Comparison

Book Tracker 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

Book Tracker

Capture, organize, and revisit key passages from your books with advanced text recognition. Create collections, add tags and notes, and easily export your highlights. Stop forgetting what you read and make your reading more impactful.

Highlights
  • Text recognition
  • Book collections
  • Tags and notes
  • Highlight export
  • Page number detection
  • Search functionality
  • Photo highlighting
Features
Read full description

4x App of the Day - Apple Remember more of what you read. Highlighted helps you capture meaningful passages from books, organize them into a searchable library, and revisit the ideas you do not want to forget. Point your camera at a page, select the text that matters, and save it with the book, page number, notes, and tags. Build your personal bookshelf, group books into collections, import highlights from Kindle or CSV, export everything in bulk, and share beautiful quote cards. Trusted by 150,000+ readers. ______ CAPTURE • Best-in-class text recognition • Smart sentence and paragraph detection • Photo highlighting from your library • Page number detection • ISBN barcode scanning • Kindle highlights import • CSV highlights import ORGANIZE • Personal book library • Book collections and reading status • Tags, notes, page numbers, and favorites • Powerful search and filters REVISIT • Highlight reminders • Home Screen widgets with random highlights • Siri Shortcuts • Offline mode SHARE & EXPORT • Beautiful highlight sharing cards • Bulk highlights export • Export to multiple formats • Include notes, tags, and page numbers • iPad drag and drop highlighting Highlighted is free to start. The core reading and highlight experience is free, and Highlighted+ unlocks optional power features. ______ Privacy Policy: https://highlighted-app.webflow.io/terms-and-policies#privacy-policy-heading Terms: https://highlighted-app.webflow.io/terms-and-policies#terms-of-service-heading ______ ABOUT ME I'm Damir, an independent creator from Europe who loves to read. Say hello at damir.stuhec@gmail.com

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

Book Tracker4 screens
Bright Passages4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Book Tracker at Free against Bright Passages's $4.99. Book Tracker also leads on ratings volume (733 vs 1) and iOS requirement (18.4 vs 26.5). Bright Passages's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 6) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 5 weeks). On rating, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Book Tracker is free to download; Bright Passages costs $4.99 up front. Book Tracker sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Bright Passages asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Book Tracker against 5.0 for Bright Passages. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Book Tracker has 733 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 93% of Book Tracker's written reviews are positive against 100% of Bright Passages's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Book Tracker ships an update every 5 weeks, Bright Passages every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Book Tracker versus Bright Passages: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBook TrackerBright Passages
PriceFree — better$4.99
Rating4.9 (733 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews93.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings733 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 5 weeksEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases — betterPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS18.4 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size63 MB5 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDamir StuhecNathan Perry

Customer experience

Book Tracker

All ratings733 ratings
Positive96.9%
Neutral1.6%
Negative1.5%
Written reviews356 reviews
Positive93.0%
Neutral3.7%
Negative3.4%

Bright Passages

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

Bugs and requests

Book Tracker

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Occasional crashes or freezes
  • Issues with recognizing text from curved pages
  • Problems with losing previously saved highlights

Requested features

5 requests
  • Add ability to highlight and annotate PDFs
  • Integrate with ebook readers like Kindle
  • Implement cloud sync and backup
  • Add more customization options for highlights
  • Improve search and filtering functionality

Bright Passages

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

6 purchases

Book Tracker

Subscriptions3
  • Highlighted Club Monthly$2.991 Month
  • plus weekly$4.997 Days
  • plus yearly3 Days trial$44.991 Year
One-time3
  • Small tip$9.00
  • Medium tip$25.00
  • Large tip$49.00
None

Bright Passages

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Book Tracker free?
Book Tracker is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Bright Passages free?
Bright Passages costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Book Tracker or Bright Passages?
Bright Passages is rated higher. Book Tracker averages 4.9 out of 5 from 733 ratings, while Bright Passages averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Book Tracker or Bright Passages have ads?
Neither Book Tracker nor Bright Passages shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Book Tracker or Bright Passages?
Book Tracker ships an update every 5 weeks, and Bright Passages every 2 days. Most recently, Book Tracker was updated on October 20, 2026 and Bright Passages on October 8, 2026.

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