Alternatives and competitors

Sites like iNaturalist

The 20 closest citizen science biodiversity alternatives to iNaturalist, ranked by what they actually offer, and the 6 technologies behind it.

Looking for an alternative to iNaturalist? The closest matches are Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic and Our World in Data. We match sites by what they actually offer, from their homepages, Wikidata and a summary by Claude, in any language. Vote on each alternative and leave a short note to help the next person choose.

Neighbours
k = 20
Sites searched
4,032
Vector
384-d
Query
19 ms

01 · Entity

About iNaturalist

iNaturalist inaturalist.org

A Community for Naturalists · iNaturalist

iNaturalist is a social network for naturalists! Record your observations of plants and animals, share them with friends and researchers, and learn about the natural world.

Wikidata: citizen science project and website

Top 10K · #4,716 English 6 technologies Crawled Nov 6, 2026
Visit iNaturalist

Summary by Claude

A nonprofit citizen science website and mobile app where users record photos and sounds of plants, animals and fungi, get automated and community species identifications, and contribute observations as open biodiversity data for researchers.

Who it’s for
Naturalists, nature enthusiasts, students and biodiversity researchers
Business model
Nonprofit, donations and grants

02 · Embedding space

Competitor map

Each alternative by how close its vector is to iNaturalist’s (x) and how much traffic it gets, how much of the stack it shares, or where it sits in the embedding space itself (y). Lines split each axis at the median. Hover for the numbers, click to jump to it in the list.

similarity × popularity

code.orgWikimedia movementFur AffinityNational Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationOSFLive ScienceResearchGateOur World in DataNational GeographicSmithsonian Institution

03 · Nearest neighbours

Alternatives to iNaturalist

Thumbs up if it’s a real alternative to iNaturalist, thumbs down if it isn’t.

Only in English
  1. 01
    Smithsonian Institution si.edu Top 10K English

    Smithsonian request verification

    group of museums and research centers administered by the United States government

  2. 02
    National Geographic nationalgeographic.com Top 10K English

    National Geographic

    Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

  3. 03
    Our World in Data ourworldindata.org Top 10K English

    Our World in Data

    Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.

  4. 04
    ResearchGate researchgate.net Top 1K English

    ResearchGate - Temporarily Unavailable

    commercial scientific social network

  5. 05
    Live Science livescience.com Top 10K English

    Live Science | Latest science news and articles for those with curious minds

    Daily discoveries, groundbreaking research and fascinating science breakthroughs that impact you and the wider world, reported by our expert journalists.

  6. 06
    OSF osf.io Top 10K English

    OSF

    tools that make open science practice easier

  7. 07

    ERROR: The request could not be satisfied

    agency in the United States Federal Government

  8. 08
    Fur Affinity furaffinity.net Top 10K English

    Index -- Fur Affinity [dot] net

    Fur Affinity | For all things fluff, scaled, and feathered!

  9. 09
    Wikimedia movement wikimedia.org Top 1K English

    Wikimedia Error

    global social movement for free educational knowledge

  10. 10
    National Academies nationalacademies.org Top 10K English

    National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

    Our work helps shape sound policies, inform public opinion, and advance the pursuit of science, engineering, and medicine.

  11. 11
    code.org Top 10K English

    Free K–12 Curriculum for Digital Fluency | CodeAI

    Bring computer science and AI education to your classroom with CodeAI’s free K–12 curriculum, hands-on projects, and teacher professional development—no prior experience needed.

  12. 12
    Ecosia ecosia.org Top 10K

    Ecosia Firewall

    web search engine and browser

  13. 13
    DOI.org query endpoint doi.org Top 1K English

    Home Page

    API endpoint

  14. 14
    ScienceAlert sciencealert.com Top 10K English

    ScienceAlert : The Best in Science News And Amazing Breakthroughs

    The latest science news. Publishing independent, fact-checked reporting on health, space, nature, technology, and the environment.

  15. 15
    Product Hunt producthunt.com Top 10K English

    product discovery website

  16. 16
    AllTrails alltrails.com Top 10K English

    AllTrails: Trail Guides & Maps for Hiking, Camping, and Running | AllTrails

    Explore the outdoors with AllTrails, the best app for hiking, biking, and running. Discover curated guides, trail maps, photos, and reviews for over 500,000 trails worldwide.

  17. 17
    Pew Research Center pewresearch.org Top 10K English

    Pew Research Center | Nonpartisan, nonadvocacy, public opinion polling and data-driven social science research

    Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

  18. 18
    CNRS cnrs.fr Top 10K English

    Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)

    Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique est le plus grand organisme public français de recherche scientifique. Il exerce son activité dans

  19. 19
    Instructables instructables.com Top 10K English

    Yours for the making

    Instructables is a community for people who like to make things. Come explore, share, and make your next project with us!

  20. 20
    Nature nature.com Top 1K English

    Nature

    First published in 1869, Nature is the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journal. Nature publishes the finest peer-reviewed research that drives ground-breaking discovery, and is read by thought-leaders and decision-makers around the world.

Ranked by score: the cosine similarity of each site’s vector to inaturalist.org’s, less a small penalty for generic sites that are close to everything. Highlighted technologies are ones iNaturalist uses too. Votes and comments come from visitors and don’t change the ranking.

04 · Fingerprints

Technology

What iNaturalist is built with, and what its closest competitors use, from its homepage’s code and its DNS records.

Built with

CSS & UI
  • Font Awesome asset https://www.inaturalist.org/assets/font-awesome-984749df86781cc8bb037169d69b5f93ce36ed5be…
Analytics
CDN
Languages & backends
  • Ruby on Rails page source: <meta name="csrf-param" content="authenticity_token"
Email hosting
SaaS tools (verified in DNS)

Stack changes

No changes yet. Each new crawl is compared with the last one, and what iNaturalist adds or drops shows up here.

SimilarSiteSearch

Competitors by meaning, stacks from the source. Data from public homepages and DNS.

About our crawler