Apple Books vs Gutenberg | eBook Reader
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Apple Books
Discover, read, and listen to millions of books and audiobooks. Browse curated collections, personalized recommendations, and bestsellers. Customize your reading experience with various themes and settings, and set reading goals to build a habit. Share your library with family.
- Discover millions of books and audiobooks
- Personalized recommendations and curated collections
- Customizable reading experience (fonts, themes, spacing)
- Reading goals and progress tracking
- Family Sharing for books and audiobooks
- Apple CarPlay and Apple Watch integration
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Apple Books is the best place to discover, read and listen to entertaining and informative books and audiobooks. Browse through top charts, personalised recommendations and expertly curated collections in the Book Store and Audiobook Store, or use search to easily find the perfect read or listen, no subscription needed. Track what you’ve read and want to read, and set your own reading goals—all in one app and across all your Apple devices. Explore millions of books and audiobooks • Check out today’s bestsellers, free books and special offers for readers of all ages, plus personalised recommendations. • Explore collections curated by the Apple Books team to find your next book or audiobook in your favourite genres, from mysteries and thrillers to romance, history, self-development and kids. • Sample any book or preview an audiobook to start enjoying the first few pages for free. • Keep track of the books and audiobooks you’re interested in with your Want to Read list. Customise your reading experience • Choose from a selection of reading themes, which include a variety of fonts and background colours. • Make your book easy to read by adjusting line height and letter spacing to your preference. • Use Auto-Night Theme and adjust your screen brightness to make reading more comfortable for your eyes. • Enable vertical scrolling to move continuously through books instead of flipping pages. Make reading a habit with Reading Goals • Set a reading goal to encourage yourself to read daily. • Track reading streaks and how many books you’ve read this year. • Get reminders and coaching to help you achieve your reading goals. Share with your whole family • Family Sharing lets you enjoy your books and audiobooks with your favourite people. Invite up to five family members. Apple CarPlay • Designed with safety in mind, the Audiobooks app in Apple CarPlay allows you to listen to audiobooks while driving. • Large buttons make it easy to start and stop, rewind or fast forward, and the simplified library helps you find your next audiobook while still keeping your eyes on the road. Apple Watch features • Use the Audiobooks app on Apple Watch to get back to your recent audiobooks or browse your library right from your wrist. • Use the Watch app on iPhone to choose which audiobooks to download to your Apple Watch. Requirements & store availability • iPhone requires iOS 12 or later. • iPad requires iPadOS 12 or later. • Content varies by country or region and may not be available on all devices.
Gutenberg | eBook Reader
Access a vast library of public domain e-books and audiobooks from around the world. Explore tens of thousands of titles across numerous languages and categories, including classics and popular works.
- Vast public domain e-book library
- Extensive audiobook collection
- Thousands of titles available
- Multiple languages supported
- Categorized book selection
- Top 50 e-books listed
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This app contains the largest public domain e-book and audio book platforms in the world. This application brings a large collection of e-books and audio books to your phone and makes more than 50.000 e-books, 10.000 audio books available for you. Thousands of books from different categories and languages. Languages with more than 50 e-books, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog. Top 50 e-books: 1- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 2- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 3- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 4- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 5- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle 6- Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 7 -The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated by John Collingwood Bruce 8- Why Men Fight by Bertrand Russell 9- Dracula by Bram Stoker 10- The Young Train Dispatcher by Burton Egbert Stevenson 11- Il Principe. English by Niccolò Machiavelli 12- Et dukkehjem. English by Henrik Ibsen 13- Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem 14- Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka 15- Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary 16- Rowlandson by Mary White Rowlandson 17- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 18- Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm 19- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 20- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes 21- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American 22- Slave by Frederick Douglass 23- Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie 24- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin 25- The Iliad by Homer 26- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare 27- Red Wagon Stories by Wells Hawks 28- War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy 29- The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana 30- The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for 31- Serious People by Oscar Wilde 32- Common Sense by Thomas Paine 33- Histories of two hundred and fifty-one divisions of the 34- German army which participated in the war 35- The Romance of Lust: A Classic Victorian erotic novel by Anonymous 36- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 37- Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville 38- The War in the East by Trumbull White 39- Ulysses by James Joyce 40- Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë 41- The Key to Theosophy by H. P. Blavatsky 42- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse 43- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 44- The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4) by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 45- The Theory of Environment by Armin Hajman Koller 46- Les Misérables by Victor Hugo 47- The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin 48- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving 49- Webster & Tourneur by Cyril Tourneur and John Webster 50- Prestuplenie i nakazanie. English by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Top Audio Books: 1- Pride and Prejudice 2- Jane Eyre 3- Persuasion 4- Anne of Green Gables 5- Emma 6- Little Women 7- The Count of Monte Cristo 8- Mansfield Park 9- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 10- Wuthering Heights 11- The Woman in White 12- Frankenstein: The 1818 Text 13- A Little Princess 14- Moby-Dick 15- Sense and Sensibility 16- North and South 17- Dracula 18- The Scarlet PimpernelThe Scarlet Pimpernel 19- The 39 Steps 20- The Picture of Dorian Gray 21- Tess of the D'Urbervilles 22- David Copperfield 23- My Man Jeeves 24- The Invisible Man 25- A Christmas Carol 26- The Secret Garden 27- Northanger Abbey 28- Uncle Tom's Cabin 29- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 30- The Return of Sherlock Holmes 31- Middlemarch 32- A Room with a View 33- Agnes Grey 34- Wives and Daughters 35- Around the World in Eighty Days 36- The Metamorphosis 37- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 38- Don QuixoteDon Quixote 39- The Importance of Being Earnest 40- A Tale of Two Cities Terms of Use(EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Apple Books at none against Gutenberg | eBook Reader's 6. Apple Books also leads on ads (none vs shown) and ratings volume (89K vs 713). Gutenberg | eBook Reader's advantage is review sentiment (69% vs 52%) and update cadence (every 6 weeks vs every 4 months). On price, rating, monetization model 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. Gutenberg | eBook Reader sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Apple Books asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.4 for Apple Books against 4.5 for Gutenberg | eBook Reader. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Apple Books has 89K ratings behind it against 713, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 52% of Apple Books's written reviews are positive against 69% of Gutenberg | eBook Reader's.
Apple Books ships an update every 4 months, Gutenberg | eBook Reader every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Apple Books | Gutenberg | eBook Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.4 (89K ratings) | 4.5 (713 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 52.0% of reviews | 69.2% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 89K — better | 713 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 6 weeks — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 10.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 17 MB | 47 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Apple | Webron Software LTD |
Customer experience
Apple Books
Gutenberg | eBook Reader
User reviews
Apple Books
From 89K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Seamless integration across devices
- 📚 Vast library of books available
- 👍 User-friendly interface
- 🎧 Exceptional audiobook experience
Room to improve
- 🐛 Books get deleted from local storage
- 🐛 Unreliable syncing between devices
- 🔒 Lack of audio closed captions
- 🤔 Pricing concerns for some books
- 🤔 Frustrating UI changes in recent updates
Gutenberg | eBook Reader
From 713 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 📚 Extensive collection of classic literature
- 💰 Free access to thousands of books
- 👍 Easy to use interface
- 📖 Page-turning feature mimics physical books
- 🌙 Night mode for comfortable reading
Room to improve
- 🔍 Search function is unreliable and confusing
- 📱 Poor book organization and browsing
- 💔 Missing many books found on Project Gutenberg website
- 📺 Excessive and intrusive advertisements
- ⚙️ Limited customization options for book format
Bugs and requests
Apple Books
Reported bugs
5 issues- Books randomly deleted from device
- Syncing issues between iPhone and iPad
- Scrolling and navigation glitches
- Inconsistent font and formatting issues
- Inability to download books over cellular data
Requested features
5 requests- Audio closed captions for audiobooks
- Ability to organize books by series
- Custom font and highlighter color options
- Syncing for audiobooks across devices
- Integration with book review platforms
Gutenberg | eBook Reader
Reported bugs
7 issues- Search returns no results or irrelevant results
- Books listed on Project Gutenberg not appearing in app
- App fails to download certain books
- Reading progress not saved between sessions
- Continuous scroll instead of page-by-page display
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- Search function completely non-functional for some users
- App crashes or becomes unresponsive
Requested features
10 requests- Improved search functionality with better filtering
- Better book organization and categorization system
- Dictionary/word definition feature
- Improved paragraph spacing and text formatting
- Page-by-page navigation instead of chapter-based
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- Ability to delete books from library
- Bookmark and reading progress saving
- More non-fiction and contemporary book titles
- Author search by first and last name
- Reduced or optional advertisements
In-app purchases
Apple Books
No in-app purchases
Gutenberg | eBook Reader
- Monthly Subscription$1.991 Month
- Weekly Subscription$4.997 Days
- Weekly Subscription3 Days trial$4.997 Days
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- Yearly Subscription$24.991 Year
- Premium$39.99
- Lifetime Premium$39.99
Questions
Is Apple Books free?
Is Gutenberg | eBook Reader free?
Which has better reviews, Apple Books or Gutenberg | eBook Reader?
Do Apple Books or Gutenberg | eBook Reader have ads?
Which is updated more often, Apple Books or Gutenberg | eBook Reader?
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