Apple Books vs Books 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.
Books Reader
This app provides a seamless e-reading experience, managing your ebook collection and offering customizable reading settings. It supports various formats and includes features like bookmarking, note-taking, and a read/unread tracker.
- Supports multiple ebook formats (epub, fb2, mobi, PDF)
- Manages and organizes ebook collections
- Customizable text size, color, theme, and brightness
- Progress tracking and bookmarking
- Note-taking and excerpt selection
- Read/unread book tracker
- Filtering and search functionality
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Books Reader - its a perfect e-reading experience. Overdrive your reading skills everyday. For everyone reader we gift free books and e-reading collections. Books Reader is a laconic pocket library and intuitive tool for a perfect reading experience. Without extra fluff or complexity, it takes care of all the basic needs: managing your ebook collections, getting the text on the screen and letting you interact with it as you go at your prime reading. For a start, the app builds a library for you by rounding up all the book files stored on the device. Books Reader works with most popular ebooks formats (epub, fb2, mobi etc.), including zip archives. If necessary, you can tweak the list manually, by adding or removing specific titles for ibooks. However big your collection gets, browsing will remain easy thanks to a provided set of filters. Besides, the system is keeping track of your history to display the books in order of relevance. Viewing the book, you can adjust the settings for the best effect: change size and color of the text, pick the right theme and brightness level, use various controls options for turning pages. The combination of a progress bar, bookmarking and a search tool help to navigate the text effortlessly. Make sure to select the excerpts that stayed with you and import them to Notes with just a couple of taps. Books Reader offers: - A variety of ebook formats (epub, fb2,PDF, mobi and others); - Auto unpacking of zip archives; - A smart manager of the books stored on your device; - Read/unread books tracker; - Filtering system (by author, by date added or read, etc.); - Adjustable page/text settings (brightness, size, color, theme and more); - Several controls methods (scrolling, tapping or using buttons); - Marking pages and taking notes. Privacy Policy: https://villow.studio/privacy Term Of Use: https://villow.studio/terms
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Apple Books at none against Books Reader's 9. Apple Books also leads on ratings volume (143K vs 22) and review sentiment (54% vs 38%). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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. Books Reader sells 9 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Apple Books asks for nothing beyond the download.
Books Reader holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Apple Books has 143K ratings behind it against 22, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 54% of Apple Books's written reviews are positive against 38% of Books Reader's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on November 11, 2026 and November 3, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Apple Books | Books Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (143K ratings) | 4.7 (22 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 54.4% of reviews — better | 37.5% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 143K — better | 22 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| 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 | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 17 MB | 59 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Apple | Villow |
Customer experience
Apple Books
Books Reader
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
Books Reader
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Apple Books
No in-app purchases
Books Reader
- Regular donation$1.991 Month
- Regular donation$3.991 Month
- Regular donation$5.991 Month
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- Regular donation$9.991 Month
- Donation$1.99
- Donation$3.99
- Donation$5.99
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- Donation$9.99
- Custom Fonts & Themes$9.99









