Comparison

Readwise Highlights vs Benkyo Box

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

Head to head
About

Readwise Highlights

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

Benkyo Box

Create and study custom flashcards with rich media support, including sketching and image annotations. Organize your learning with folders and track your progress with daily study schedules and trend analysis.

Highlights
  • Custom flashcard creation
  • Image sketching and annotation
  • Quick entry and CSV import
  • Folder organization
  • Daily study scheduling
  • Progress tracking and trends
  • Shortcut integration
Features
Read full description

Benkyo Box is a flashcard app that is like your notes, but of the things that you want to commit to memory like names, fun facts, or exam material. These are the facts that you don't want to bury in a note taking app, and want to ensure you truly know them. Every flashcard you add to Benkyo Box is added to your daily studies, in which a beautiful study interface shows you the card’s question, you try to recall its answer, reveal it, then rate yourself after seeing the actual answer. Based on that rating, the card is re-surfaced in future with a notification so that you can practice again until you know it. Flexible flashcard content: Flashcards not only have the standard image/text front and back format, they also support in-app sketching and images for both the question and answer. Text supports multiple lines in both the question and answer so you can learn lists in a single flashcard. Powerful annotation cards: Looking to learn concept of an image? Like: - the components of a mechanical object - anatomical parts - different elements of a dish Benkyo Box makes this easy with Annotation Cards - simply annotate an image with arrows, rectangles and other tools, which automatically turn into flashcards. It preserves the original image as incredibly useful context. Easily create study material: - Natural Language: No need to enter questions and answers in flashcards! Enter a statement you'd like to learn, and with Apple Intelligence, we'll rewrite it as question and answer (Advanced Learner feature). - Quick Entry: Enter many cards at once by alternating questions and answers in plain text. This is specially helpful for pasting content from LLMs or adding multiple cards during a meeting. - CSV import: import a spreadsheet with flexible options on how to interpret the columns for the final flashcards - Folder import: select a folder with multiple images, creating a flashcard for each image in the question, filename on the answer. If the folder contains a CSV, the CSV can be used to customize how the images are imported (used as question, answer or both). Shortcuts for everything: Quickly do almost anything that you can do in the app within Shortcuts, like adding cards, checking your study status, importing content, and even updating app settings. Flexible organization: Organize your flashcards using folders and subfolders for all your topics, or keep them in the default unsorted folder if you prefer them that way. Your schedule and trends, at a glance: Open the app and you'll immediately see your study progress for the day and the time for your next study (also available as a widget). Navigate to the calendar to see what you have scheduled for today, the following days and how you scored the previous day. Flexible study sessions: Study a specific topic by navigating to it, or study all topics scheduled for today by studying from the Today view. Study times and flashcard frequencies can be configured in settings. Also if you are feeling like studying a topic but the cards are not available yet, you can always reset the folder and study right away. Privacy: Cards are private information and we have no access to them. If you use iCloud sync, Benkyo Box securely encrypts your content in iCloud with client-side encryption - nobody in the server can read your cards. Themes, each with a Dark Mode version: Choose a theme to match the mood of the study session. Advanced Learner Features: With Advanced Learner, a paid tier, you get features that help you streamline your studies: - Add cards using natural language - Extract cards from text and articles using on devices that support Apple Intelligence - Hidden folders that are ignored from studies until you are ready to unhide them - Deadlines that help prioritize studies before an important date Most importantly, the app is fully functional without Advanced Learner and we work hard to ensure that it’s easy to unsubscribe from it with the least disruption as possible.

Screenshots

Readwise Highlights4 screens
Benkyo Box4 screens

Verdict

The call

Readwise Highlights and Benkyo Box both sit at 4.8 stars, but that hides the real split: 100% of Benkyo Box's written reviews are positive against 69% of Readwise Highlights's. Benkyo Box also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 2 weeks). Readwise Highlights's advantage is ratings volume (1.5K vs 5) and iOS requirement (15.5 vs 18.2). On price, rating, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Readwise Highlights sells 8 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Benkyo Box sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Benkyo Box holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Readwise Highlights has 1.5K ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 69% of Readwise Highlights's written reviews are positive against 100% of Benkyo Box's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Readwise Highlights ships an update every 2 weeks, Benkyo Box weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Readwise Highlights versus Benkyo Box: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterReadwise HighlightsBenkyo Box
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (1.5K ratings)5.0 (5 ratings) — better
Positive reviews69.3% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings1.5K — better5
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFreemium
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS15.5 — better18.2
Further details — not scored
Size112 MB154 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperReadwise, Incautorelease LLC

Customer experience

Readwise Highlights

All ratings1,513 ratings
Positive95.7%
Neutral1.5%
Negative2.8%
Written reviews400 reviews
Positive69.3%
Neutral7.0%
Negative23.8%

Benkyo Box

All ratings5 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews3 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Readwise Highlights

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

Benkyo Box

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

8 purchases

Readwise Highlights

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
3 purchases

Benkyo Box

Subscriptions2
  • Advanced Learner (Monthly)$2.991 Month
  • Advanced Learner (Yearly)$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • Advanced Learner Lifetime$34.99

Questions

Is Readwise Highlights free?
Readwise Highlights is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Benkyo Box free?
Benkyo Box is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Readwise Highlights or Benkyo Box?
Benkyo Box is rated higher. Readwise Highlights averages 4.8 out of 5 from 1.5K ratings, while Benkyo Box averages 5.0 from 5 ratings.
Do Readwise Highlights or Benkyo Box have ads?
Neither Readwise Highlights nor Benkyo Box shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Readwise Highlights or Benkyo Box?
Readwise Highlights ships an update every 2 weeks, and Benkyo Box weekly. Most recently, Readwise Highlights was updated on October 25, 2026 and Benkyo Box on October 24, 2026.

Other comparisons