The best baby name apps for two people who can’t agree
Seven ways a couple lands on a name, ours among them, with what each one is good at and where it gives up. Nothing here is ranked by anybody who paid for it.
No download, no sign-up. It opens in your browser.
Last updated August 2026. Everything said here about somebody else’s product was read on their own site or store listing, and anything we could not check is described as a shape rather than named as a product.
NameHatch
A swipe-and-match name app for couples that runs in a browser. Its own site leads with there being no app to download, and describes inviting your partner to swipe in private and getting a match notification when you both like the same name. There is a free tier with limited swipes and basic filters, and paid tiers past it. Good at: the exact job on this page, with nothing to install between the two of you and it. Where it gives up: the free swiping is capped, so a couple who works through a long list will meet a price before they meet a name.
BumpNames
Also a browser one, also built for two. You make an account, share a game code with your partner, and answer each name with like, dislike or maybe; its site says you are notified when you both choose the same name. It counts its full list at 104,819 names, of which 1,000 are free and the rest are paid. Good at: the maybe. A third answer is a real thing that a yes-or-no swipe cannot say, and “I could live with it” is most of a shortlist. Where it gives up: there is a sign-up and a code to pass around before either of you has seen a single name.
Kinder
The one you find by searching the App Store rather than the web. Its listing describes swiping through name suggestions, like, pass and repeat, and connecting with your partner to find the matches; it is free to download with sets of names sold inside it, and a recent version note adds a third parent to the family, which most tools of this kind have no concept of. Good at: being a proper app with a curated library behind it, and at households that are not two people. Where it gives up: it is an install on every phone involved, and the listing asks for a recent iOS, so whoever is on the older handset is the one holding it up.
Baby Name Genius
The reference end of the shelf. It is a name library you can browse in the browser, with iPhone and Android apps offered beside it, built around finding names, saving favourites and keeping a list, and it publishes guides alongside, including one on choosing an app as a couple. Its pages state neither a price nor a sign-up, so neither do we. Good at: the wide half of the problem, which is having any candidates at all. Where it gives up: two lists of favourites are not an agreement, and the conversation is still ahead of you.
A baby name book, or one very long list
Free at the library, older than all of this, and still the best way to meet a name you would never have typed into a search box. Good at: breadth, serendipity, and the origins and meanings that apps summarise. Where it gives up: a book has to be read aloud, and reading aloud is the exact thing that stalls, because whoever reads first sets the tone and the other one answers the voice as much as the name. The way around that is a method rather than an app, and it is written out on how to agree on a baby name.
A wheel, or any random name draw
Type the last few in, spin, live with it. Good at: ending a fortnight of deadlock in ten seconds, and at hearing one name on its own instead of weighing five against each other at once. Where it gives up: it picks for you rather than between you, so the name it lands on is nobody’s, which is a strange way to choose the one thing you will say out loud every day for the rest of your life. Ours draws the same way and is on the wheel of names alternative page, where it is deliberately the smaller half of what the page offers.
bickr
Ours, so read this one knowing that. A free web app: one of you starts a room and sends a link or a six character code, you both swipe the same deck of names on your own phones, and neither of you sees the other’s answers. The first name you have both said yes to is the one that comes back matched, on both screens at once, so the only name you ever have to discuss is one neither of you has to be talked into. The honest tradeoffs: it is a web app rather than a native one, so there is nothing to download and you add it to your home screen instead; names are one deck among several, since the same room also picks restaurants and films, so a dedicated name library will always have more names in it than we do; and none of it is any use to one person deciding alone. The longer version of the case, with a table, is on our baby name app for couples page.
The short version
If you are still collecting candidates, use the widest thing you can find: a library or a book will beat every swiping app in this list at that. If you want the swiping and you want it deep, the ones that do nothing else have more names than we do. If the two of you already have a shortlist and the problem is that neither of you will be the one to give in, that is the narrow case bickr was built for, and it is the only one we would argue about.