Readwise User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience72.3% of reviews
Neutral7.7% of reviews
Negative experience20.0% of reviews

~ Based on 325 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is Readwise Safe?

Readwise appears safe based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for Readwise is 96/100.

This assessment is based on 1,513 user ratings, with an App Store average of 4.8/5.

Safety Analysis

95.7% of ratings point to a safe experience
1.5% of ratings suggest some concerns
2.8% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 1,513 App Store ratings for Readwise.

Is Readwise Legit?

Readwise appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Readwise is 100/100.

Based on 100 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Siri integration

Love Readwise, any intention on adding ability to add thoughts from Siri into highlights? I like hands free adding thoughts for future.

Five stars

Great app and an amazing team working hard to make reading more useful and enjoyable.

Please Turn Highlights into Living Notes

I love the idea of turning highlights into cards, but I wish Readwise would treat those cards less like Anki review items and more like living note objects.

I want to revisit a highlight days, months or years later, add a new reflection, keep the old reflection, connect it to related highlights, and gradually build an evolving interpretation around that card.

I’m not trying to memorize everything I highlight. I want a structured, searchable commonplace book where highlights become durable units of thought.

The current card model is already very close — I just wish each card could accumulate notes and reflections over time instead of mainly being something to “review.”
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abhorrent app redesign ruins brilliant service

I’ve been a paid member of the service (for about 3-4 years) and find it extremely helpful and I love it, but the lates app redesign is an excellent example how unnecessary redesign can ruin otherwise great app. There was literally no need or sense in redesigning like that. Nothing, nothing has improved user experience in any way. Fonts are smaller, background is distracting, interface is messier, streak stats are tiny icon in the corner and then just a couple of weeks worth of tracking presented as weird calendar. Please stop your UI designers from ruining your service. It has one pure purpose, don’t mess with it.
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Love the redesign

Awesome job!

Everything now locked behind a paywall

The most recent update has been detrimental to the usability of this app locking ~95% of features behind an expensive subscription.

It is now minimum £70 a year just to be able to use the main previously free features such as syncing highlights from Kindle. You even have to pay to manually add notes by typing or photo scan. If you are not willing to cough up the money don’t bother with this app.

While the app is good for organising book notes, I will be deleting and moving to a free alternative as soon as I find one as it is just unaffordable to have yet another subscription.

If they just locked proper premium features behind a paywall as before it would have been understandable. But no, Mr greedy corporation locks the most basic functions of the app behind a paywall and completely ruin the app for previous free version users unless they pay.

Do better Readwise!
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Love the 2.0 update

I’ve been using Readwise together with Readwise Reader for a while now, and it’s a brilliant combo for reading and actually reviewing what you’ve read. The 2.0 update has genuinely changed things for me. It’s the first time the app has felt like somewhere I want to spend time, rather than a chore I do to feel virtuous about my reading habits. Recommended, especially if you actually want to remember what you read.
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Finally, an update.

I have been subscribed to this app for years. It’s the best at what it does, but paying monthly for an app that was without significant updates for that long, and was really showing its age in annoying ways was more & more frustrating. Thankfully they are finally giving it a significant upgrade it is much better. I know the Reader app has more users, but here’s hoping this is a sign of frequent updates for the Readwise app as well. That is what got some of us into this ecosystem in the first place.
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Amazing 2.0 update

Great redesign!

Excellent way to reengage with your books!

Readwise presents my Kindle highlights to me in a daily review. I’ve also hooked it up to Claude who reads from my personal/professional development books and provides me advice! It’s fantastic. Thanks Readwise!

Fantastic app

In the few apps I pay for. Helps me remember all of the highlights of the books. I’ve read in the past 10 years. Super helpful for learning.

Finally an app made for serious readers!

If your memory is half as bad as mine, when you can’t remember what you read 5 minutes ago, this app is totally for you. Try it for free. You’ll purchase it.

Superb

I use this for work all of the time. Superb at bringing my highlights to one place and allows me to chat with my highlights like my own AI. Absolutely wouldn’t live without it.

Genial!

Wärmste Empfehlung für alle Viel-Leser! Hätte ich gerne viel früher gefunden.

My new fav

Finally, an app that helped me remember what I actually read. Been using it for a while now, and it's amazing to have all highlights in one place. Love that they added audio reviews recently.

I don't get it

Should be called "highlights". That's all it does, collect highlights then show them to u later. Article collection apps (Instapaper etc) already do highlights well, so it's mainly for ebooks. But not manual highlights directly in the pdf or epub file. So it's only for corporate book apps like kindle with a shareable highlights function. For physical book readers, digital article readers, & even ebook raw file readers it's redundant.

But what's the hype on highlights anyway? Usually they are lacking without the wider context, a self-written summary works better for learning. Anyone who reads too many books too fast to remember needs to rethink their process anyway, not save short out-of-context blurbs to cycle thru them later on.
I make highlights in physical books, why would I want them removed from the book & collected/shuffled with highlights from other books? Makes no sense. Plus the effort of photographing dozens of pages from each book, yeah right.

Better off just reviewing the books on storygraph or w.e, read thru ur reviews later to remember, & flip thru the full book checking ur highlights for a more in-depth reminder. There could be useful info u stumble across that u didn't highlight before, why dump all non-highlighted parts of the book?
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not work

can't proceed initial setup. damn app.

The Real Deal

I use this app every single day as a way to tap into the insights from all the books and articles I have read. This is one subscription on my must have list (which I am trying to pare down).

Finally an app made for serious readers!

If your memory is half as bad as mine when you can’t remember what you read 5 minutes ago, this app is totally for you. Try it for free. You’ll purchase it.

Too much ai

I wish there was less emphasis on ai and more emphasis on improving the basics. Offline support. Dynamic type support. Making the UI feel native, especially for picking up previous days.