Comparison

Readwise vs R Discovery

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

Head to head
About

Readwise

This app helps you retain more of what you read by centralizing and revisiting your highlights from various reading platforms. It uses spaced repetition and active recall techniques to improve memory and offers features like tagging, note-taking, and OCR for physical books.

Highlights
  • Synchronize highlights from multiple platforms
  • Daily review habit via app and email
  • Spaced repetition and active recall
  • Tag, note, and search highlights
  • OCR for paper book highlights
  • Convert highlights to flashcards
Features
Read full description

Readwise helps you get the most out of what you read by making it fun & easy to revisit your highlights from all your favorite reading platforms in one place. Quickly synchronize your highlights from Kindle, Apple Books, Instapaper, Pocket, Medium, Goodreads, and even paper books. Then start building a daily review habit using the app and daily email. By reviewing your highlights every day, you'll retain dramatically more and you'll finally stop forgetting all the details from books you just finished! --- “Readwise is my favorite new service this year. Save highlights from Kindle, Instapaper, and now tweets... one of the best long-term personal learning tools I’ve come across.” — Caleb Hicks “Besides my Kindle, Readwise has been the most influential tech for improving my reading process.” — Blake Reichmann “If you use Kindle or Instapaper or just enjoy keeping and reading highlights, please sign up to Readwise. It will become one of your cherished services.” — Christopher Galtenberg --- ACTUALLY USE YOUR HIGHLIGHTS Highlighting is great, but why bother if you're never going to see any of your highlights again? Readwise makes it easy to quickly liberate all your highlights into one place, ensuring that you'll actually see and use them, including highlights from: • Amazon Kindle • Apple iBooks • Instapaper • Pocket • Medium • Goodreads • Twitter • Physical Books (using OCR) • Manual Input • CSV Upload STOP FORGETTING WHAT YOU READ How often do you finish a book, only to forget the key ideas two weeks later? We don't remember things by just reading them once. Readwise solves this problem using scientifically proven learning techniques called Spaced Repetition and Active Recall. Readwise resurfaces the right highlights at the right times using a daily email and an app. Readwise even makes it possible to convert your best highlights into flashcards for added retention. TAG, NOTE, SEARCH, AND ORGANIZE With your highlights all in one place, Readwise enables you to organize and connect these ideas in new ways. Use search to find a highlight instantly; use tag to organize highlights within your library; use notes to add your own annotations. HIGHLIGHT PAPER BOOKS Readwise also makes it possible to take highlights from your physical books and papers using your phone’s camera. Just snap a pic, highlight with your finger, and have your favorite highlights saved forever. --- If you are not already a Readwise subscriber, you can get started immediately with a 30-day free trial with no credit card upfront. At the end of the trial, you will not be charged unless you choose to subscribe to Readwise Full or Readwise Lite. Price may vary by location. Manage your subscription from your dashboard. --- Support: Check out readwise.io/faq or email us at hello@readwise.io Privacy Policy: https://readwise.io/tos Terms of Service: https://readwise.io/privacy

About

R Discovery

Access over 250 million research papers, including open access and preprints, with personalized feeds and curated reading lists. This app simplifies literature searches and helps you stay updated on academic research.

Highlights
  • Access 250M+ research articles
  • Personalized AI-curated feeds
  • Open access article library
  • Institutional access for paywalled papers
  • Collaborative reading lists
  • Audio streaming for papers
  • Research paper translation
Features
Read full description

R Discovery is your #1 place to discover research literature, stay current, and read what matters faster. Built for students, researchers, clinicians, educators, and academics, R Discovery helps you find relevant papers without spending hours searching across scattered sources. With research-grade AI workflows, R Discovery accelerates every step of your literature journey: discover papers, understand key findings, chat with PDFs, listen to research, translate papers, and build a personalized academic library around your interests. We search, curate, summarize, and organize the literature so you can spend more time on meaningful research and more time with the people you love. R Discovery gives you access to: • 150M+ journal articles • 78M+ open access papers • 10M+ conference documents • 5M+ preprints • 7.5M+ patents • 8M+ summaries and highlights • 9.5M+ research topics • 14M+ authors • 64K+ journals • 120K+ universities and institutions Why researchers use R Discovery: • Personalized research feeds based on your interests • Fast literature search for papers, journals, authors, topics, and institutions • Reliable, clean research database built to reduce duplication and low-quality content • Open access discovery so you can quickly find papers you can read • Full-text access with institutional login through GetFTR and LibKey integrations • Alerts for newly published papers in your field • Summaries and highlights to assess relevance faster • Bookmarks and reading lists to organize your library Upgrade to R Discovery Prime to accelerate your research further with unlimited access for research-grade AI workflows • Ask R Discovery for reference-backed answers from research papers • Chat with PDFs and get instant answers from full papers • Listen to papers with audio streaming for research on the go • Translate research papers into your preferred language • Sync your saved papers with Zotero and Mendeley R Discovery partners with leading global publishers, societies, and research platforms including Wiley, IOP Publishing, Springer Nature, Sage, Taylor & Francis, Hindawi, NEJM, Emerald Publishing, Duke University Press, IntechOpen, AIAA, Karger, Underline.io, J-STAGE, and more. Join 3M+ academics on R Discovery, the highest rated app in this space with a 4.6+ App Store rating. Free to use, or upgrade to R Discovery Prime for unlimited premium access. Get it now! Privacy Policy: https://cactusglobal.com/privacy-policy Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Readwise4 screens
R Discovery4 screens

