Comparison

Paperpile vs Clover

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

Head to head
About

Paperpile

Organize and manage your research papers effortlessly. Collect, read, and annotate PDFs from millions of academic journals. Beat paper chaos with a tidy digital library.

Highlights
  • Search millions of academic papers
  • Collect PDFs with one tap
  • Organize with folders and labels
  • Read and annotate PDFs
  • Highlight and add notes
  • Browser integration for saving
Features
Read full description

Get a head start for you research and finally beat the paper chaos on your desk. With Paperpile you have all your research PDFs in one place — nice and tidy. Paperpile makes it easier than ever to collect, manage, read, and annotate your papers. FIND & COLLECT - Search millions of papers from 20,000+ academic journals right in the app. - Add new papers to your collection with one tap and the PDF will be downloaded automatically. - Save directly from your browser to your Paperpile library - User your university's off-campus proxy access to get restricted content behind paywalls. MANAGE & ORGANIZE - Bring structure to your library with folders and subfolders - Organize your library visually with colored labels - Mark important papers with stars. - Search your library to find the paper you need fast. READ & ANNOTATE - Read like on paper with a fast and slick PDF viewer experience - Highlight important sections in different colors - Add notes and never forget an important idea. - Add hand-drawn annotations - with your fingers or your Apple Pencil The Paperpile App requires a Paperpile account.

About

Clover

Features
Read full description

Clover is a sheep. She lives in a meadow, and she does not need you to talk to her. Choose how long you want to leave your phone alone — a short wander, a good ramble, or a long walk — and press one button. The apps you picked go away for that time. Clover keeps wandering while you're gone, and she finds things. When the time is up, your apps come back and a card appears in your hands, handwritten, naming everything she found. The card is yours to keep. HOW IT WORKS Pick your apps once. Clover uses Apple's Screen Time to put them away — the selection never leaves your phone, and we never see which apps you chose. Pick an outing. Three lengths, named for what she does with the time rather than for the clock. A longer outing finds more. That is the only reason to choose one. Watch, or don't. She keeps wandering either way. If you happen to open the app mid-outing, you might catch the moment she stops to look at something, and a line in her handwriting floats above her. If you don't, you miss nothing — the find is reported at the end regardless. Check the Lock Screen. The Live Activity shows her hopping through the meadow and the last thing she noticed, so you always know she's still out there. Keep the card. Every outing ends with one memory, kept in a journal that only ever grows. THINGS THIS APP WILL NEVER DO No streaks. A streak is a thing that can be broken, and this app is built on the idea that breaking is fine. No punishment for stopping early. Nothing withers, nothing dies, nothing is taken back. If you need your phone, take your phone. Clover will be in the meadow later. No guilt notifications. No "Clover misses you." No pressure to come back. No ads. No pop-ups. Nothing sold to you in the middle of a quiet moment. No account required. The meadow, the journal and your app selection all live on your device. WHO IT'S FOR People who have tried a hard app blocker and quietly deleted it after four days. People who want to study, read, sleep or eat dinner without their phone in reach. People who don't want a productivity dashboard telling them they failed — just somewhere pleasant for the time to go. Focus, screen time, deep work, digital detox, phone-free evenings: whatever you call it, the mechanic is the same. You put the phone down. Something small and good happens in your absence. You get to see what it was. A note on Screen Time: app shielding uses Apple's Family Controls and requires your permission. If you'd rather not grant it, everything else still works — the outing, the meadow, the finds and the journal all run on the clock alone.

Screenshots

Paperpile3 screens
Clover4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Clover at weekly against Paperpile's every 2 months. Paperpile's advantage is iOS requirement (12.0 vs 16.1). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Paperpile ships an update every 2 months, Clover weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Paperpile versus Clover: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPaperpileClover
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (131 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews71.6% of reviews—
Number of ratings131 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS12.0 — better16.1
Further details — not scored
Size242 MB188 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperPaperpile LLC宇轩 谢

Bugs and requests

Paperpile

Reported bugs

12 issues
  • App crashes frequently on iPad and iOS devices
  • Highlighting disappears when revisiting papers
  • Overlapping annotations delete together when removing one
  • Sync failures requiring logout/login cycles
  • Annotations not syncing between iPad and web versions
Show 7 more
  • PDF metadata recognition failures when adding papers
  • Settings reset when returning to previously edited files
  • App incompatible with older iOS versions (iOS 12)
  • Login authentication errors with university accounts
  • App crashes without reliable internet connection
  • Search functionality broken after updates
  • Annotations not saving/loading on iOS 14.4.2

Requested features

17 requests
  • Dark mode implementation
  • Edit citation metadata on mobile app
  • Change PDF file functionality
  • Save to downloads feature
  • Dictionary/lookup function for reading
Show 12 more
  • Cite while you write feature
  • BibTeX export capability
  • Ability to upload PDFs directly from mobile app
  • Support for Safari and other browsers
  • Desktop application version
  • Shared library access in mobile app
  • Advanced sorting options (by title, author, date)
  • Custom color options for annotations
  • Paste images into PDFs
  • Shape snapping for drawing tools
  • University email authentication
  • Paper rating system beyond stars

Clover

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Paperpile

No in-app purchases

None

Clover

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Paperpile free?
Paperpile is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Clover free?
Clover is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Paperpile or Clover have ads?
Neither Paperpile nor Clover shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Paperpile or Clover?
Paperpile ships an update every 2 months, and Clover weekly. Most recently, Paperpile was updated on October 23, 2026 and Clover on October 29, 2026.

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