Booken vs Murmur
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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
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.
- 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
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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
Verdict
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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Booken | Murmur |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (8 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 80.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 8 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, Apple Watch — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 24 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Riley Brookins | Tom Frauenfelder |
Customer experience
Booken
Murmur
In-app purchases
Booken
No in-app purchases
Murmur
No in-app purchases