Verdict

The call

Readwise and R Discovery both sit at 4.8 stars, but that hides the real split: 72% of Readwise's written reviews are positive against 57% of R Discovery's. On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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. Readwise sells 8 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and R Discovery sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $11.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for Readwise against 4.8 for R Discovery. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1.5K and 910 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 72% of Readwise's written reviews are positive against 57% of R Discovery's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Readwise ships an update every 2 weeks, R Discovery monthly. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 22, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Readwise versus R Discovery: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterReadwiseR Discovery
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (1.5K ratings)4.8 (910 ratings)
Positive reviews72.2% of reviews — better56.8% of reviews
Number of ratings1.5K — better910
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterMonthly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS15.515 — better
Further details — not scored
Size110 MB56 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperReadwise, IncCACTUS COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES PTE. LTD

Customer experience

Readwise

All ratings1,513 ratings
Positive95.7%
Neutral1.5%
Negative2.8%
Written reviews324 reviews
Positive72.2%
Neutral7.7%
Negative20.1%

R Discovery

All ratings910 ratings
Positive95.5%
Neutral2.1%
Negative2.4%
Written reviews44 reviews
Positive56.8%
Neutral20.5%
Negative22.7%

User reviews

Readwise

From 1.5K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Powerful spaced repetition
  • 📚 Seamless integration with reading apps
  • 🔍 Helpful AI-powered features
  • 🗓️ Useful daily review routine
  • 🧠 Boosts knowledge retention

Room to improve

  • 💰 Expensive subscription
  • 🔌 Sync issues with some platforms
  • 📱 Subpar mobile app experience
  • 🕰️ Lack of flexibility in daily review
  • 🔍 Limited search functionality

R Discovery

From 910 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 👍 Wonderful site for research professionals
  • 🚀 Fantastic app for researchers
  • 💡 Provides relevant paper recommendations

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Slow and choppy performance
  • 🐛 Buggy and unreliable features
  • 🐛 Difficult to use certain core functions
  • 🐛 Downloading PDFs doesn't work

Bugs and requests

Readwise

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Frequent app crashes
  • Sync failures with certain accounts
  • Unreliable highlight capture

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add support for more reading apps
  • Improve sync and import capabilities
  • Introduce more customization options
  • Enhance search and organization tools
  • Develop a more intuitive mobile interface

R Discovery

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Home screen takes a long time to load
  • Audio translation feature doesn't work
  • Buttons are extremely slow
  • Switching between dark and light mode is glitchy

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add option to view author information in preview
  • Enable screen rotation for iPad users
  • Add more advanced search functionality
  • Allow canceling of export in progress
  • Improve integration with Zotero

In-app purchases

8 purchases

Readwise

Subscriptions8
  • Readwise Lite Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Readwise Lite Monthly$6.991 Month
  • Readwise Full Monthly Plan$8.991 Month
Show 5 more
  • Readwise Full Monthly$12.991 Month
  • Readwise Lite Yearly$52.991 Year
  • Readwise Lite Yearly$66.991 Year
  • Readwise Full Yearly$94.991 Year
  • Readwise Full Yearly$119.991 Year
6 purchases

R Discovery

Subscriptions6
  • Monthly$11.991 Month
  • Monthly$24.991 Month
  • Monthly$25.001 Month
Show 3 more
  • Yearly$69.001 Year
  • Yearly$139.991 Year
  • Yearly$143.991 Year

Questions

Is Readwise free?
Readwise is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is R Discovery free?
R Discovery is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Readwise or R Discovery?
Readwise and R Discovery are both rated 4.8 out of 5 on the App Store, from 1.5K and 910 ratings respectively.
Do Readwise or R Discovery have ads?
Neither Readwise nor R Discovery shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Readwise or R Discovery?
Readwise ships an update every 2 weeks, and R Discovery monthly. Most recently, Readwise was updated on September 24, 2026 and R Discovery on September 22, 2026.

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