The 12 best news and reading apps in the world

The New York Times exemplifies how to make a great news app with NYT Now. The app is run by a dedicated team at the Times and updated throughout the day with breaking news, features, stories from other publications, and easily digestible breakdowns of the day’s news highlights.

Even better, you can use it for free, even if you don't subscribe to The New York Times.

Price: Free (iOS)

Nuzzel knows the stories your friends are talking about on Twitter and suggests them for you to read. Not only are you seeing the most talked about articles from around the web in your feed, but you also see them with comments from accounts that you follow.

Price: Free (iOS, Android)

Everyone from Woody Harrelson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and President Obama have participated in Reddit's popular AMA interviews, where commenters can submit questions for the chance for a direct answer. Since Reddit can appear cluttered and confusing for new users, Ask Me Anything organizes the interviews in an easy-to-peruse format, even alerting you to new AMAs and allowing you to explore past ones, too.

Price: Free (iOS, Android)

Snapchat has made major moves into the news business with both live stories and its "discover" feature. Discover gives you Snapchat channels for media outlets like BuzzFeed, Vice, and CNN. If you want a more on-the-ground feel, "live stories" can show you curated collections of amateur video shot around big events near you and in the world at large.

Price: Free (iOS, Android)

Flipboard has been in the App Store for a long time, but even with the introduction of the Apple News app in iOS 9, it’s managed to stay relevant.

Like Apple News, Flipboard pulls in stories from online publications and displays them in a mobile-optimized interface. Where Flipboard stands out is its ability to let you see what other users are reading through the app. You can also make your own “magazine” of content you like and share it with others on Flipboard or through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Price: Free (iOS, Android)

With access to over 3,000,000 books and audiobooks, the Kindle app is a no-brainer for reading.

It works on and syncs across Android, iOS, the desktop, and, of course, your Kindle, so your reading progress is up to date wherever you go.

The formatting options, built-in dictionary, and search capabilities are great, but the real killer feature is Amazon’s Whispersync For Voice technology, which lets you go back and forth between reading text and listening to an audiobook. For now, the feature is available on 60,000 titles.

Price: Free (iOS, Android)

Reddit, the so-called "front page of the internet," is an ever-changing ecosystem of interesting articles, pictures, and discussions, but it's notoriously messy to browse on your smartphone. Alien Blue fixes that, wrapping Reddit's content into an eye-catching design that brings to focus the essentials information like photos, post titles, and comments.

Price: Free (iOS)

Over 40 million people use Wattpad to read millions of free e-books, from classics like "Moby Dick" to "Twilight" fanfiction. Wattpad is also a social network built around reading. You can leave comments on passages and see comments from others. Authors on the app can talk directly with fans and share their works.

Cost: Free (iOS, Android)

Tweetbot is a fantastic way to customize your Twitter experience, and makes it easy to stay on top of all incoming activity. It also lets you monitor the stats on your individual tweets and your account in general, and cuts out all the ads you would have seen in your timeline.

Price: $4.99 (iOS)

The Associated Press claims to be "where the News gets its news," and there's no better place to stay up to date on the latest breaking local and national news. You can customize what kind of stories are in your feed, and the app constantly refreshes so you don't miss any new developments.

Price: Free (Android, iOS)

The BuzzFeed News app is all about ease. It curates the breaking news around the web, pulling in articles from BuzzFeed as well as other publications, in addition to newsworthy tweets or longform journalism. You can also teach the app to be even better with customizable notifications, or share the content with your friends.

Price: Free (iOS, Android)