Comparison

Board Game Shelf vs BacklogForge

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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/

About

BacklogForge

This app helps PC gamers manage large Steam libraries by automatically importing games and tracking completion status. It offers smart recommendations for what to play next and provides detailed statistics on your gaming habits.

Highlights
  • Steam library import
  • Automatic completion tracking
  • Play next recommendations
  • Library statistics dashboard
  • Offline and guest mode
  • Per-game notes and ratings
Features
Read full description

BacklogForge connects to your Steam account, imports your game library, and helps you decide what to play next. It pulls completion time estimates from HowLongToBeat and compares them against your actual playtime to automatically track which games you have finished, which are in progress, and which are still sitting in your backlog. Designed for PC gamers who own large Steam libraries and want a structured, low-friction way to manage them — no spreadsheets, no third-party accounts, all data stored locally. Key Features: - Steam Library Sync — Automatically imports your entire Steam library. BacklogForge fetches HowLongToBeat estimates for every title in the background with live sync progress, so your backlog is always up to date. - Automatic Completion Tracking — Compares your actual playtime against HowLongToBeat targets to mark games as completed, in progress, or unstarted — no manual input needed. Supports Essential, Extended, and Completionist targets per game. - Play Next Recommendations — Two modes to cut through decision paralysis: Shuffle picks a weighted random game from your backlog, while Homestretch surfaces games you're closest to finishing — either by percentage or fewest hours remaining. - Library Statistics — A full stats dashboard with your completion grade (A+ → D-), hours remaining to clear your backlog, average finish time, monthly completion velocity, and a daily budget calculator showing how long until your backlog is clear. - Guest & Offline Mode — No Steam account required. Use the app in guest mode and add games manually. All data is stored locally in SQLite with no cloud sync. - Per-Game Notes & Ratings — Add personal notes and a 1–10 rating to any game. Export and import your full library (including notes and ratings) for backup or device transfer.

Screenshots

Board Game Shelf4 screens
BacklogForge4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: BacklogForge at none against Board Game Shelf's 5. BacklogForge also leads on iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.0). Board Game Shelf's advantage is ratings volume (15 vs 1). On price, rating, ads and monetization model 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Board Game Shelf sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.95 per year. BacklogForge asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Board Game Shelf against 5.0 for BacklogForge. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Board Game Shelf has 15 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Board Game Shelf versus BacklogForge: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBoard Game ShelfBacklogForge
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.9 (15 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings15 — better1
Update frequencyWeekly—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.016.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size79 MB22 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperSaku StudioAjwad Tahmid Ayon

In-app purchases

5 purchases

Board Game Shelf

Subscriptions1
  • Yearly Pro Subscription$4.951 Year
One-time4
  • Small Tip$1.99
  • Medium Tip$3.95
  • Large Tip$6.99
Show 1 more
  • Pro Lifetime$11.95
None

BacklogForge

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Board Game Shelf free?
Board Game Shelf is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is BacklogForge free?
BacklogForge is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Board Game Shelf or BacklogForge?
BacklogForge is rated higher. Board Game Shelf averages 4.9 out of 5 from 15 ratings, while BacklogForge averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Board Game Shelf or BacklogForge have ads?
Neither Board Game Shelf nor BacklogForge shows ads.

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