Aurora Reader vs Focus
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Aurora Reader
Save, read, and organize articles from the web with a clutter-free reading experience. Look up word definitions, add notes, and listen to articles hands-free. Syncs across devices via iCloud.
- Save articles from web
- Clutter-free reading view
- Offline article access
- Word definition lookup
- Highlighting and note-taking
- Article-to-speech functionality
- iCloud sync across devices
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Save articles, read articles, learn new words, record new thoughts… Aurora Reader is a premium Read-It-Later app that builds with latest technologies and packs a ton of exciting features. SAVE ARTICLES • Find Aurora Reader’s extensions from Share sheet in Safari, Twitter, Medium and many other apps, and use them to view or save articles • On iPad, use Drag & Drop to import multiple articles from another app at once • With automatically iCloud Sync, you can save articles on your iPhone and read them later on your iPad, iPod touch or Mac* READ ARTICLES • Article view automatically removes clutter from webpage and shows only the main article content for you • Immersive reading experience let you keep focus • No network, no problem: saved articles can be read at anytime, even without network • Customize your reading experience with multiple fonts and themes • Reading progress is automatically sync with iCloud, so you can easily switch device and continue reading from where you left off LEARN NEW WORDS • On article view, you can check word definitions simply by one tap. To close definitions view, it’s also as simple as a tap or swipe • Check word definitions in multi-language dictionaries • Aurora Reader can get you a great amount of definitions in least amount of time, thanks to the customized search engine with special optimization • Words you look up can be automatically saved to Aurora Reader’s companion app: Aurora Dictionary • Install or delete dictionaries from Dictionary Manager view RECORD NEW THOUGHTS • Select, swipe, highlight, and add notes • Save unlimited highlights and notes • Choose the highlight color that match your style REWIND • Rewind your reading journey with Search • Search saved articles, notes, folders and more from iOS home screen or in-app search bar • Accurately locate sentences and paragraphs with Full-Text Search ORGANIZE • Organize your articles and notes with Folders • Enjoy the freedom to create unlimited folders and subfolders • Quickly find your folders with Search • Use Drag & Drop to move and reorder your folders, articles and notes RELAX • Listen to articles with high fidelity voice, hands-free and eyes-free • Check currently reading paragraph on in-app Now Playing view. Find some unfamiliar words? just tap to look up • Listen with just your Apple Watch (requires watchOS 6.0 or later, and a pair of Bluetooth headphones) • Switch between multiple speech languages and voices * Aurora Reader for Mac is available on Mac App Store
Focus
Enhance your browsing with a customizable video player, powerful ad blocker, and advanced reading tools. Enjoy hands-free page turning, web translation, and script support for a personalized online experience.
- Customizable video player
- Userscript support (JavaScript, Tampermonkey)
- Advanced reading mode
- Hands-free auto page turning
- Powerful ad blocking
- Web translation
- Bookmark syncing
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【Video Mode】 Customizable player supporting floating video, playback speed control, picture-in-picture, DLNA and AirPlay casting, and one-click screen lock. 【Userscripts】 Supports both JavaScript and Tampermonkey 5.3.0 syntax. After years of user feedback, Focus has greatly improved compatibility with various scripts, ensuring more scripts run smoothly on Focus. 【Reading Mode】 The best reading mode on iOS, supporting automatic preloading of the next page, font size, line height, margin adjustments, and webpage theme selection. Supports text filtering and regular expression rule filtering. 【Auto Page Turning】 Hands-free page turning for novels, comics, or forums. Supports search engines like Baidu, Google, Bing, and Yandex. Try it out now! 【Redirect Blocker】 Can block malicious app redirects within webpages. 【Custom Homepage】 Add your favorite websites to the homepage and set a personalized browser homepage. 【Web Translation】 Super fast translation, making it easy to understand any webpage and breaking down language barriers. 【Ad Blocking】 Powerful ad-blocking feature supporting AdBlock Plus and AdGuard syntax. Includes ad tagging, webpage blacklists, and custom ad rules. 【Bookmark Sync】 Import bookmarks from Safari, Chrome, and Alook into Focus and export Focus bookmarks to those browsers, ensuring seamless bookmark syncing. 【URL Scheme】 Open URLs via Shortcuts: FocusBrowser://search?url=search term or link. 【Other Features】 Supports iPad, iCloud bookmark sync, dark mode, incognito mode, ad marking mode, fingerprint/FaceID login, feedback, and full-screen mode. 【Privacy & Security】 Focus respects your privacy. Incognito mode doesn’t save browsing history, cache, or cookies.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Aurora Reader at none against Focus's 1. Focus's advantage is rating (4.7 vs 4.3) and ratings volume (4.9K vs 12). On price, review sentiment, 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. Focus sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Aurora Reader asks for nothing beyond the download.
Focus holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Focus has 4.9K ratings behind it against 12, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 62% of Aurora Reader's written reviews are positive against 54% of Focus's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Aurora Reader ships an update every 6 weeks, Focus every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on August 12, 2026 and September 28, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Aurora Reader | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (12 ratings) | 4.7 (4.9K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 61.5% of reviews — better | 53.8% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 12 | 4.9K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 13.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 27 MB | 34 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Junyu Kuang | 庆彬 邓 |
Customer experience
Aurora Reader
Focus
Bugs and requests
Aurora Reader
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Focus
Reported bugs
3 issues- Incompatibility with certain websites
- Inconsistent script performance
- Inability to export bookmarks
Requested features
4 requests- Add mute tab button
- Implement desktop mode
- Improve video playback controls
- Restore video download feature
In-app purchases
Aurora Reader
No in-app purchases
Focus
- Pro Lifetime$4.99
Questions
Is Aurora Reader free?
Is Focus free?
Which has better reviews, Aurora Reader or Focus?
Do Aurora Reader or Focus have ads?
Which is updated more often, Aurora Reader or Focus?
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