Games like Flappy Bird

Most lists answering this question open at number one. This one cannot, because the game people are looking for is not in either app store, the game being sold as its return is not that game, and in the United States the name is registered to a company that did not make the original. All three are checkable in public records, and together they change which alternatives are worth installing.

What happened to Flappy Bird

The developer’s own site still carries it. DOTGEARS, which trades as .GEARS and lists Nguyen Ha Dong as the representative of a Hanoi company, gives the release date as 24 May 2013 and the developer as Dong Nguyen. Its FAQ answers the obvious question under a heading that asks it plainly. The game was made in 2013 when the company was one person; its creator wanted it enjoyed in a few minutes rather than for hours; he told customers by tweet one day before taking it off sale. The last sentence of that answer is the one that settles the search: since then the original has not been updated or republished.

His timeline as it stood on 9 February 2014 is archived and still readable. He apologized to players and wrote that “22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down”, and in the same run of posts said it was nothing to do with legal issues, that he was not selling the game, and that he still makes games. That is a complete account, given at the time, by the only person who had one.

The rest of the catalog went for a different reason. The same FAQ says the studio changed its in-house policy in 2021 and removed all of its apps from sale to update them, keeping in-app purchases intact for people who had bought them. Looking for any DOTGEARS game in the US App Store on 3 September 2026, we found none. The studio’s catalog is a website.

The game being sold as its return

Search the name today and the site presenting itself as the official return is flappybird.org. Its terms of use, last updated 22 October 2024, are the clearest description of what that actually is. The operator is named in the first sentence as Flappy Bird Inc., a limited liability British Virgin Islands company, and the product covered is the website together with a game published on Telegram Messenger through a bot. There is no iPhone app in the document and none in the App Store.

The rest of the terms are not a game’s terms. They require you to pay gas costs for interacting with a blockchain, warn that losing a private key will permanently deny you access to your digital assets, and prohibit the trading tactics they name as rug pulls and wash trading. One clause deserves reading twice: to claim an airdrop of any cryptographic token, you must represent that you are not a resident, national or agent of the United States. The company caps its total liability to you at one US dollar, and the governing law is that of the British Virgin Islands.

The person who made the original has given his view of it. On 15 September 2024 he posted that he has no relation to their game, that he did not sell anything, and that he does not support crypto. It is the same account that announced the takedown in 2014, and that post is by a wide margin the most-read thing on it.

Who owns the name

The trademark file is blunter than any of the coverage, and it is public. In the United States, FLAPPY BIRD is registered trademark 5430683. The application behind it was filed on 10 February 2014, within days of the takedown; the registrant’s own claimed date of first use in commerce is 9 February 2014; it registered on 27 March 2018, and a Section 8 declaration of continued use was accepted on 10 April 2025, so it is live. The current owner of record is FB Zanorg Holding LLC, a Delaware company with an address in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Dong Nguyen applied for the name himself and lost by default. His application, serial 86209920 for FLAPPYBIRD, was opposed by Gametech Holdings, LLC on 29 September 2023. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board issued a notice of default on 30 November 2023, sustained the opposition on 10 January 2024 and terminated the case two days later. The application now reads “ABANDONED - AFTER INTER-PARTES DECISION”. No answer was ever filed.

A second FLAPPY BIRD application, serial 98007245, was filed on 22 May 2023 on an intent-to-use basis and allowed on 17 September 2024. Its status as of 16 March 2026 is that a third request for extension of time to file a statement of use has been granted. A statement of use is the sworn declaration that the mark is actually being used on the goods it claims, so three years after filing that declaration has still not been made. None of this is an accusation of anything. It is simply the answer to why the name can appear on things its author did not make, and not on anything he did.

The number neither store will print

Flappy Bird was free and had nothing in it to buy. Most of what gets recommended in its place is also free and does have something in it to buy, which is not a criticism: a game has to be paid for somehow, and a published price is the good case. The difficulty is finding the price.

