Comparison

Booken vs Murmur

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

Head to head
About

Booken

This app provides a simple and efficient way to listen to your audiobook files. It offers features for importing, managing, and tracking your listening progress, with playback controls accessible from your phone and Apple Watch.

Highlights
  • Import own audiobook files
  • Track listening progress
  • Mark books as finished
  • Lock screen playback controls
  • Apple Watch companion app
  • Variable scrubbing speed
  • Adjustable playback speed
Features
Read full description

A lightweight and easy to use player for your audiobook files. Manage your files - Import your own files straight into the app - Manage and see the progress of the books you've listened to - Mark books as finished Listening features - Control playback directly from the lock screen/control center or from the Apple Watch companion app - Easily navigate books with variable scrubbing speed and chapter selection - Change playback speed Listen from your watch - Easily download your favorite books to your watch when you need to listen without your phone - Navigate local files on your watch with chapter selection and custom skip duration - Keep your progress synced between your phone and watch with both automatic and manual syncing options

About

Murmur

This audiobook player is designed for nighttime listening, featuring a dark interface and automatic rewind to your last point of attention when sleep is detected via Apple Health. It supports various audio file formats and can import libraries from multiple sources without requiring tidying.

Highlights
  • Dark mode design for low-light listening
  • Automatic rewind to last attention point
  • Sleep detection via Apple Health integration
  • Supports .m4b, .mp3, .m4a, .flac files
  • Import from Files, iCloud Drive, AirDrop
  • Handles messy real-world audio libraries
Read full description

Murmur is a quiet audiobook player built for the last few hours of the evening. The part of the day where the lights start to come down, the pace shifts, and a book is meant to carry you the rest of the way. Most audiobook apps are built for daylight: bright surfaces, big buttons, high contrast for a screen you might glance at in the sun on a walk or a run. Murmur is the opposite. Dark by design, unhurried by design, and made for the dim room at the end of the day. (It works just as well during the day, too; it simply isn't designed around it.) Bring your own audiobooks (.m4b, .mp3, .m4a, .flac) in from Files, iCloud Drive, AirDrop, or anywhere iOS lets you reach. Murmur absorbs the kind of messy real-world libraries people actually own (folders of MP3s, embedded chapters, mixed metadata, missing covers) without making you tidy them first. If you've ever fallen asleep listening to an audiobook, you know the problem. When you read on paper, you close the book when your eyes get heavy. With audio, that doesn't happen. You drift off mid-chapter, the book keeps going, and in the morning, you have no idea where you actually stopped paying attention. Murmur fixes that. While you listen, the app pays attention to when sleep is detected by Apple Health (read-only). The next time you open the book, Murmur rewinds you to roughly where you actually drifted off, with a small buffer back so you can re-orient. That's the whole idea. No more waking up lost.

Screenshots

Booken4 screens
Murmur4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Murmur at 100% against Booken's 80%. On price, ads, in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Booken versus Murmur: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBookenMurmur
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (8 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews80.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings8 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 months—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, Apple Watch — betteriPhone
Requires iOS17.0 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size24 MB7 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperRiley BrookinsTom Frauenfelder

Customer experience

Booken

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews5 reviews
Positive80.0%
Neutral20.0%
Negative0.0%

Murmur

Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Booken

No in-app purchases

None

Murmur

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Booken free?
Booken is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Murmur free?
Murmur is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Booken or Murmur have ads?
Neither Booken nor Murmur shows ads.

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