App Store listing is marketing copy, so a station count is whatever the developer decided to print, and several of these apps pull from the same public directories, radio-browser.info among them. Treat the numbers as a rough size signal rather than a scoreboard. What separates these apps in daily use is the handling: how fast a station starts, whether the app knows what song is playing, what happens when a stream drops, and how much of your attention the interface asks for.

The seven apps compared

Every figure comes from each app's App Store listing in the United States store, read on 14 September 2026. "Not advertised" means the listing does not claim the feature, which is not proof that it is missing.

Macdio, for people who would rather buy it once

Macdio is $9.99 in the United States store, paid once, and that purchase covers iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch through Universal Purchase. There are no ads, no in-app purchases and no account. It carries 55,000+ stations from the RadioBrowser directory, plus any stream URL you paste in yourself.

The features that are hard to find elsewhere are recording and song identification. It records the stream itself rather than the speaker output, and Split by Track cuts a session into one file per song, each named with its own artwork, which is covered in the recording guide. Song identification reads the audio out of the stream, so it keeps working with the phone in a pocket and the app never asks for microphone permission. Synced lyrics scroll in time with what you are hearing. Favourites and history sync over iCloud between devices, and the watch app streams over LTE with no iPhone nearby.

Two limits to state plainly. Macdio needs iOS 26 or macOS 26, so it will not install on an older iPhone or an Intel Mac left behind by that release, and among the seven apps here it has the highest system requirement by a wide margin. And recordings stay inside the app: no export, no sharing, no copy into Files or Finder. That was a deliberate decision and it is not going to change.

Pick it if you want one payment, no advertising, and the recording and song naming features. Skip it if your device cannot run the current OS.

Eter, the free option that grows up well

Eter from Apparent Software is free to download and runs on macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS, with CarPlay included. It searches the radio-browser.info database and adds a hand-picked list of recommended stations, and you can add any stream URL of your own. A single one-time in-app purchase unlocks saved favourites and hides the recommended list so you only see your own stations. The listing sets a sleep timer alongside that, and unlimited listening is free even without the unlock.

Its App Store listing does not publish a station count and does not advertise recording. The minimum is iOS 16, so it reaches back several generations further than Macdio does.

Pick it if you want to spend nothing, see whether you like the app for a week, and pay a small amount only when favourites start to matter. It is the most sensible free starting point on this list.

Broadcasts, for people who curate their own list

Broadcasts, by Steven Troughton-Smith, takes the opposite approach to a giant directory: you build a library of the stations you actually listen to and it shows them as a grid of artwork. The free version keeps a limited-size library, and the full version unlock removes that limit and adds a Now Playing screen with station and track artwork. It syncs the library across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV over iCloud, is a Universal Purchase, supports CarPlay on certified head units, and uses Shazam in beta to fill in metadata when a station does not provide any.

Nothing in the listing mentions recording, and there is no advertised station count, because the directory is not the point of the app.

Pick it if you have a dozen stations you love, care about how they look on screen, and want your own artwork rather than a search field. Skip it if discovery is the reason you are installing a radio app at all.

Simple Radio, the one your parents will manage

Simple Radio from Streema advertises 90,000+ stations on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, and is free with display ads. Its Premium purchase removes those ads and adds a sleep timer. The interface is exactly what the name promises: a search field, a favourites list, and a big play button, with no settings worth getting lost in.

There is no Mac app in the Mac App Store listing, no recording mentioned, and the minimum is iOS 15, which covers most phones still in use.

Pick it when you are setting up a phone for someone who wants one station at one tap and will never explore a second screen. Skip it if ads between songs will bother you and you would rather not pay to remove them.

myTuner Radio, the global directory with a Mac version

myTuner Radio from Appgeneration advertises 50,000 radio stations and supports Apple Watch, Apple TV and CarPlay. The iPhone app is free with subscriptions running from $0.99 a week to $7.99 for six months, and there is a separate myTuner Radio Pro on the Mac App Store at $9.99. It also connects to Apple Music for playlists if you have a subscription there.

The listing does not describe the free tier's advertising, so this page does not claim either way, and recording is not mentioned. Minimum is iOS 15.

Pick it if you want a broad international directory and are comfortable with the subscription model, or if the one-off Mac Pro version fits how you listen. Read the subscription terms before tapping through, because weekly pricing adds up faster than it reads.

TuneIn, the biggest catalogue and the most advertising

TuneIn advertises 100,000+ stations, the largest count here, and reaches further than any other app on this list: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Alexa, Google Home and Sonos, plus a web player. That reach is the real reason to choose it. It is free with ads, and TuneIn Premium is a subscription that advertises ad-free news from CNBC, CNN and Fox News Radio, commercial-free music stations, and fewer ads elsewhere. A separate paid app, TuneIn Radio Pro, sells for $9.99 on the App Store.

TuneIn also carries live sport commentary that the smaller apps cannot license, which for some listeners settles the question on its own. What you pay for that is ad breaks in the app on top of the ones the station already broadcasts, and an account.

Pick it for sport, for smart speakers, or when a station you need is nowhere else. There is a longer comparison of Macdio and TuneIn if that is the choice you are weighing.

Radio Garden, the one you show people

Radio Garden Live puts stations on a spinning globe. Every green dot is a city, you tap it, and you are listening to something local in Reykjavik or Lagos. It is free, it runs on iPhone and iPad, and it is the most fun ten minutes on this page.

It is also the least maintained: the App Store listing shows the last update on 21 October 2023, which is nearly three years old at the time of writing. There is no station count published, no recording, and no Mac, Watch or TV app.

Install it for the globe and keep something else for daily listening.

What none of the seven can do

Some limits are the medium rather than the app, and they will follow you to whichever one you pick. An internet stream runs a few seconds behind the over the air broadcast, which only matters next to someone with a radio during a football match. Stations go down, change their URL without telling anyone, and sometimes block listeners outside their own country for rights reasons, so a dead station is usually the broadcaster's doing and not a bug in the player. The directories behind most of these apps are community maintained, which is why you will meet duplicate entries, wrong logos and stations filed under a genre nobody would guess.

None of them turns your phone into an FM receiver either. The hardware for that is not in an iPhone at all, which is covered in the FM radio answer.

Apps left out, and why

Apple Music has radio stations, but it is a music subscription with radio attached rather than a way to reach your local broadcaster, so it answers a different question. The Sonos and Alexa apps play internet radio well inside their own hardware and are not really Mac or iPhone players. Web players are fine at a desk and poor in a pocket, since a browser tab gives you no Lock Screen controls, no CarPlay and no sleep timer. The list above is limited to apps you install on an Apple device and open to listen.

How to choose in one minute

Start with the money. If you will not pay anything, Eter is the best free experience and Simple Radio is the easiest one to hand to someone else. If you dislike subscriptions but will pay once, Macdio, Broadcasts and myTuner Radio Pro are all one-time purchases with very different personalities: a full player, a curated library, and a directory.

Then check the device list. An older iPhone or an Intel Mac rules out Macdio immediately and points at Eter or Broadcasts. A smart speaker in the kitchen points at TuneIn. An Apple Watch used for running without a phone narrows it to the apps that stream on the watch itself.

Last, think about what you do while the radio is on. If you only ever press play, any of these works. If you keep hearing songs you want to find later, or you want to keep a show, that is where the recording and song identification features earn their price.

Frequently asked questions

If you want the paid one

Macdio is on the App Store for $9.99, once, for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch. No subscription, no ads, no account.