Apple’s product page for a free game prints one word about it. Under Information, the row reads In-App Purchases and the value is “Yes”. Not a range, not a top item, not a currency symbol. We read the same row on three unrelated publishers on 3 September 2026 — Voodoo’s Flappy Dunk, Hipster Whale’s Crossy Road and Sybo’s Subway Surfers — and all three say exactly that, so this is how Apple builds the page rather than anything a developer chose. Google Play does the same job with a badge reading In-app purchases and no figure, on the listing and inside its About this game panel alike.

Both stores are far more forthcoming about the other price. Crossy Road’s Play listing links to a data safety page of its own, itemizing what may be shared and what may be collected down to approximate location, device identifiers and user IDs. Apple prints an App Privacy panel on every listing naming the categories a game may use to track you across other companies’ apps and websites. So the store will tell you in detail what a free game takes from you in data, and nothing whatsoever about what it takes in money.

One publisher happens to sell the same game both ways, which is the most useful thing on this page. RobTop Games sells Geometry Dash for $3.99, it shows no in-app purchases, and its App Privacy panel reads “Data Not Collected”. The same studio’s Geometry Dash Lite is free, also shows no in-app purchases, and its panel names location, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics as data that may be used to track you across other companies’ apps and websites. One developer, one game in a paid and a cut-down free form, and two prices — only one of which is printed in dollars. That is the economics of a free game set out in two store listings by the people who make it.

The ones with nothing to buy

These come first because it is the deal Flappy Bird made. Each of them shows no In-App Purchases row on its App Store listing, which is a fact Apple publishes rather than a claim anyone is making about themselves.

• Geometry Dash Lite is the closest thing on this page to the original in shape rather than in theme: one tap, one mistake, instant restart, and a difficulty curve that assumes you will fail a great many times. It is free, rated 4+, 268 MB, needs iOS 13 or later, and Apple shows 4.3 stars across 261,000 ratings with the game at number two on the Music chart. It sells nothing, and it pays for itself the other way: its privacy panel names location, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics as data that may track you across other companies’ apps.
• Flappy Nyan is a bird, pipes and one tap, published by isTom Games on 26 February 2014, in the weeks after the original came down, and never monetized beyond that. Free, 4+, 16.9 MB, runs on anything from iOS 7 onward, 4.6 stars across 15,000 ratings. Its last version is 1.9, dated 11 August 2016, so it is a decade old, and Apple shows no compatibility warning on it. Its privacy panel lists location, identifiers and usage data as collected but not linked to you, and nothing at all under tracking.
• Ours, last on this list and not a flapper: Taco Rain is a sixty-second catcher, one thumb, ten levels and an endless mode, free, 4+, 73.6 MB, iOS 15 or later. It has no in-app purchases, no currency and no rewarded video, and the power-ups fall as pickups instead of being sold. It is also iPhone and iPad only, it is new, and it is a catcher rather than a tap-to-fly game, so if what you want is the bird and the pipes then Geometry Dash Lite or Flappy Nyan is the honest answer and not this.

The one that asks for the money instead

Geometry Dash costs $3.99 once, and that is the entire transaction. No in-app purchases, no subscription, no ads to skip, and a privacy panel that says the developer collects no data from the app at all. It is 190.6 MB, rated 4+, needs iOS 12 or later, and Apple shows 4.6 stars across 271,000 ratings with the game at number one on the Casual chart. It is worth stating plainly on a page like this that paying is the transparent option here rather than the expensive one. It is the only listing of the eight that asks you for money and then tells you how much.

The ones that are free with a shop inside

These are good games run as businesses, and the point of grouping them is not that something is wrong with them. It is that the store will confirm a shop exists and will not tell you what is in it, so the only way to learn the prices is to install the game and open the shop.

