Apps 14 min read

Solar monitoring on iOS: comparing the options in 2026

Four PVOutput apps, a few manufacturer apps, and the choice between them

Let me be upfront about my conflict of interest before this article starts. I built HelioPeak, one of the apps this article will compare, and that is an unavoidable bias in everything that follows. I will try to be honest about strengths and weaknesses across the field. I will recommend competitors where they fit better than HelioPeak does. I will name HelioPeak's limitations alongside its strengths. But you should still read this with the awareness that the author is not a neutral observer, and you should check the App Store reviews of every app mentioned here before deciding which one to install.

With that out of the way, this article walks through the actual choices facing an iOS user who wants to monitor a residential solar installation in 2026. There are two fundamental decisions to make, and most owners have already made the first one without realising it.

The two paths: manufacturer or independent

The first decision is whether to use the app that came with your inverter, or a third-party app that talks to a separate data layer.

Manufacturer apps are bundled with the inverter when you buy it. Enphase systems get Enphase Enlighten. SolarEdge systems get mySolarEdge. Fronius gets Solar.web. SMA gets Sunny Portal or SMA Energy. GoodWe has SEMS Portal. Huawei has FusionSolar. These apps are typically free, are designed specifically for the inverter brand, and offer the most detailed view of that specific equipment. The downsides are that they are tied to one vendor, they vary considerably in polish and feature set, and they often disappear or change drastically when the manufacturer pivots its product strategy. SolarEdge has restructured its app twice in the last five years. SunPower's app effectively orphaned its users when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2024.

Independent apps sit on top of a separate data layer. The most common one in the European solar community is PVOutput, which we covered in detail in What is PVOutput.org, and why solar owners keep coming back and Getting your data into PVOutput. PVOutput is a free service that accepts data from almost any inverter brand (via various upload routes) and stores it in a standard format. Any app that knows how to talk to PVOutput can then show that data, regardless of which inverter is producing it. The independent layer protects you from vendor lock-in and from any single manufacturer's app strategy changing.

Most Belgian residential owners I have spoken to end up using both. The manufacturer app for installation, commissioning, and any features that depend on inverter-specific functions (firmware updates, remote configuration, panel-level diagnostics for optimiser or microinverter systems). The independent app for daily reading, multi-year analysis, multiple-system comparison, and anything where the data outliving the inverter matters.

This article focuses on the independent path, because that is where there is a real choice to make. The manufacturer app is whatever shipped with your hardware; you can use it, complain about it, or ignore it, but you do not generally choose it.

The case for an independent app on top of PVOutput

The argument for adding an independent app to your manufacturer app is simple: data permanence and platform independence. Your panels will likely outlive your inverter, your inverter will likely outlive its first manufacturer app revision, and the data those panels produce for 25-plus years is worth keeping in a format you control.

PVOutput as a data backbone gives you that permanence. The data lives in your PVOutput account, not in any single app's database. If you change inverters in year ten, the historical data is still there. If you change phones, the data is still there. If a particular app stops being maintained, you can switch to another one without losing anything.

The independent layer also gives you analytical capabilities that manufacturer apps usually do not. Cross-system comparison. Multi-year specific yield calculation. Standardised performance ratio. Export to CSV for spreadsheet analysis. Notes attached to specific dates. Annual report PDFs. The community on forum.pvoutput.org where owners compare data across thousands of similar systems.

The downside is that PVOutput requires data to be uploaded to it. We covered the upload routes in Getting your data into PVOutput: direct push from some inverter brands, the PVOutput Auto Uploader for others, a Home Assistant bridge for the most flexible setup, or custom scripts. None of these is hard, but each adds a step beyond simply installing the manufacturer app and looking at it.

If you have your data in PVOutput, what app do you actually use to look at it on iOS?

The four PVOutput iOS apps in 2026

The current iOS landscape for PVOutput viewing apps has four serious entries, in roughly chronological order of when they appeared on the App Store.

