Comparison

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books vs Bright Passages

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

Head to head
About

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books

Access over 100,000 free public domain eBooks from Project Gutenberg. Enjoy a customizable reading experience with features like text-to-speech, auto-scrolling, and note-taking. Download books for offline reading on any device.

Highlights
  • Unlimited eBook downloads
  • Customizable reading experience
  • Text-to-Speech (TTS) mode
  • Auto-scrolling mode
  • Bookmark, highlight, and notes
  • Offline reading
Features
Read full description

Gutenberg Reader – The Ultimate Free eBook & Classic Book Reader Discover 100,000+ Free eBooks with Project Gutenberg If you love books, novels, and classic literature, this is the perfect eBook reader for you! With Gutenberg Reader, you can access over 100,000 free eBooks from Project Gutenberg, including timeless classics, historical texts, philosophy, poetry, and more. Enjoy reading legendary works from Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Emily Brontë, and many others—all legally available in the public domain. What is Project Gutenberg? Project Gutenberg is the largest digital library of free public domain eBooks, offering a vast collection of literature, philosophy, history, and poetry—completely free and legally accessible. Whether you're interested in classic novels, educational texts, famous speeches, or timeless stories, you'll find endless reading material at your fingertips. Top Features of Gutenberg Reader ・ Unlimited eBook Downloads – Download books for offline reading anytime. ・ Customizable Reading Experience – Adjust fonts, themes, colors, margins, and more. ・ AUDIO: Text-to-Speech (TTS) Mode – Listen to your favorite books while reading along. ・ Auto-Scrolling Mode – Hands-free reading without flipping pages. ・ Full-Screen Mode – Distraction-free reading with an immersive experience. ・ Bookmark, Highlight & Notes – Save quotes, mark passages, and take notes. ・ Big & Bold Fonts – Ideal for easy readability and accessibility. ・ Smart Resume Feature – Pick up reading right where you left off. ・ Optimized for All Devices – Works smoothly on both phones and tablets. Popular Free Books Available in Gutenberg Reader Discover a vast collection of classic literature, novels, and timeless books, including: ・ Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen ・ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll ・ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain ・ A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens ・ The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People – Oscar Wilde ・ The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman ・ Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ・ Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain ・ A Doll's House – Henrik Ibsen ・ Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka ・ The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle ・ Moby-Dick – Herman Melville ・ Dracula – Bram Stoker ・ Grimms' Fairy Tales – Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm ・ The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde ・ Great Expectations – Charles Dickens ・ Ulysses – James Joyce ・ Emma – Jane Austen ・ Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad ・ Jane Eyre: An Autobiography – Charlotte Brontë ・ The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas ・ Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse ・ Dubliners – James Joyce ・ Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson ・ Les Misérables – Victor Hugo ・ Leviathan – Thomas Hobbes ・ Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie ・ Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen ・ The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky ・ Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman ・ The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois ・ Beyond Good and Evil – Friedrich Nietzsche ・ Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë ・ A Study in Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle ・ Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky …and thousands more free eBooks! Why Choose Gutenberg Reader? With Gutenberg Reader, you can carry a massive digital library of classic books, novels, and free eBooks wherever you go. Whether you love fiction, history, philosophy, poetry, or educational texts, this app gives you unlimited access to some of the greatest literary works of all time—without ads and completely free! Start Reading Today! Download Gutenberg Reader now and explore the world’s greatest free eBook library. Whether you're a book lover, student, researcher, or casual reader, this app is your gateway to endless knowledge and literary adventures—all from the palm of your hand. Happy Reading!

About

Bright Passages

Capture and organize highlights from physical books using your camera. Automatically detects highlighter colors and allows manual text selection for unmarked passages. Creates a searchable, shareable digital library of your favorite book passages.

Highlights
  • Camera-based highlight detection
  • Automatic highlighter color categorization
  • Manual text selection
  • Searchable digital library
  • Customizable categories
  • Add personal notes
  • Export to CSV, Excel, Markdown
Features
Read full description

