Comparison

PaperSpan vs GoodLinks

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

PaperSpan

Save articles from the web to read or listen to later, even offline. Organize your content with smart filters and track your reading habits. Send articles to your Kindle for a seamless reading experience.

Highlights
  • Save articles from web
  • Offline reading and listening
  • Smart search and filters
  • Reading habit tracking
  • Send to Kindle
  • Text-to-speech functionality
  • Highlighting and notes
Features
Read full description

Your articles ready for you to read or listen - while you wait, commute, walk, cook, whenever. No ads, no suggestions. Add articles of your own interest, the app should help finish reading them. Carefully designed search, sort, and filters to easily pick the article you need. Choose a category matching your mood. Interested in health articles now? Choose Health. You don't have to assign the category in advance, the app does this for you. Take up on your pending reads by opening Unread articles alone. Short waiting time? Pick those short articles by reading time. • READ COMFORTABLY: Save from your phone or desktop. Read them in a clean and comfortable view. Nothing gets in the way of your reading. • OFFLINE: Read, listen, and manage those articles even if your device is offline. App will auto-sync when your device is back online. • HIGHLIGHTS: Highlight those important phrases as you read. Keep the essence of your reading and refer whenever you need. • TRACK YOUR READING HABITS: Know how many articles you read or yet to read, and how long you spent reading them. Know your current interests with a beautiful word cloud out of your articles. Track & improve your reading routine! • SEND TO KINDLE: Love the Kindle reading experience? Send articles to your Kindle device (or app) and read at your own pace. • SEARCH & COMFORT: Search & Sort to quickly find an article. Organize with folders. Adjust your reading experience with dark/light theme, fonts, brightness, and more! • NOTES: Capture the gist out of an article you just read - your summary of lessons learned, thoughts you got out of an article. Keep the record to re-read yourself anytime or share to your notes app. • LISTEN: Listen to articles while you walk, cook, or commute with in-app text to speech. Even offline. You don't have to trade your productive time for your web reading. --- Upgrade to Premium for a fully featured powerful experience --- • ADVANCED SEARCH: Pull out an article with what you remember. Search by full-text, author, notes, and more! Skip the hassle of finding from list, start reading the article you have in mind. • PLAYLIST: Listen to your articles with no interruption in between. Perfect while you drive, run, or doing daily chores. • ADVANCED STATISTICS: Get insights into your reading routine. You read rate, daily peak reading time, categories you read, your popular sites and more to help plan and enhance your reading. • MULTIPLE ARTICLES TO KINDLE: Send multiple articles at once to your Kindle device (or app). You will receive them as a kindle book, carefully crafted. Read them with your Kindle experience. • LIMITLESS OFFLINE: Perform actions (add/remove highlights, notes, Send to Kindle) even while offline. App will automatically sync when your device is back online. Ad-free reading experience. PaperSpan is free to download and use. PaperSpan Premium gives a more powerful experience for $8.99 a year through an auto-renewing subscription. Price may vary by location. Subscriptions will be charged to your credit card through your iTunes account. Your subscription will automatically renew unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You will not be able to cancel a subscription during the active period. You can manage your subscriptions in the Account Settings after purchase. (Reference: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202039) Our Terms of Use: https://www.paperspan.com/terms Our Privacy Policy: https://www.paperspan.com/privacy

About

GoodLinks

Save articles and links for later reading, with a clean, ad-free experience. Organize, highlight, and take notes on your saved content across all your devices. Enjoy a private and customizable way to manage your reading list.

Highlights
  • Save links and articles
  • Ad-free reading experience
  • Cross-device syncing
  • Highlight and take notes
  • Organize with tags and stars
  • Customizable interface
  • Private and secure
Features
Currently charting
Read full description

