APPSPECTOR ALTERNATIVE
AppSpector is still up and still bills by traffic — but it has no MCP endpoint, so your coding agent can't see the app. AppTelepath opens the same class of data — logs, network, database, files, screenshots, UI hierarchy — as tools an agent calls directly, and adds tap and text input on top. iOS only today, free beta, no credit card.
iOS SDK · hosted MCP · free beta
Two reasons to move, one reason to stay.
If Claude Code, Codex or Cursor writes most of your changes, the bottleneck is that it can't see the result. Pasting screenshots and log excerpts by hand is exactly the work this removes.
AppSpector meters relayed traffic — $19 a month for 2 GB at the entry tier. AppTelepath's plans price by concurrent devices with traffic as a monthly quota, and agents and devices never take a seat. Nothing is billable during the beta.
AppTelepath is iOS-only. Android and React Native are on the roadmap and not started. If Android debugging is why you pay AppSpector, keep paying it.
AppSpector is not shut down. The service is up, signup is open, and the paid tiers bill: Developer starts at $19 a month for 2 GB of relayed traffic, and the published range reaches $999 a month for 1024 GB, after a 14-day trial that takes no card. As a classic session monitor for iOS and Android, it works.
What has gone quiet is the client side. The iOS SDK's last commit is 17 February 2025 (v1.5), and its Swift Package Manager repository stopped the same day. The Flutter plugin's last release is July 2023. The site footer reads © 2018–2024, and the newest entry in the official changelog is dated eight years ago. None of that breaks an app you already have integrated — it is the shape of a product in maintenance.
The gap that matters in 2026 isn't a missing panel. AppSpector exposes no MCP endpoint and no agent-facing tool interface, so a coding agent cannot read the running app. You become the transport layer: screenshot, paste, describe, repeat. That is the specific job AppTelepath was built to remove.
Row by row, with the numbers we could verify.
| AppSpector | AppTelepath | |
|---|---|---|
| Real devices and simulators | Yes — SDK linked into the app | Yes — SDK linked into the app |
| SDK required | Yes. Register the app in the web monitor, then paste its API key into the SDK. | Yes. One CocoaPods line. Over MCP the agent adds it and issues the device credential itself — nobody copies a token. |
| AI agent interface | None as of August 2026. No MCP endpoint, no agent tool interface. | Hosted remote MCP at apptelepath.com/mcp, plus HTTP and SSE for agents that don't speak MCP. |
| Driving the app | No UI hierarchy, tap or text-input tools documented. | Tap and type by stable element ref; simulated location, push and poor network. |
| Billing axis | Relayed traffic. $19 a month for 2 GB at the entry tier, up to $999 a month for 1024 GB. | Concurrent devices, with traffic as a monthly quota. Free beta now — billing isn't open and prices aren't published yet. |
| Seats | People. Team 8 is $99 a month with 5 seats. | People only — agents and devices take no seat. |
| Platform coverage | iOS and Android SDKs; the Flutter plugin's last release is July 2023. | iOS only. Android and React Native are on the roadmap, not started. |
| Data retention | 14 days of session history. | 14 days on Trial and Solo, 30 days on Team; data stays readable through the retention window even after a plan lapses. |
| Client SDK activity | iOS SDK v1.5, last commit 17 February 2025. | iOS SDK 3.0, public beta, in active development. |
AppSpector figures were checked against its website and public repositories in August 2026; prices and limits change, so verify before you buy. This is a capability comparison, not an obituary — AppSpector is running and taking customers.
The same underlying data a classic monitor collects, in a shape an agent can act on without a human relaying it.
Every node in the hierarchy carries a stable ref. The agent passes that ref straight to a tap or a text input — no coordinate guessing, and an expired ref errors out instead of hitting the wrong control.
The default hierarchy response is a summary — interactive elements and visible text, not tens of thousands of nodes. Screenshots become a choice rather than the only way to see the screen.
Clustered error logs, failed requests, crashes and hangs from the last window, ranked by severity — instead of an agent scrolling a raw log stream and guessing.
A tap returns what changed: screen transition, elements that appeared and disappeared, error logs and failed requests in between. Usually no follow-up screenshot is needed.
Record a run as a timeline of logs, network, performance and periodic screenshots, then replay, filter or export it. The agent and a person read the same recording.
GET /api/devices, GET /api/screenshot, POST /api/invoke, and an SSE stream at /api/events. Any script or CI job with an HTTP client is a client.
The live demo on the home page runs the same calls an agent makes against a running app.
Open live demoThree steps. The agent does two of them.
Add the hosted MCP endpoint to your client and authorize once in the browser. No npm package, no stdio process.
The agent issues a device-only credential, adds the pod, writes the build settings and the start call, then launches the app and confirms the device is online.
From there it answers from the device — logs, requests, the current screen — instead of from your description of them.
# Claude Code claude mcp add --transport http apptelepath https://apptelepath.com/mcp # Codex CLI codex mcp add apptelepath --url https://apptelepath.com/mcp \ --oauth-client-id https://apptelepath.com/oauth/clients/codex-cli.json codex mcp login apptelepath
# Podfile · debug and internal test configurations only pod 'AppTelepath', '~> 3.0', :configurations => ['Debug', 'Staging'] // AppDelegate.swift #if TELEPATH_ENABLED import Telepath Telepath.start() // reads the workspace credential from build settings #endif
Guard the call with your own compilation condition rather than #if DEBUG — TestFlight and Ad Hoc builds are Release-class configurations. The credential the agent issues opens a device connection only; it cannot call the MCP, HTTP or controller APIs.
Four limits worth knowing before you migrate.
Android, React Native, HarmonyOS and Flutter are on the roadmap and unstarted. A workspace is designed to hold every platform, but only iOS devices can connect right now.
The SDK detects its distribution channel at runtime and refuses to start in App Store builds; TestFlight needs an explicit opt-in. It is a development tool, not production monitoring.
AppTelepath is the hosted Cloudflare service. There is no self-hosted edition; the local relay in the repository is a development and test host, not a deployment option.
The free beta runs on Trial quotas — 2 devices, 1 GB a month, 1 seat, 14 days of retention — with no expiry date today. Billing isn't switched on yet, so paid pricing isn't published.
No. As of August 2026 the service is up, signup is open, and it bills from $19 a month by relayed traffic. What has stalled is the client side: the iOS SDK's last commit is 17 February 2025, the Flutter plugin's last release is July 2023, and the site footer still reads 2018–2024. If it covers what you need, it works.
Keep them in separate build configurations rather than in one binary. Both are debug-only SDKs that intercept networking and logging, and isolating them keeps it obvious which probe is responsible when something behaves oddly.
Not as of August 2026. It ships mobile SDKs and a web monitor, with no MCP endpoint and no agent-facing tool interface. AppTelepath's MCP endpoint is https://apptelepath.com/mcp, and agents that cannot speak MCP use the HTTP and SSE APIs instead.
For now, yes. AppTelepath ships an iOS SDK only; Android and React Native are on the roadmap and not started. Teams that need Android today keep AppSpector for it and use AppTelepath on iOS.
It is a free beta with no expiry date today, running on Trial quotas: 2 devices online at once, 1 GB of traffic a month, 1 seat, and 14 days of session retention. Billing isn't switched on yet and prices aren't published. No card is required to start.
It should never reach review. Link it only into Debug and authorized internal test configurations; the SDK also checks its distribution channel at runtime and refuses to start in an App Store build, with TestFlight requiring an explicit opt-in.