What Is Citizen: Protect The World?
Citizen is a real-time safety app that provides urban residents with instant alerts regarding local crimes and emergencies. By leveraging police scanner audio and user-generated video, it offers a unique, high-utility service for those prioritizing situational awareness.
Despite its strong market position—ranking #4 in Grossing for its category—the app is currently struggling with a negative sentiment trend. Users are increasingly frustrated by aggressive paywalls on public safety data and invasive location requirements, creating a significant opportunity for competitors to capture market share by offering a more transparent and user-friendly experience.
Citizen: Protect The World Key Features
Instant location-based notifications for crimes, natural disasters, and emergencies.
Watch breaking incidents unfold via live video streams or broadcast from the scene.
Access to live emergency scanner audio clips for deeper incident context.
Nationwide map and notification system for registered sexual offenders living nearby.
Historical data analysis to understand local crime patterns and inform travel decisions.
Community-driven alerts to assist in locating missing loved ones or pets.
User Sentiment
High confidence · 49 reviewsTop Praises
Timely on the spot crime and event news and data ALL IN REAL TIME!
I Love that this app, is accurate always telling you what’s going on !!!
Top Complaints (Impact Areas)
90% of the app is blocked by a super expensive pay wall.
Every time the app gets updated, there is a new feature that requires payment.
Citizen apparently hides my followed areas alerts behind a requirement to give them 24/7, always on precise location data.
It needs permission from everything! Contacts,location,call logs,photos,data,camera,microphone almost everything.
Majority of the stuff seen in the local area is false alarm or fake.
Not sure what happened with the app but it no longer shows anything going on around me.
Every time I click an alert to see the incident and the go back to see the other alerts they are gone.
Since the latest update two days ago app now pushes out two notifications at the same time for the same thing.
Is Citizen: Protect The World Free? Pricing & Plans
Model: freemium
Monetizes through a subscription model that gates high-utility data (scanner audio) and advanced customization, while maintaining a large free user base to ensure community-driven data density.
App Store Performance
| Chart | Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Grossing | #4 | |
| Free | #8 | 1 |
Citizen: Protect The World Pros and Cons
Pros
- Massive user base and high data density in major urban centers.
- Strong brand recognition as the primary safety app.
- High-utility features like live video and scanner audio.
Cons
- Aggressive paywalling of public safety data.
- Perceived decline in content moderation and accuracy.
- Technical instability and bugs in recent updates.