Save links effortlessly. View them later, from anywhere, on all your devices. Sync, organize, and share your links—privately, without ever creating an account. GoodLinks is a powerful bookmarking app with a sleek reading experience. Save the content of the link while eliminating the ads and other clutter. Adding and viewing links is super simple and lightning fast. If you want to dig deeper, GoodLinks can be fully customized. No account. No ads. No creepy spying. GoodLinks just works. KEY FEATURES • Universal App :: GoodLinks is a single app that works on all of your iOS and macOS devices, so you can access your articles anywhere. • No Account :: Sync links, tags, and reading position without needing another web service account. iCloud Sync means all you have to do is install the app. • Simple :: Save articles from anywhere with a powerful Share Sheet extension. GoodLinks is so easy it feels like part of the operating system. • Readability :: Put the emphasis where it belongs—on the article you want to read. GoodLinks extracts the article text and removes web advertisements and other distractions to provide a wonderful reading experience. Pick the perfect font, spacing, and size. • Highlight & Note :: Highlight important information within articles and add notes to them, making it easier for you to remember key passages. • Organize :: Tame a large list with tags and starred articles, so you can always find what you need. You can also search based on title, author, and description. • Actions :: Actions help you manage and share links. You can add article to Starred, share to other apps, export to PDF, plain text or Markdown... Build your own actions to export and share your saved links. • Customize :: Adjust how your links and lists look, change swipe behavior, and more. Tailor GoodLinks to fit your style. • Themes :: Switch between beautiful themes: Light and Sepia for light mode, Dark and Night for dark mode. • Siri Shortcuts :: Deep support of iOS Shortcuts. Save a new link, query links, open a specific view, and more. • Log in to Sites :: Log in to paywalled sites to get full access to their content. • Widgets :: Get quick access to a list, or open a random unread link from your home screen. • Summarization :: Get a summary of any article with Apple Intelligence or external LLM services using your own API keys. • Archive :: The full rich text of each article gets saved in GoodLinks, and your reading history provides a natural archive if you need it. Save as many links as you want. • Private :: Your reading history and favorite articles should only be private by default. GoodLinks doesn’t track you or your information, and nothing is shared online unless you choose to share it. • VoiceOver :: GoodLinks is fully accessible via VoiceOver. GOODLINKS PREMIUM When you purchase GoodLinks today, you will get *permanent* access to all the current features, including any new ones released one year from your date of purchase. After your one year of feature upgrades is up, any new features introduced will require the GoodLinks Premium subscription to unlock. Once unlocked, those features are yours to keep *forever*, even if you choose to unsubscribe right after subscribing. Terms: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://goodlinks.app/privacy/

Screenshots

PaperSpan4 screens
GoodLinks4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: GoodLinks at 79% against PaperSpan's 20%. GoodLinks also leads on update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 3 months) and rating (4.7 vs 4.3). PaperSpan's advantage is price (Free vs $9.99) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

PaperSpan is free to download; GoodLinks costs $9.99 up front. PaperSpan sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $8.99 per year and GoodLinks sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

GoodLinks holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: GoodLinks has 633 ratings behind it against 75, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 20% of PaperSpan's written reviews are positive against 79% of GoodLinks's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PaperSpan ships an update every 3 months, GoodLinks every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 17, 2026 and September 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 4 level
PaperSpan versus GoodLinks: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPaperSpanGoodLinks
PriceFree — better$9.99
Rating4.3 (75 ratings)4.7 (633 ratings) — better
Positive reviews20.0% of reviews79.4% of reviews — better
Number of ratings75633 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 2 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemiumFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank—#2 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS13.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size35 MB223 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperSravan KumarNgoc Luu

Customer experience

PaperSpan

All ratings75 ratings
Positive82.7%
Neutral0.0%
Negative17.3%
Written reviews15 reviews
Positive20.0%
Neutral6.7%
Negative73.3%

GoodLinks

All ratings633 ratings
Positive93.4%
Neutral2.4%
Negative4.3%
Written reviews462 reviews
Positive79.4%
Neutral8.4%
Negative12.1%

Bugs and requests

PaperSpan

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

GoodLinks

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Syncing problems between devices
  • Crashes and freezes reported
  • Inconsistent article rendering

Requested features

5 requests
  • Annotation and highlighting support
  • Folder-based organization
  • Improved search and filtering
  • PDF export and annotation
  • RSS feed integration

In-app purchases

1 purchases

PaperSpan

Subscriptions1
  • PaperSpan Premium$8.991 Year
6 purchases

GoodLinks

Subscriptions1
  • Annual Feature Upgrade$4.991 Year
One-time5
  • Small Tip$0.99
  • Nice Tip$2.99
  • Generous Tip$4.99
Show 2 more
  • Massive Tip$9.99
  • Amazing Tip$19.99

Questions

Is PaperSpan free?
PaperSpan is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is GoodLinks free?
GoodLinks costs $9.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, PaperSpan or GoodLinks?
GoodLinks is rated higher. PaperSpan averages 4.3 out of 5 from 75 ratings, while GoodLinks averages 4.7 from 633 ratings.
Do PaperSpan or GoodLinks have ads?
Neither PaperSpan nor GoodLinks shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PaperSpan or GoodLinks?
PaperSpan ships an update every 3 months, and GoodLinks every 2 weeks. Most recently, PaperSpan was updated on September 17, 2026 and GoodLinks on September 25, 2026.

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