PaperSpan vs ReadKit
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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
ReadKit
This app consolidates your favorite news, articles, and feeds into a single, distraction-free reading hub. Save articles to read later, organize content with smart folders, and enjoy offline access. Customize your reading experience with themes and gestures.
- All-in-one reading hub
- Cross-platform support
- Flexible syncing options
- Advanced organization with smart folders
- Offline article access
- Enhanced reader mode
- Customizable interface
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Your All-in-One Reading Companion ReadKit is a powerful, all-in-one read-later and RSS client that brings together your favorite news, articles, and feeds. Supporting all major providers and featuring a built-in RSS engine, ReadKit lets you save and read articles later, providing a distraction-free reading experience anytime and anywhere. KEY FEATURES • All-in-One Reading Hub: Access all your accounts in one place with multi-account support. • Cross-Platform: Universal app with full feature parity on iOS and macOS. • Flexible Syncing: Sync with major RSS aggregators and read-later services, or use the built-in RSS engine. • Advanced Organization: Manage feeds, folders and tags, and create smart folders with automatic updates based on your criteria. • Smart Folder Actions: Apply actions to items in smart folders, such as marking them as read or starred, and use them for advanced content filtering. • Offline Access: Read articles offline with cached images. • Enhanced Reading Experience: Built-in reader mode extracts full article content, with options for automatic activation. • Wide Gesture Support: Intuitive gesture controls for effortless navigation, marking articles as read, or performing quick actions. • In-App Browser: View links and references without leaving the app. • App Badge Preferences: Customize the badge to display the count of unread items. • Mark as Read Options: Automatically mark articles as read while scrolling, use a pull-up gesture, or mark all with a single tap. • Contextual Marking: Quickly mark articles as read above or below directly from the context menu. • Customizable Interface: Choose themes, light or dark mode, and app icons to suit your style. • Powerful Search: Search articles by content, title, or source. • Filter Articles: Easily filter articles by read or starred status. • Background Syncing: Always stay updated with background sync. • Content Sharing: Use the share extension to save articles from Safari and other apps for later reading. • Email Articles: Send articles directly via email to share with others. • Share via Apps and Services: Share articles with apps, social media platforms, and other services through the share sheet. • YouTube Channel Support: Subscribe to YouTube channels and playlists through RSS feeds. • Full Keyboard Support: Optimized for hardware keyboards on macOS and iPad. • Feed Import/Export: Import or export subscriptions via OPML files. Enjoy ReadKit’s essential features completely free — no ads, no data mining. Unlock additional features with ReadKit Premium, available via a universal subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase for iOS, macOS, or both. A free trial is also available. PREMIUM FEATURES • Multi-Account Support: Manage multiple accounts simultaneously. • Unlimited Smart Folders: Create and customize more than one smart folder per account. • Enhanced Reader Mode: Extract full-text content from articles, even when missing from the feed source. • Article Summary: summarize articles using AI on supported devices (requires ReadKit Premium, Apple Intelligence and iOS 26). • Unlimited Feeds: Remove the 20-feed limit for the built-in RSS service. • Advanced Organization Tools: Organize feeds and articles into folders or tags. • Image Caching: Enjoy offline reading with cached images. • Themes & Custom Icons: Unlock exclusive themes and choose custom app icons. • Full OPML Support: Import and export feed subscriptions with ease. • Early Access: Enjoy upcoming premium features as they're released. • Support Development: Your subscription helps sustain ReadKit’s ongoing improvements. SUPPORTED SERVICES • News Reader Services: BazQux, Feedbin, Feedly, Fever, FreshRSS, Inoreader, Miniflux, NewsBlur, The Old Reader, Tiny Tiny RSS and Built-in RSS • Read Later & Bookmarking Services: Instapaper, Wallabag and Pinboard Privacy Policy: https://readkit.app/privacy Terms of Use: https://readkit.app/terms-of-use
Screenshots
Verdict
PaperSpan and ReadKit both sit at 4.3 stars, but that hides the real split: 57% of ReadKit's written reviews are positive against 20% of PaperSpan's. ReadKit also leads on update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 3 months). PaperSpan's advantage is iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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. PaperSpan sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $8.99 per year and ReadKit sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.3 for PaperSpan against 4.4 for ReadKit. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 75 and 124 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 20% of PaperSpan's written reviews are positive against 57% of ReadKit's.
PaperSpan ships an update every 3 months, ReadKit every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 17, 2026 and September 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | PaperSpan | ReadKit |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (75 ratings) | 4.4 (124 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 20.0% of reviews | 56.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 75 | 124 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 35 MB | 30 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sravan Kumar | Balazs Varkonyi |
Customer experience
PaperSpan
ReadKit
Bugs and requests
PaperSpan
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
ReadKit
Reported bugs
12 issues- Persistent toolbars blocking distraction-free reading
- Background refresh not working reliably
- Wallabag sync errors and failures
- App crashes when integrating multiple services
- Reading articles not marking as read automatically
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- Embedded tweets not displaying in web view
- Favicon and headline display issues in article list
- Thumbnail images not showing in article list
- Text overlap with underline formatting
- Inconsistent behavior between iOS and iPadOS versions
- Sync errors preventing account setup
- Partial feature support without clear disclosure
Requested features
19 requests- iCloud sync support for feeds and data
- Raindrop read-later service integration
- Sepia background option for light mode
- Widgets support
- Automatic reader view option
Show 14 moreShow fewer
- Push notifications for new articles
- Import Smart Folders from previous versions
- Sync Smart Folders across all devices
- Additional read-later service integrations (GoodLinks, etc.)
- Mark all as read button
- Pinboard API key login support
- Article position sync for read-later services
- More article list view customization options
- Highlight and annotate text functionality
- Built-in annotation and newsletter management
- Podcast playing capability
- Automatic full article text loading
- Quick article opening in Safari
- Image zoom and preview functionality
In-app purchases
PaperSpan
- PaperSpan Premium$8.991 Year
ReadKit
- Premium Monthly$2.991 Month
- Premium Annual7 Days trial$9.991 Year
- Premium Lifetime macOS$19.99
- Premium Lifetime iOS$19.99
- Premium Lifetime Universal$29.99









