Flash Reader vs Speed Reading UpRead
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Flash Reader
Enhance your reading speed and comprehension with this app. It presents text one word at a time, in chunks, or as a traditional reader, allowing you to adjust speed and track progress. Supports various file types and offers a free tier with an optional Pro upgrade.
- Word-by-word reading mode
- Chunk reading mode
- Traditional reader mode
- Adjustable reading speed
- Supports PDFs, EPUBs, Word files
- Camera scanning for text
- Siri integration
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Flash Reader is back, and better than ever. It read you one word at a time years before that was a trend. On the App Store since 2010, rebuilt from scratch for version 4, and everything happens on your device. Paste it, share it from any app, open a PDF, EPUB or Word file, or point the camera at a page, and you're reading. Every document keeps your place, and a widget, Control Center or Siri takes you straight back in. THREE WAYS TO READ • Flash: one word, one spot, and the pages fly. One letter in red holds your eye. • Chunk: a few words at a time, for when you would rather stroll. • Reader: the whole text, for a look back. Tap to pause. Play picks the sentence back up, so you never lose the thread. SPEED, WITH RECEIPTS Understanding holds to about 350 words a minute, then it slips. Flash Reader starts you at 250, the ruler shows which zone you are in, and your real speed counts the pauses too. Go faster whenever you like; the ruler tells you what it costs. Little words pass quickly, long or rare ones get a beat more, and a full stop gets its pause. Rest breaks when you want them. READ ANYTHING, START ANYWHERE • Copy anything, anywhere. Tap the clipboard chip, or the button in Control Center, and it flashes. • Share text, a web page or a link from any app: articles, mail, messages, notes. • Open PDF, EPUB, Word and text files from the Files app. • Point the camera at a page, or pick a photo or a screenshot. The text is read on your device. • Drop in a link and get the article, with none of the clutter around it. • Say "Flash my clipboard" or "Resume reading" and Siri does the rest. • Every document keeps its place, its mode and its speed. • Search, sort and rename. Deleted documents wait in Recently deleted. BACK IN ONE TAP Continue Reading and Streak widgets for the Home and Lock Screens. Flash clipboard and Resume reading in Control Center. Stats keep words read today, your streak and your real speed, pauses and all. ROOM TO READ Four themes (Paper, Ink, Sepia and High Contrast), a choice of fonts, an adjustable word size, and reading in landscape. On iPad, the library sits beside the reading view and a keyboard drives both. Designed for iPhone Duo: open it and the page unfolds beside the words. The whole app speaks 50 languages. FREE AND PRO Free to start. Text you paste, copy or share reads free, forever, at full quality: every mode, every speed, every theme, links, TXT and Markdown files, and three documents on the shelf at a time. Pro opens PDF, EPUB, Word, RTF and HTML files, scans and photos, and an unlimited shelf. One purchase covers iPhone and iPad, and your library and your place travel between them through your own iCloud. Choose Pro by the year with a 14-day free trial, by the month, or pay once and keep it. Annual and monthly Pro renew automatically until cancelled in your Apple Account settings, at least 24 hours before the period ends. No account. No ads. No analytics and no tracking. COMING BACK? Your books, your speed and your bookmark come along from the old version. If you bought Pro inside Flash Reader before, it is still yours: Restore purchases in Settings brings it back on any device. If you bought the separate Flash Reader Pro app, write to us and we will sort it out. More formats and modes are coming as free updates. Flash Reader 4 needs iOS 26 or later. On an older iPhone or iPad, the App Store keeps offering the last version that runs there. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy: https://flashreaderapp.com/privacy Questions: support@flashreaderapp.com
Speed Reading UpRead
Enhance your reading speed and comprehension with a science-backed approach. Effortlessly process web articles, PDFs, and documents at an accelerated pace. Customize your reading experience with adjustable speed, fonts, and colors for improved productivity and time savings.
