CHMate vs A FB2 Reader
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.
A FB2 Reader
This free application allows you to read your favorite FB2 format ebooks on your iPad and iPhone. Easily import books from various sources, customize your reading experience with adjustable fonts and color schemes, and navigate your library with ease.
- Read FB2 ebooks
- Import from web, iTunes, and cloud drives
- Adjustable fonts, spacing, and width
- Three color schemes
- Easy navigation and page turning
- Sort books by various criteria
- Book image gallery
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A FB2 Reader lets you read your favorite books on iPad without any restrictions and hidden fees. A FB2 Reader completely free ebook reading application, you can collect unlimited number of titles in your Library and read them for you own pleasure. Application optimized for all iPad and iPhone models and high resolution Retina Display graphics. It is possible to load ebooks in fb2 format into application by a number of way, like: - download fb2 books using your favorite web browser application and open it with A FB2 Reader using "Open In..." iSO feature - use iTunes file sharing to copy files from you computer - import books from you preferred cloud drive - Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive currently supported, more options coming in next versions A FB2 Reader features: - Turn pages with a tap or swipe - Easy navigation inside the book - Open electronic books from any source - Automatically expands fb2 files from zip archive - Adjustable fonts and font sizes - Adjustable line spacing - Adjustable page width - Three color schemes - Sort books by File name, Book Title, Author or Recently opened - Book Information Page - Book Images Gallery View - all embedded images on one page - Book sharing - possible to transfer book to any destination supported by iOS or any application which can handle this file type
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: A FB2 Reader at none against CHMate's 1. A FB2 Reader also leads on update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 2 months) and review sentiment (67% vs 55%). CHMate's advantage is rating (3.8 vs 3.4) and ratings volume (20 vs 5). On price, 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
Both are free to download. CHMate sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. A FB2 Reader asks for nothing beyond the download.
CHMate holds the better App Store score, 3.8 against 3.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 20 and 5 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 55% of CHMate's written reviews are positive against 67% of A FB2 Reader'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, A FB2 Reader every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CHMate | A FB2 Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.8 (20 ratings) — better | 3.4 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 55.1% of reviews | 67.1% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 20 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 9.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 48 MB | 18 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 贤安 陈 | Yuri Staloverov |
Customer experience
CHMate
A FB2 Reader
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
A FB2 Reader
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
CHMate
- CHMate+$9.99
A FB2 Reader
No in-app purchases
