Beanstack Tracker vs Sunshine State Reader
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Beanstack Tracker
This app encourages reading for all ages through engaging challenges and easy progress tracking. It allows family profiles, individual logging, and offers features like barcode scanning and reading timers. It prioritizes user privacy by not selling data or showing ads.
- Motivating reading challenges
- Easy reading progress tracking
- Barcode scanner for titles
- Reading timer and logging
- Streaks and badges
- Reading recommendations
- Friend leaderboards
- Reading fundraisers
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Beanstack helps schools, libraries, and families bring the fun back to reading with reading challenges, easy tracking, and insightful data. We invite students, families, and readers of all ages to a world of reading inspiration and motivation. You can create profiles for everyone in your family within a single library or Beanstack Go account, or you can use SSO to sign in to any of your students’ school accounts and swiftly toggle between them. Beanstack helps you grow your reading habits together, while also logging and tracking reading progress individually. We never sell your data or use it to show you ads, so Beanstack is safe for everyone. Features: - Join motivating reading challenges created by librarians, educators, and reading specialists. Our ever-growing reading challenge collection features seasonal challenges like summer reading, yearlong literacy initiatives, and diverse custom challenges for all ages, levels, and communities. - Track reading progress and create an all-time reading log. - Use a barcode scanner to quickly and easily find titles. - Record reading sessions with a reading timer or log an entire book with a click. - Achieve streaks for reading multiple days in a row and badges for reaching reading goals. - Complete fun enrichment activities and leave book reviews. - Access reading recommendations and resources. - Add friends from your organization to see what they’re reading and compete on leaderboards. - View reading stats, including totals and averages of time spent reading and titles read. - Participate in reading fundraisers: Raise money for your organization with reading! With Beanstack’s reading fundraisers, you can earn badges while collecting donations to fund important priorities at your school or library. Beanstack is created by Joyful Reading Co, where we're dedicated to nurturing a lifelong love of reading through engagement, access, and data-driven insights.
Sunshine State Reader
This app helps K-8 students in Florida track their reading for the Sunshine State Young Readers Award program. Log books, earn badges, and contribute to your school's leaderboard. It's free, ad-free, and designed for easy use by students and families.
- Track all 45 SSYRA titles for 2026-2027
- Log reading progress with timer
- Earn achievement badges
- Contribute to school leaderboard
- Offline tracking
- Parental gates for external links
- Spanish language translation
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Sunshine State Reader is an independent reading tracker for the Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) — Florida's statewide reading program for grades K-8. All 45 nominated titles for 2026-2027 are built in, so a reader can pick their grade band and start logging the first time they open the app. Read three books from your own grade band and you have earned your vote for the SSYRA winner. The app keeps the count and counts down the days to vote day. (Three is the standard requirement; some schools set their own.) TRACK EVERY BOOK • All 45 SSYRA titles for 2026-2027 — 15 each for K-2, 3-5, and 6-8 • Log your page as you go, or run the built-in reading timer: start, stop, resume • Daily reading streaks, plus a progress chart on the Me tab • Rate every book you finish — loved it, it was okay, or not for me • Every book list is bundled, so tracking works offline. No account, no sign-in STAY MOTIVATED • 11 achievement badges to unlock over the school year • Daily reading reminders and streak-saver nudges • A celebration when a book is finished, and a prompt toward the next one • A Vote Ready banner the moment you have read enough to cast a ballot • Home screen widget with the current book, progress ring, and vote status FOR FAMILIES • Made for a reader and a grown-up to use together, on iPhone or iPad • Every external link sits behind a parental gate • VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, and a warm light and dark mode • Fully translated into Spanish — set the device to Spanish and the whole app follows FOR TEACHERS AND MEDIA SPECIALISTS • A lighter alternative to paper reading logs: no rosters to build, no student accounts to manage, nothing to administer • Lexile measure, AR level, and AR points on every title • Full synopses and cover art for booktalks, displays, and shelf-talkers • Free for every student, in every classroom YOUR SCHOOL ON THE LEADERBOARD • Pick your school from a bundled directory of 2,900 Florida public and charter K-8 schools • Every book a student finishes adds to their school's total • Climb the rankings in your county and across the state • Only a books-completed count per school is ever sent — no names, no ages, no student data of any kind FIND YOUR NEXT BOOK • Browse all 45 titles, or search by title or author • Borrow from your local library or buy a copy, one tap from any book (behind the parental gate) • Amazon links are affiliate links, which help keep the app free FREE, WITH NO ADS Sunshine State Reader is completely free. No ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases, no account. PRIVACY No personal information is collected from children. Reading progress stays on the device. The school leaderboard sends only an anonymous, school-level count of completed books. Sunshine State Reader is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by the Florida Association for Media in Education (FAME) or the official SSYRA program. Book lists are updated for each school year.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: Sunshine State Reader at free against Beanstack Tracker's free with in-app purchases. Sunshine State Reader also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.8). Beanstack Tracker's advantage is ratings volume (102K vs 1) and iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). On price, update cadence, ads and 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Sunshine State Reader holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Beanstack Tracker has 102K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Beanstack Tracker ships an update every 3 weeks, Sunshine State Reader every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Beanstack Tracker | Sunshine State Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (102K ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 102K — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 60 MB | 13 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Zoobean, Inc. | Embay, LLC |
Customer experience
Beanstack Tracker
Sunshine State Reader
Bugs and requests
Beanstack Tracker
Reported bugs
4 issues- Incorrect logging of reading sessions and progress
- Inability to edit or remove previously logged books
- Compatibility issues on tablets and iPads
- Timezone-related bugs causing lost reading streaks
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to backdate reading sessions
- Calendar view to easily see monthly reading progress
- Option to log quantity of books read instead of just time
- Personalized book recommendations based on reading history
- Improved syncing and data management across devices
Sunshine State Reader
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Beanstack Tracker
No in-app purchases
Sunshine State Reader
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Beanstack Tracker free?
Is Sunshine State Reader free?
Which has better reviews, Beanstack Tracker or Sunshine State Reader?
Do Beanstack Tracker or Sunshine State Reader have ads?
Which is updated more often, Beanstack Tracker or Sunshine State Reader?
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