• Crossy Road arrived in November 2014 and is still being updated, most recently in August 2026. Free with in-app purchases, rated 9+, 256.4 MB, iOS 15 or later, 4.7 stars across 735,000 ratings, an Editors’ Choice badge and tenth on the Family chart. Its Play listing adds the two things Apple leaves out: it says the game contains ads, and it reports more than 100 million downloads. Apple lists location, identifiers, usage data and diagnostics as used to track you, and purchases as linked to your identity.
• Flappy Dunk is the most direct descendant with a big audience behind it: one tap, a ball, and hoops instead of pipes. Voodoo published it on 16 May 2017 and still updates it. Free with in-app purchases, rated 13+, 322.1 MB, iOS 15 or later, 4.6 stars across 768,000 ratings. It is also the heaviest ask on the page for what you give back — location, identifiers, usage data, diagnostics and other data all appear both under tracking and under data linked to you.
• Flappy Golf 2 is the quiet one, from Noodlecake, and the closest to a flapping game with courses attached. Free with in-app purchases, rated 4+, 156.8 MB, iOS 13 or later, and much smaller in audience at 4.3 stars across 2,700 ratings. Its privacy panel is the lightest of the three: identifiers under tracking, and nothing else.

The ones still called Flappy Bird

Searching the App Store for the name today returns none of DOTGEARS’ games and several clones from 2014 that were never taken down. The most prominent is Flappy Bird: Cute birdie with tiny wings from Qubasoft, published on 15 March 2014, last updated to version 1.7 on 23 April 2015. Apple’s page for it now carries a notice that the developer needs to update it to work with your version of iOS, and its App Privacy section reads “No Details Provided” with a note that details will be required at the next update, which has not come in eleven years. It is honest about one thing, and it is the thing that matters: its own description says it was not created by the Flappy Bird creators.

It is listed here as a warning rather than a recommendation. A store listing outlives the game inside it, and the name on the icon is the least reliable thing on the page.

All of them side by side

Store facts only, because those are the checkable part. Every figure is Apple’s or the publisher’s own, read on 3 September 2026 and linked at the foot of this page.

The last two columns are not a ranking and a shop is not a fault. Crossy Road has been maintained for eleven years and Flappy Nyan has not been touched since 2016, which is the trade the table cannot show: the games that sell something are the games that can afford to keep being made.

What these games do better than ours

Almost everything, and it is not close. This section is compulsory on every page in this format, and on this one it is the easiest to write.

• Geometry Dash asks for money and then leaves you alone. $3.99, no purchases, no ads and a privacy panel that says nothing is collected. That is a cleaner deal than ours, which is free because it carries a banner, and we cannot match it without charging you.
• Crossy Road is a far bigger game. Hundreds of characters, dozens of worlds, same-device multiplayer, offline play, and versions for Apple TV and iMessage. Ours has ten levels and an endless mode. Eleven years of updates is a thing you can feel in the first minute.
• Flappy Dunk and Geometry Dash Lite are on Android. Taco Rain is iPhone and iPad only, which ends the comparison before any of the rest of it matters for most people reading this.
• Flappy Nyan is sixteen megabytes and runs on a phone from 2013. Ours needs iOS 15 and 73.6 MB to do less. If the device you are installing on is old, that is the whole decision.
• All of them are actually flapping games, and ours is not. Taco Rain is a catcher. If you came here for the bird and the pipes, we do not make that, and no amount of it being free fixes the mismatch.

How to check any of this yourself

Two habits cover almost everything on this page. Before installing a free game, read the App Privacy panel first and the description second: the panel is the only itemized price the store publishes, and it is the one nobody reads. Then look at the version date. A game last updated in 2015 is a listing rather than a product, whatever the name on the icon says.

When a game is missing and the internet cannot agree on why, go to the developer rather than to the coverage. DOTGEARS answered the Flappy Bird question on its own FAQ page years ago in four sentences, and the trademark file at the USPTO settled the rest for free. That is the same method the rest of this site uses on reward apps, where the number a company will not divide usually turns out to be published somewhere it never expected anyone to look.