PV Output by Mark McDonald

PV Output by Mark McDonald (yes, the developer's name is in the app name, which is consistent with how he has always done it) is the longest-running PVOutput app on iOS. It has been around since the early 2010s and is also available for Android, where it has tens of thousands of installs. The feature set is comprehensive: live feeds with animated power flow visualisations, system pages with intraday/daily/monthly/yearly views, customisable dashboards, comparison between two dates, team and favourites support, home screen widgets.

The pricing is a yearly subscription with a seven-day free trial, currently around €5 to €10 per year depending on the region. There is also a basic widget tier that remains free.

The strengths are completeness and longevity. If a feature has been requested by the PVOutput community in the past decade, there is a decent chance it landed in this app eventually. The animated power-flow display is iconic and works well as an in-home display.

The weaknesses, from my honest assessment, are the visual design and the subscription model. The UI shows its age: it predates SwiftUI by a long way and the design language has not aged well in the era of iOS 17 and 18. Some users report bugs and rough edges that have persisted across versions. The subscription model is unusual in the PVOutput community, where most users come from the tradition of one-time purchases or free tools. If you do not mind either of those things, the feature breadth is genuinely impressive.

PVOutput Plus by Ton Snoei

PVOutput Plus by Ton Snoei is the second-oldest active app, originally released around 2021. Its pitch is straightforward: manage your PVOutput.org PV systems, view daily/weekly/monthly/yearly data, combine two systems' data, compare with any other system on PVOutput. The app supports iOS 10.0 and later, which means it runs on a very wide range of devices, and includes a Mac version (M1 and later) and a visionOS version.

The price is a one-time purchase, which puts it in the more traditional PVOutput pricing camp.

The honest assessment from App Store reviews suggests the app has reliability issues in its current state. Multiple recent reviewers report that the daily view loads only blankly or that other views "keep loading for ages". This may be a transient bug, a server-side issue with PVOutput's API, or a sign that the app is not being actively maintained. As of the last App Store update I can find, it has been a while since visible feature work. I am noting this for transparency rather than as a judgment; the developer may have plans, and an update may resolve the issues.

If the reliability concerns are addressed, the feature set covers most of what a casual PVOutput user needs, and the one-time pricing is attractive.

MyPVOutput by wodnik7

MyPVOutput is the newest of the established apps, released by a developer who goes by wodnik7 in the PVOutput community. It is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac (M1 and later), with a free tier covering one system and a one-time purchase (around €3.50 to €4 at the time of writing) unlocking unlimited systems.

The app has been visibly active in development over the past year. Recent updates have added consumption tracking, detailed day-by-day historical data, and other features. The developer is responsive on the PVOutput forum, which is a good signal for ongoing support. The visual style is more modern than the older apps, and the basic workflow is clean.

The current limitation is language support: the app is available in three languages. For Belgian users on a multilingual device, this may or may not matter depending on which three languages those are.

For users who want a simple, actively developed, one-time-purchase PVOutput app on iOS in 2026, MyPVOutput is the most direct competitor to HelioPeak and the one I most often suggest to people whose needs do not require everything HelioPeak offers.

HelioPeak

HelioPeak is the app I built, so this section is unavoidably the one with the most bias. I will try to be specific about what it does and does not offer, and you should weigh that against the previous sections.

HelioPeak is a native SwiftUI app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with universal app architecture (one app, all three platforms). It supports six languages out of the box (EN, NL, FR, DE, IT, ES). The pricing model is one-time: a free tier covering one real system plus a demo, and a one-time €6.99 IAP for unlimited systems. The base app is one-time and is intended to stay that way; a separate optional Pro tier might be added in the future for new features that justify ongoing revenue (such as live forecasting or cloud aggregation), but if it arrives it will be additive, the core app will remain a one-time purchase for the people who already have it and for new buyers who only want the core functionality.

What HelioPeak emphasises in its current state:

What HelioPeak does not currently do, and what would push you to a different app:

The honest summary is that HelioPeak is positioned for owners who value multi-year analytical depth, a polished native iOS experience on all three Apple platforms, a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, multilingual support, and the long view. If those are your priorities, it is worth trying. If you need any of the missing features above, one of the other apps will fit you better, and I would rather you use the right tool than struggle with mine.

