Facebook is the most popular social media site on planet Earth. It has over a billion registered users, most of which are active on almost a daily basis. Unfortunately, the official Facebook app is a data using, resource hogging, battery draining catastrophe of an app that a lot of people don’t want. It’s always good to have options so we’re going to take a look at the best Facebook apps for Android. If these aren’t doing it for you, we have a second list of Facebook alternatives here that’s a little bit more in-depth! There are new Facebook apps coming down the pipes as well, but we don’t think they’re quite ready for prime time yet. That includes apps like this one.
Facebook and Facebook Lite
Price: Free
We realize you’re likely on this list to get away from this app. However, sometimes it’s unavoidable. Whenever Facebook rolls out a new feature, the official app will have it long before the third party Facebook apps. Facebook’s official suite of apps include Facebook Messenger, Facebook Groups, Facebook at Work, and Facebook Mentions (if you’re famous). They aren’t great for battery life, but they’ll always get the new features first. Facebook Messenger is also notoriously hard to use outside of the official app. Consequently, Facebook also makes Facebook Lite. It’s a super light, simple, and surprisingly good alternative to its larger, battery swilling sibling. If you want something lighter than regular Facebook, we recommend trying the Facebook Lite app.
Faster for Facebook Lite
Price: Free / $2.99
Faster for Facebook Lite is one of the newer Facebook apps. It uses the lighter and less resource intensive Facebook Lite as its template instead of the usual Facebook. The app includes Facebook and Facebook Messenger support, it can view all kinds of content like video and GIFs, and you can change to classic Facebook mode if needed. It’s a web wrapper like most Facebook apps. However, the dark mode and all-in-one experience are definitely nice. The premium version goes for $2.99 and that’s a perfectly reasonable price for it. It’s better than most.
Friendly for Facebook
Price: Free / $1.99-$9.99
Friendly for Facebook is one of the newer Facebook apps. It has a pretty decent set of features as well. That includes theming, Facebook Messenger support, the ability to customize your news feed, and more. You can also download videos from Facebook. The News Feed customization allows you to filter out things like keywords. That’s a great way to get rid of nonsense you don’t want to see. This is definitely among the best third party Facebook apps. The pro version unlocks some of the feature and goes for $1.99. This app is free for those who use Google Play Pass.
Maki
Price: Free / Up to $4.99
Maki is a serviceable and functional replacement for Facebook. It offers both Facebook and Facebook Messenger along with a small app size, no ads even in the free version, and a fingerprint unlock for privacy. You also get themes, multi-account support, the ability to download photos from Instagram, and more. The app is a few glitches here and there, but nothing that detracts from the overall experience in our testing.
Phoenix
Price: Free
Phoenix is another Facebook alternative with Facebook Messenger support. You can do almost all of the same stuff as the official app and the Messenger section works with things like voice calls and chat heads. You also get a few extra functions not available in the Facebook app. We experienced the occasional crash or hiccup from time to time during our testing, but it’s also entirely free with no ads so you get what you pay for.
Simple for Facebook
Price: Free / $1.49
Simple for Facebook keeps true to its namesake. It’s a simple web-wrapper for the Facebook mobile site. It includes all of the basic features. That includes interacting with posts, uploading photo and video, and all of that. It also boasts support for Facebook Messenger. About the only other noteworthy thing about the app is the small selection of themes. Like we said, this one is really simple. The free version has ads. You can purchase the full version for $1.49 to get rid of them.
SlimSocial
Price: Free
SlimSocial is a newer Facebook app that keeps it wicked simple. Its claim to fame is its intensely small size (100KB), that it shows no ads, and that it’s open source so you can go view the source code and contribute to its development if you want to. Aside from that, there isn’t much to talk about. It’ll be a little slow and clunky like many third party apps. It’s not that bad, though. The developer has also expressed interest in adding new features down the road like background notifications along with more stuff. .
Swift for Facebook Lite
Price: Free / $0.99
Swift for Facebook Lite is among the lightest Android Facebook options. It boasts an install size of 30MB and 20MB of RAM use. The install size isn’t that impressive but the RAM use is. It also boasts Facebook and Facebook Messenger features. You can do the basic stuff. That includes uploading photo/video, tagging friends, posting updates, and interacting with posts. It’s not going to blow you out of the water. However, it gets you to where you need to go without taking up too many of your phone resources. You can get rid of the ads for a single $0.99 in-app purchase.
Swipe for Facebook
Price: Free / $2.99
Swipe for Facebook is one of the more powerful Facebook apps. It has a laundry list of features, including an ad blocker, Facebook Messenger support, themes, chat heads, Material Design, and support for over 30 languages. It’s less resource intensive than the stock Facebook app. However, it is a little larger than something like SlimSocial. The app even includes multiple layouts that mock the stock Facebook app, Google+, and other setups. The free version has most of the basic features. A single $2.99 in-app purchase gets you the complete experience.
Tinfoil for Facebook
Price: Free
Tinfoil is a little bit older, but many people still swear by it. Tinfoil’s claim to fame is being a Facebook app that doesn’t ask for any of your permissions, hence the name. It’s a web-wrapper like many of these. Thus, most of its features are similar to the web version. This is is an excellent choice for people who still want to use Facebook but don’t want it installed on their phone at all in any capacity. It hasn’t received an update in quite some time so we may not include it in the next update of this list, but for now, it’s a free, ad-free, and permission-free solution. The only downside is the lack of updates as the app hasn’t seen one since 2017 (as of the time of this writing). We hope that changes.
If we missed any great Facebook apps, tell us about them in the comments!You can also click here to check out our latest Android app and game lists!