- Read faster without special training
- Reduce reading effort
- Read web articles and documents
- Save content for offline reading
- Customize reading speed, font, and color
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Read faster. Without effort nor any special training. Sounds like a dream? It’s not, thanks to science: the approach we use has been tested by neuro-scientists and proved effective over a wide range of studies. We made it available on iOS and iPadOS with a sleek design and some nice advanced features that will make it a pleasure to use. With UpRead you will be able to: - Read faster, in a matter of minutes. No kidding - Reduce reading effort so that you can read longer - Read articles from the web, imported from Safari or other apps - Read PDF files and other text documents - Save your content and read it later, offline - Customise the reading experience by setting speed, font and color. You’ll be much more effective, process more information and save time. Your professional and personal life will both have a nice boost from using just one little app. There’s no price for this. Since we’re sure you’ll love the app, you can try UpRead for free for a limited time. If you’re still (slowly) reading this, it’s time to press that GET button and start the download. Try the app, it’s worth more than a thousand words. Here’s a few reviews about us: > Magnifique application qui accélère la lecture tout en améliorant l'attention. Indispensable. — Manitoo, Switzerland, Sep 2019 > This app is the one thing I never knew I needed so desperately. […] For my fellow columnist hounds, UpRead is absolutely essential. — dfe1998, USA, Sep 2019 > I have used every flash reader I could Get my hands on. […] The back end works somehow where the others fail. [… ] You will surprise yourself by how fast you can go over time. Now friends who see me reading something look at how fast the words go and tell me that they just see flashing gobbledygook. I thought the same thing but the learning curve is painless! […] Thank you to the UpRead team!!! Finally! An app worthy of my bottom bar! — eightyanthony, USA, Aug 2019 > It's not a free app but it's worth your money! Simple to use very intuitive, I am reading more than ever! Highly recommended. — dhernz1, Honduras, Jul 2019 We’re really happy to receive feedback from our users. We seriously try to make the app better and better based on what you tell us. Please, try the app and let us know your opinion too. Feel free to contact us by visiting https://crazyhorseapps.com/support. Terms of service: https://crazyhorseapps.com/apps/terms-of-service
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Speed Reading UpRead at 16.0 against Flash Reader's 26.0. On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume 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. Flash Reader sells 9 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Speed Reading UpRead sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per 7 days. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.2 for Flash Reader against 4.2 for Speed Reading UpRead. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 163 and 116 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 49% of Flash Reader's written reviews are positive against 54% of Speed Reading UpRead's.
Flash Reader ships an update every 6 weeks, Speed Reading UpRead every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 6, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Flash Reader | Speed Reading UpRead |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.2 (163 ratings) — better | 4.2 (116 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 49.3% of reviews | 53.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 163 — better | 116 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 22 MB | 33 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Didstopia | Alain caltieri |
Customer experience
Flash Reader
Speed Reading UpRead
User reviews
Flash Reader
From 163 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Ahead of its time
- 👍 Simple to use
- 🚀 Helps read books efficiently
- 👍 Useful, easy to use
- 👍 Brilliant app, great time saver
Room to improve
- 🐛 Doesn't allow to open modern websites
- 🐛 Restarts the book being read
- 🐛 Crashes when using camera
- 🐛 Bugs and stops working
- 🐛 Loses reading progress
Speed Reading UpRead
From 116 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Increases reading speed significantly
- 👍 Easy UI and useful tool
- 👍 Well-designed app
- 👍 Good for reading articles online
- 👍 Syncs content easily
Room to improve
- 🐛 Freezes on intro page
- 🐛 Doesn't display PDF text
- 🐛 Asks for purchase immediately
- 🐛 Lacks built-in content
- 🐛 Difficult to operate
Bugs and requests
Flash Reader
Reported bugs
5 issues- Login screen freezes
- Incompatible with older devices
- Crashes when switching modes
- Loses reading progress
- Inaccurate resume times
Requested features
10 requests- Fancy text like newer video captions
- Bookmarks and navigation
- Support for Google Drive
- Quick rewind option
- Table of contents
Show 5 moreShow fewer
- Search option
- Ability to go backward/forward
- Choose page to go to
- Dark mode
- Advanced analytics dashboard
Speed Reading UpRead
Reported bugs
10 issues- Froze on intro page
- Did not display text from imported PDF
- Asks for purchase on start screen
- Lifetime subscription not available in app
- Importing limited to documents without images or chapters
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- Document imports often fail
- Large documents (over 2MB) fail to import
- PDFs with non-parsable text are unreadable
- Reading rate appears inaccurate (e.g., 100 wpm is closer to 60)
- Articles take significantly longer to read than estimated time
Requested features
15 requests- Add ability to read more than one word at a time
- Option to include articles (a, an, the) and punctuation
- Ability to upload books
- Search feature within text
- Pause reading stream by pressing and holding
Show 10 moreShow fewer
- Display pictures and diagrams
- Voice feature for accessibility
- Option for red focus character and frame
- Word grouping feature
- Faster maximum WPM (e.g., 10,000)
- File compatibility for PDF, EPUB, and HTML
- Automatically strip citations or edit imported text
- Landscape mode
- Cloud sync across devices
- Integrate with Kindle and other reading apps
In-app purchases
Flash Reader
- Pro Monthly$4.991 Month
- Pro Annual14 Days trial$29.991 Year
- Flash Reader Pro$0.99
- Flash Reader Pro2 variants$1.99
- Flash Reader Pro$2.99
Show 4 moreShow fewer
- Flash Reader Pro$3.99
- Flash Reader Pro$4.99
- Pro Lifetime$39.99
- Pro Lifetime$79.99
Speed Reading UpRead
- Speed reading, weekly7 Days trial$0.997 Days
- Speed reading, monthly7 Days trial$3.991 Month
- UpRead Speed Reading Yearly7 Days trial$19.991 Year
Show 1 moreShow fewer
- Speed reading, yearly7 Days trial$39.991 Year
- Speed reading, lifetime$54.99
Questions
Is Flash Reader free?
Is Speed Reading UpRead free?
Which has better reviews, Flash Reader or Speed Reading UpRead?
Do Flash Reader or Speed Reading UpRead have ads?
Which is updated more often, Flash Reader or Speed Reading UpRead?
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