How to choose

For most Belgian residential owners I have talked to, the decision tree looks roughly like this.

If your inverter is from a major brand (Enphase, SolarEdge, Fronius, SMA, GoodWe, Huawei) and you have not yet uploaded to PVOutput, start with the manufacturer's app. It is free, it is integrated, and for many owners it covers the daily-glance use case adequately. The independent-app question can wait until you decide whether you want the multi-year permanence and the cross-system comparison that PVOutput provides.

If you already have data in PVOutput, the question is which iOS app to use for viewing. Try the free tier of two or three of the four apps above, see which one matches your daily reading habits, and commit to that one. A two-week trial of each (which the free tiers permit) is enough to know.

If you want the most feature-complete option and a subscription does not bother you, the McDonald app is the most comprehensive.

If you want the simplest free or low-cost option and one of the supported languages fits, MyPVOutput is the cleanest entry point.

If you want multi-year analysis, native Mac and iPad experience, six-language support, and a one-time purchase, HelioPeak fits that brief.

If your needs are extremely basic, the free tier of any of the above is probably enough. You do not need to pay for solar monitoring on iOS unless the paid features actually serve a need you have.

What is missing from this comparison

A few honest caveats about what this article does not cover.

It does not cover Android. The Belgian household with a mix of iOS and Android devices needs a different conversation, and the PVOutput community has Android-specific apps (the same McDonald app is the dominant Android option, and several Android-only alternatives exist). Cross-platform is a real consideration.

It does not cover Home Assistant as a monitoring front-end. Home Assistant on iOS via the Companion app is a different beast: not specifically a solar app, but capable of being configured as one for technical users who want to build their own dashboard. For a non-trivial subset of Belgian solar owners, this is the right answer.

It does not cover web-only solutions. PVOutput's own website at pvoutput.org remains a fully functional way to view your data. For users who do most of their reading on a desktop browser, no iOS app is strictly necessary.

It does not cover battery-specific apps. Sonnen, Marstek, and similar battery brands have their own apps with their own logic. We touched on this in Home batteries in 2026, and the broader point stands: in 2026, a battery-equipped solar household typically looks at three apps to see their full energy picture, and the consolidation problem has not yet been solved by anyone.

A small recommendation about subscriptions

One final observation, which is not about HelioPeak specifically but about the category. In 2026, the trend across software is increasingly toward subscription pricing, including for solar monitoring. Some of the apps in this article use subscription models; others stick with one-time purchases. The arguments for and against subscriptions are well-rehearsed in software circles, but for solar monitoring specifically, there is one consideration worth flagging.

Solar panels are a 25-year investment. The data they produce is, in some sense, also a 25-year asset. Paying a subscription for 25 years adds up to significantly more than a one-time purchase, even for a relatively inexpensive subscription. €5 per year for 25 years is €125. €10 per year for 25 years is €250. Both are larger numbers than any of the one-time purchase prices in this article.

This is not an argument against subscriptions in general; ongoing revenue genuinely funds ongoing development, and an actively developed app may be worth €5 per year. It is an argument for thinking about what you are paying for over the lifetime of your solar installation, not just over the next year. If the subscription pays for active development that you value, it is worth it. If you have been paying it on autopilot and the app has not meaningfully changed in three years, it might be worth reviewing.

The right answer for any specific owner depends on what features they actually use and what pricing model they prefer. The wrong answer is to not think about it at all.

Closing

The iOS solar monitoring landscape in 2026 is small but mature. Four serious PVOutput apps, several capable manufacturer apps, the Home Assistant route for technical users, and the PVOutput website as a fallback for everyone. The choice between them is genuinely a matter of personal preference and use case, not of one app being objectively better than the others.

The thing that matters more than the app choice, in the end, is having the data in a format that outlives the app. PVOutput as a backbone does this. Whatever app you use to read that data is replaceable; the data itself, sitting in your PVOutput account, is what compounds value over the 25 years your panels are on the roof.

Pick whichever app gives you the daily reading experience you want, and trust that the data underneath is portable. If the app changes, the data does not. That is the whole point of the independent layer.

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