Book Lover vs Mastodon
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Book Lover
Connect with fellow book enthusiasts on a social network designed for readers. Curate your digital bookshelf, discover personalized reading plans, and join global or local book communities to discuss literature and find new friends.
- Digital bookshelf management
- Personalized reading plans
- Global and local book communities
- Book reviews and discussions
- Social chat and connections
- Virtual shelf experience
Read full descriptionHide full description
Your books say something about you. Bring them together in BookLovers and find more to read, discuss, and share. MAKE YOUR BOOKSHELF YOUR OWN Scan a book’s barcode or look it up by ISBN. Explore your collection as a shelf or a list, search for a title, and keep the books you care about close at hand. FIND YOUR NEXT READ Browse book recommendations and genres. Explore authors, book details, reader reviews, and memorable quotes before choosing what to read next. BUILD A READING HABIT Create a reading plan, set goals, and organize the books you want to read, are reading, or have finished. Use the reading timer and see your collection’s statistics. CONNECT THROUGH BOOKS Discover fellow readers, explore their shelves, and start a conversation. Share reviews and join book discussions. Report a reader or block contact from a profile or conversation, and manage blocked readers in your profile. BookLovers offers an optional auto-renewing BookLovers Plus subscription. The current price and available benefits are shown in the app before purchase. Manage or cancel your subscription in your Apple account settings. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://booklove.rs/privacy
Mastodon
Connect with others on a decentralized social network. Share posts, images, and videos in chronological order without algorithms or ads. Discover new content and participate in conversations across the fediverse.
- Chronological feed
- No algorithms or ads
- Discover new users and topics
- Post with images, videos, and polls
- Create custom lists
- Filter content
- Cross-platform communication
Read full descriptionHide full description
Mastodon is the best way to keep up with what’s happening. Follow anyone across the fediverse and see it all in chronological order. No algorithms, ads, or clickbait in sight. This is the official iOS app for Mastodon. In our app, you can: EXPLORE ■ Discover new writers, journalists, artists, photographers, scientists and more ■ See what’s happening in the world READ ■ Keep up with people you care about in a chronological feed with no interruptions ■ Follow hashtags to keep up with specific topics in real time CREATE ■ Post to your followers or the whole world, with polls, high quality images and videos ■ Participate in interesting conversations with other people CURATE ■ Create lists of people to never miss a post ■ Filter words or phrases to control what you do and don’t want to see AND MORE! ■ Login and switch between multiple accounts ■ No spoilers! You can put your posts behind content warnings A POWERFUL PUBLISHING PLATFORM You no longer have to try and appease an opaque algorithm that decides if your friends are going to see what you posted. If they follow you, they’ll see it. If you publish it to the open web, it’s accessible on the open web. You can safely share links to Mastodon in the knowledge that anyone will be able to read them without logging in. Between threads, polls, high quality images, videos, audio, and content warnings, Mastodon offers plenty of ways to express yourself in a way that suits you. A POWERFUL READING PLATFORM We don’t need to show you ads, so we don’t need to keep you in our app. Mastodon has the richest selection of 3rd party apps and integrations so you can choose the experience that fits you best. Thanks to the chronological home feed, it’s easy to tell when you’ve caught up on all updates and can move on to something else. No need to worry that a misclick will ruin your recommendations forever. We don’t guess what you want to see, we let you control it. PROTOCOLS, NOT PLATFORMS Mastodon is not like a traditional social media platform, but is built on a decentralized protocol. You can sign up on our official server, or choose a 3rd party to host your data and moderate your experience. Thanks to the common protocol, no matter what you choose, you can communicate seamlessly with people on other Mastodon servers. But there’s more: With just one account, you can communicate with people from other fediverse platforms. Not happy with your choice? You can always switch to a different Mastodon server while taking your followers with you. For advanced users, you can even host your data on your own infrastructure, since Mastodon is open-source. NON-PROFIT IN NATURE Mastodon is a registered non-profit in the US and Germany. We are not motivated by extracting monetary value from the platform, but by what’s best for the platform. AS FEATURED IN: TIME, Forbes, Wired, The Guardian, CNN, The Verge, TechCrunch, Financial Times, Gizmodo, PCMAG.com, and more.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Book Lover at 100% against Mastodon's 48%. Book Lover also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs monthly) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 18.6). Mastodon's advantage is rating (4.5 vs 4.0) and in-app purchases (none vs 4). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Book Lover sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Mastodon asks for nothing beyond the download.
Mastodon holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 4.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Mastodon has 13K ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 100% of Book Lover's written reviews are positive against 48% of Mastodon's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Book Lover ships an update every 4 days, Mastodon monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Book Lover | Mastodon |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.0 (4 ratings) | 4.5 (13K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 48.3% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 4 | 13K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 days — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 18.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 41 MB | 110 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Lennart Lopin | Mastodon GmbH |
Customer experience
Book Lover
Mastodon
Bugs and requests
Book Lover
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Mastodon
Reported bugs
4 issues- Can't log in or create account
- Keyboard freezes during editing
- Inconsistent behavior when switching accounts
- Notifications not working as expected
Requested features
5 requests- Add local and federated timelines
- Improve search and discovery features
- Implement edit and delete post functionality
- Add support for animated GIFs
- Provide better accessibility options
In-app purchases
Book Lover
- BookLovers Plus$2.991 Month
- Bookmark$0.99
- Bookmark 3-pack$1.99
- Bookmark 10 pack$4.99
Mastodon
No in-app purchases









