CHMate vs CHM+
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CHMate
This app offers a robust reading experience for EPUB and CHM eBooks. Organize your library, add bookmarks and notes, and customize your reading environment. Share passages and easily search within your books.
- Organize eBooks into collections
- Add bookmarks and notes
- Customizable fonts and line height
- Fast scrolling and pagination
- Highlight favorite passages
- Built-in search functionality
- Share quotes with friends
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Most e-readers are bloated with monthly subscription traps, intrusive ads, and clumsy formatting. CHMate brings the quiet focus and tactile elegance of a real book back to your screen. Native EPUB and CHM reader with rich typography customization, instant search, and paper themes. Trusted by readers for over a decade, now rebuilt natively for modern iOS. Download free. Unlock unlimited bookshelf with a one-time purchase. CHMate is a local EPUB and CHM reader for iPhone and iPad. Import the books and documents you already own, arrange them into a library you enjoy, and read each one in the way that suits it best. CRAFTED FOR FOCUSED READING • Paper Texture & Themes: Curated paper backgrounds, customizable fonts, line spacing, margins, and dark mode • Distraction-Free: Clean interface designed to put nothing between you and the text • Tactile Gestures: Smooth chapter transitions and fluid page-turning that respect your reading rhythm DUAL FORMAT POWER: EPUB & CHM • EPUB: Perfect for literature, novels, and reflowable publications • CHM & MHT: Read technical documentation, programming references, and compiled help manuals with structured tables of contents POWERFUL, PRIVATE UTILITIES • Instant Search: Lightning-fast full-text search across chapters • Highlights & Notes: Capture the quotes that move you and review annotations easily • iCloud Theme Sync: Seamlessly sync your typography themes across your devices via CloudKit • Local Wi-Fi Transfer: Drop books directly from your computer browser to your device over Wi-Fi without cables HONEST PRICING • Free to download and read • Pay once to unlock the unlimited bookshelf forever • No subscriptions. No ads. No tracking.
CHM+
This app provides a streamlined way to read CHM documents on iOS devices. It offers quick import from local storage and iCloud, fast opening of large files, and efficient chapter navigation. Enjoy a smooth reading experience with support for multiple encodings.
- Quick document import (local storage, iCloud)
- Fast opening of large CHM files
- Table of contents chapter switching
- Multi-screen collaboration on iPad
- Support for multiple encoding types
- Smooth reading experience
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CHM+ focuses on enhancing the reading experience of CHM documents on the iOS platform. Main features: - Quick document import: Supports importing CHM documents from local storage and iCloud. - Fast opening of extremely large files. - Quick chapter switching: Supports switching by table of contents and quick switching in the order of the table of contents. - Multi-screen collaboration: Available for iPad. - Support for multiple encoding types. - A smooth reading experience.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: CHMate at 3.8 against CHM+'s 3.0. CHMate also leads on ads (none vs shown) and ratings volume (20 vs 2). CHM+'s advantage is review sentiment (83% vs 55%) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.0). On price, update cadence, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. CHMate sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and CHM+ sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
CHMate holds the better App Store score, 3.8 against 3.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: CHMate has 20 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 55% of CHMate's written reviews are positive against 83% of CHM+'s, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
CHMate ships an update every 2 months, CHM+ every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 20, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CHMate | CHM+ |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.8 (20 ratings) — better | 3.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 55.1% of reviews | 83.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 20 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 6 weeks — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 48 MB | 16 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 贤安 陈 | 俊锋 仝 |
Customer experience
CHMate
CHM+
Bugs and requests
CHMate
Reported bugs
13 issues- App crashes when searching CHM files
- Crashes when using tap-hold for bookmarking
- Highlighting functionality broken after iOS updates
- Notes and bookmarks not saving properly
- Highlights disappear or move between chapters
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- App crashes on startup or when opening files
- Table of contents index expansion broken
- Custom fonts blocked after iOS 14.5 update
- Files not accessible via iCloud or Dropbox
- Missing icons after updates
- Images display as half-dark or missing
- Text formatting changes not visible without page reload
- First line spacing issues
Requested features
12 requests- Dark mode and additional color themes (Sepia)
- Book cover display instead of text-only library view
- PDF support
- Text-to-speech functionality
- Better pagination options
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- iPad Pro resolution support
- iOS multi-window support
- Better bookmark functionality
- Separate highlighting and annotation tools
- Support for Cyrillic and Arabic text encoding
- Collection/folder organization for multiple files
- Zip file support for documentation sets
CHM+
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
CHMate
- CHMate+$9.99
CHM+
- CHM Pro$4.99
