What is HistoryGuessr?
Last updated: 20 August 2026
HistoryGuessr is a free game in which you guess where and when a historical photograph was taken. Each round shows a real archive photograph or painting; you drop a pin on a world map and pick a year. The closer both guesses are to the truth, the more points you score.
It runs on iPhone (iOS 17 and later) and in any modern web browser. It needs no account, costs nothing, and contains no advertising and no in-app purchases. It is made by AKG Interactive, an independent studio.
At a glance
| What it is | A historical photo guessing game — place and year |
|---|---|
| Platforms | iPhone (iOS 17 and later) · any modern web browser |
| Price | Free. No in-app purchases, no subscription, no ads |
| Account | Not required — no sign-up, no login, no profile |
| Modes | Classic (5 rounds) · live 1v1 duel · challenge a friend · Survival · daily frame · archivist's shift |
| Library | 160 curated frames, roughly 1801–2019; growing |
| Image source | Wikimedia Commons — public domain or openly licensed |
| Map | Apple Maps (MapKit) |
| Languages | Turkish, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese, Korean |
| Age rating | 4+ |
| Developer | AKG Interactive — independent iOS studio |
| Links | App Store · play in browser · support@akginteractive.com |
How a round works
A photograph appears. You can zoom into it — most of the answer is sitting inside the image.
- You drop a pin anywhere on a world map.
- You choose a year between 1800 and 2025.
- You submit, and the true location and year are revealed.
- Alongside them come the frame's credits: title, photographer or painter, licence, a link to the original file on Wikimedia Commons, and a short note on what the picture actually shows.
The exact scoring — how many points a kilometre costs, how the streak multiplier works — is on the how to play page.
How is it different from GeoGuessr?
Most players arrive here through GeoGuessr, and the comparison is a fair starting point: both put an image in front of you and ask you to place it on a map. Three things are genuinely different.
1. Time is half the game
A perfect pin on the map earns you at most half the available points; the other half comes from naming the year. That changes what you look at: power lines, car models, hemlines, film grain, the presence or absence of a wristwatch. After a while you learn to say "this frame is from the twenties" — and teaching you that is what the game is really for.
2. The images are archival, not street view
Every frame is a real photograph or painting from Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain or under an open licence. You are not looking at a panorama shot from the roof of a car last year; you are looking at the historical record itself — and when the round ends you find out whose record it was.
3. There is no server
No account, no sign-up, no profile. Multiplayer either matches through Apple Game Center or runs on a challenge link that carries the whole match inside itself. Nothing about you is stored anywhere except on your own device.
Modes
Classic
Five rounds, then a final score. The default way to play.
Live 1v1 duel
Real-time matchmaking against another person through Game Center. Same photographs, 45 seconds per round. When the round ends both pins open on the same map. If nobody is available to match at that moment, the game puts an AI opponent in front of you rather than leaving you waiting — when the rival is a real person, their name is on screen.
Challenge a friend
You play first, then send the link. Your friend plays the same frames against your actual guesses and your actual times. The whole match is encoded inside the link, so neither side needs a server or an account — your friend does not even need the app installed, because the link opens in a browser too.
Survival
Three lives and a threshold that rises every round, from 4,000 up to a ceiling of 8,000. You keep improving at the same rate; the threshold keeps closing in.
Daily frame
One new photograph a day, the same one for everybody, with a daily streak.
Archivist's shift
A verification minigame: a file arrives with a claim — this date, this place — and you rule on whether the claim holds.
In-game economy
There is a single currency, called diamonds, and it cannot be bought with real money. The app contains no StoreKit code and no in-app purchases at all. Diamonds are earned by playing and by daily log-ins, and are spent on hints and on unlocking collection items.
That is a deliberate choice: a purchasable hint would make the game's difficulty purchasable.
The library
There are 160 curated frames at the moment, and the number is growing. The range is roughly 1801–2019. Coverage spans Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Oceania; the game groups eras as Early Records (1800–1899), the War Years (1900–1945), Post-war (1946–1980) and Recent (1981–2025).
Every image comes from Wikimedia Commons and is either in the public domain or under an open licence. Title, creator, licence and source link are shown to the player at the end of each round — not as a legal formality but as part of the game: once you have solved the frame, you get to read its story.
Privacy
There is no account system, no login, no user profile, no advertising SDK and no analytics SDK. The game has no backend storing player data, because it has no backend at all. Scores, statistics and collection progress live on your own device. Challenge links carry the match inside themselves rather than pointing at a record on a server — so there is no record of who challenged whom.
Full text: privacy policy.
Where to play
- iPhone — iOS 17 and later, portrait. Download on the App Store.
- Browser — no installation: akginteractive.com/oyna/. The full game including live 1v1, not a demo.
- Android — no native app; the browser version plays fine on Android phones.
The studio
AKG Interactive is an independent iOS studio. HistoryGuessr is its first and currently only game. If you found a bug or have an idea, write to support@akginteractive.com — it genuinely gets read.