Board Game Shelf vs MeepleVault
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Board Game Shelf
Organize your board game collection, track plays with detailed stats, and discover new trending games. Features a random game picker, custom challenges, and iCloud sync for a personalized experience.
- Organize board game collection
- Track game plays and statistics
- Discover trending board games
- Random game picker
- Customizable challenges
- iCloud sync and backup
- Home screen widgets
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Game Shelf is the ultimate app for board game lovers. Powered by BoardGameGeek, it helps you organize your collection, track every play with detailed statistics and discover the hottest new games. Discover Trending Games: Browse the hottest board games on BoardGameGeek. Search for any game and instantly see player counts, playtime, ratings, and more. Build Your Collection: Add games to your collection or wishlist by searching, scanning a barcode or importing your BGG collection. Organize them with custom lists and filters. Track multiple copies with edition, language, condition, purchase and storage details. Mark copies for sale, for trade or previously owned, while each game appears once. Add personal ratings, with six short questions to help you find your score. Can't Decide What to Play? Get personalised game suggestions based on your play history, player group, available time and preferred complexity. Choose familiar games, new experiences or a mix, filter by personal rating, and see why each game fits. Playtime estimates use your recorded sessions. Log Every Play: Enter duration directly or record start and end times. Record your game sessions with players, scores, winners, time, location, notes, and photos. Quickly replay a previous session (so the same players, same game) with one tap. Challenges: Set goals for plays, different games, new games or time spent playing. Start from a template, customise your goal and period, and choose progress reminders if you fall behind. Share a card with your challenge statistics. Detailed Statistics Explore your most-played games, player win rates, locations and trends over time. Track player experience and levels, overall Player ELO, and per-game player and team ratings, with separate solo and cooperative performance ratings. Sync & Backup Sync across devices with iCloud. Export and import backups with copy details and collection history, choose custom lists separately, or export your games as CSV. Made for You: Customize your experience with alternative app icons, dark mode, grid or list views, and custom game images or titles. Access your collection, plays, and stats instantly with home screen widgets and quick actions. Game Shelf Pro: Unlock more with Game Shelf Pro: • Import your play history from BoardGameGeek. • Player Groups: save your regular groups for faster logging and filter plays and stats by group. • Player Comparison: compare wins, win rates, streaks and favourite games, and share a rivalry card. • Live sessions: pause and resume, manage players and seating order, track rounds and take notes. Sessions recover after reopening the app; pauses do not count towards playtime. • Loans: see games on loan in your collection and link each loan to a specific copy. • Detailed scoring for games including Wondrous Creatures, Akropolis, Clank! Catacombs and Endeavor: Deep Sea, with supported expansion fields. Missing your favourite? Contact me! Game Shelf is free to use. If you enjoy the app and want extra features you can subscribe to Game Shelf Pro to support a passionate board game loving indie developer. Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled. Manage or cancel anytime in your App Store account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://sakustudio.nl/en/privacy-policy-board-game-shelf/
MeepleVault
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MeepleVault – Your board game collection, finally under control. If you own a lot of board games, you know the pain: games pile up in boxes, in the basement, on shelves – and on game night you can't find the one game you wanted. MeepleVault fixes that. How it works Stick a QR code on each storage bin, scan it with the app, and start filling it. MeepleVault handles the rest: scan a game's barcode and you're done. Title, player count, play time, and cover art are detected automatically and assigned to the right bin. Catalog games in seconds • Barcode scan (EAN/UPC) recognizes the game automatically • Data from BoardGameGeek: player count, play time, cover image • No match? Add it manually in seconds • QR codes for your bins – every box uniquely tagged Find everything • Full-text search across your entire collection • Instantly see which bin a game lives in • Overview dashboard of your whole library • Filter by player count and play time Your data, your control • Works fully offline – no account required • Optional sync across multiple devices • Backup & restore anytime • No tracking, no ads Who's it for? For heavy gamers, collectors, board game cafés, and anyone who wants to stay on top of their games – whether you own 20 titles or 500. No more searching. Scan, store, find. --- Download MeepleVault now and bring order to your game collection.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: MeepleVault at none against Board Game Shelf's 5. MeepleVault also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs weekly). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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. Board Game Shelf sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.95 per year. MeepleVault asks for nothing beyond the download.
Board Game Shelf ships an update weekly, MeepleVault every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Board Game Shelf | MeepleVault |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (15 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 15 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 79 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Saku Studio | Digitmedia e.K. |
In-app purchases
Board Game Shelf
- Yearly Pro Subscription$4.951 Year
- Small Tip$1.99
- Medium Tip$3.95
- Large Tip$6.99
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- Pro Lifetime$11.95
MeepleVault
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Board Game Shelf free?
Is MeepleVault free?
Do Board Game Shelf or MeepleVault have ads?
Which is updated more often, Board Game Shelf or MeepleVault?
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