Kindle readers have built-in highlight sync. Physical book readers have a highlighter and a problem. Bright Passages solves it. Point your camera at a highlighted passage in a real book. Bright Passages reads the page, transcribes it, and detects what color highlighter you used — automatically categorizing the passage before you tap save. Didn't highlight it? Just select the text by hand instead — perfect for library books, textbooks, or any page you didn't mark up. Your highlights become a searchable, shareable library in seconds. Finally, an app built for people who read physical books. Bright Passages is a digital commonplace book — the tradition of collecting passages from real pages that move, challenge, or clarify your thinking. Highlight detection that thinks with you. Bright Passages' camera detects six highlighter colors — orange, yellow, pink, blue, green, and purple — and maps them to your personal categories, renamed however you like. Answer one quick question when you first open the app — student, book club, fiction, nonfiction, or religious study — and your categories are already set up to match how you actually read. The colors you already use in the margins now mean something in your library too. Capture the highlighted words alone, or the full page with the marked passage bolded, italicized, or both. Need more than one page for a single passage? Take multiple photos and combine them into a single capture. One category system, two levels of control. Set your categories globally, then override them book by book — so "Quote" in one book can mean "Premise" in another, without changing anything else. Add your own thinking. After capturing a passage, add a note — your reaction, a connection you made, a question it raised. Edit any transcription with a built-in formatting toolbar for bold, italic, underline, and undo. Notes are saved alongside the passage and included in every export. Your physical library, finally organized. Every passage lives inside its book. Add a chapter number for citation-ready passages. Filter by chapter, category, or reading status. Search across every physical book you've ever read. Share a passage as a beautiful card. Export your library as CSV, Excel (formatting preserved), or Markdown. Your data is always yours. No subscription. No account. No cloud you don't control. One purchase. Your data syncs through your own iCloud — private, automatic, no third-party servers. The words you've marked in real books deserve better than another monthly fee. FOR READERS WHO: Highlight passages in physical books and want them saved permanently Read library books, textbooks, or any book they'd rather not mark up Use multiple highlighter colors, each with its own meaning Keep a commonplace book — or always meant to start one Read as a student, in a book club, or for serious nonfiction Finish a book and want to actually remember what mattered WHAT YOU CAN DO Photograph a highlighted page, or select text by hand if it isn't highlighted Combine multiple photos into a single passage Capture the highlight alone or the full page, emphasized Automatic highlighter color detection and categorization A one-time reader-type quiz sets up your categories for you Add personal notes to any passage Built-in formatting toolbar — bold, italic, underline, undo Chapter numbers for citation-ready passages Rename categories globally or per book Filter passages by chapter, category, or search Share passages as designed image cards Export as CSV, Excel (formatting preserved), or Markdown Reading status tracking (Reading, Want to Read, Finished) Bright Ideas — a random past passage on a schedule you set The best physical books leave marks. Bright Passages remembers which ones.

Screenshots

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books4 screens
Bright Passages4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Bright Passages at 100% against Gutenberg Reader + Many Books's 45%. Bright Passages also leads on rating (5.0 vs 3.6) and ads (none vs shown). Gutenberg Reader + Many Books's advantage is price (Free vs $4.99) and ratings volume (120 vs 4). On in-app purchases 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

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books is free to download; Bright Passages costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Bright Passages holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Gutenberg Reader + Many Books has 120 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 45% of Gutenberg Reader + Many Books's written reviews are positive against 100% of Bright Passages's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books ships an update every 3 weeks, Bright Passages every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard9 real differences · 1 level
Gutenberg Reader + Many Books versus Bright Passages: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterGutenberg Reader + Many BooksBright Passages
PriceFree — better$4.99
Rating3.6 (120 ratings)5.0 (4 ratings) — better
Positive reviews44.7% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings120 — better4
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 2 days — better
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases — betterPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS13.0 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size20 MB5 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperHaven TranNathan Perry

Customer experience

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books

All ratings116 ratings
Positive62.1%
Neutral7.8%
Negative30.2%
Written reviews38 reviews
Positive44.7%
Neutral2.6%
Negative52.6%

Bright Passages

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books

Reported bugs

16 issues
  • App hangs often
  • Speed of moving text uncontrollable
  • Illustrations do not show up
  • Does not sync between separate devices
  • Search function is not working correctly
Show 11 more
  • Ads are intrusive
  • App support link is broken
  • Books keep getting deleted
  • Takes ages to load, still doesn't load
  • No download functionality
  • Does not display Umlauts
  • Words are split at random
  • Search button renders incorrectly
  • Reports 404 on book downloads
  • Many bugs, unable to read books
  • Too many ads

Requested features

9 requests
  • Fix app hanging issues
  • Improve search functionality
  • Allow users to rate & review books
  • Add book summaries before download
  • Fix illustrations not showing
Show 4 more
  • Sync between separate devices
  • Improve paragraph formatting for dyslexia
  • Fix books deleting overnight
  • Make UI more modern and intuitive

Bright Passages

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

Gutenberg Reader + Many Books

No in-app purchases

None

Bright Passages

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Gutenberg Reader + Many Books free?
Gutenberg Reader + Many Books is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Bright Passages free?
Bright Passages costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Gutenberg Reader + Many Books or Bright Passages?
Bright Passages is rated higher. Gutenberg Reader + Many Books averages 3.6 out of 5 from 120 ratings, while Bright Passages averages 5.0 from 4 ratings.
Do Gutenberg Reader + Many Books or Bright Passages have ads?
Gutenberg Reader + Many Books shows ads; Bright Passages does not.
Which is updated more often, Gutenberg Reader + Many Books or Bright Passages?
Gutenberg Reader + Many Books ships an update every 3 weeks, and Bright Passages every 2 days. Most recently, Gutenberg Reader + Many Books was updated on November 6, 2026 and Bright Passages on October 31, 2026.

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