Comparison

Bookshelf vs Papyrus

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

Head to head
About

Bookshelf

Organize your entire reading life, tracking physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks. Set reading goals, log sessions, save quotes, and visualize your progress with detailed statistics and a reading habits heat map. Discover new books and connect with friends.

Highlights
  • Smart book organization with custom shelves
  • Reading timer and session tracking
  • Save quotes and notes with OCR
  • Flexible reading goals and progress tracking
  • Detailed statistics and insights
  • Reading habits heat map
  • Monthly and yearly recaps
  • Purchase and borrowing logs
Features
Read full description

The best reading tracker for physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks. Whether you're managing your TBR pile, tracking a BookTok recommendation, or building a reading habit - Bookshelf is the book journal, reading log, and library organizer you've been looking for. Switching from Goodreads or StoryGraph? Import your entire library in minutes. SMART BOOK ORGANIZATION Organize your books into Reading, To Read, Wishlist, Finished, and Abandoned shelves - or create unlimited custom shelves with your own icons and colors. Drag and drop books between shelves. Tag books with custom color-coded labels for easy filtering. Sort by title, author, rating, date added, start date, finish date, last read, pages, publication date, and more. Track series, editions, and co-authors. Add books by searching or by scanning ISBN barcodes - even in bulk scan mode. MULTIPLE VIEWS, YOUR WAY See your library the way you love it: a cozy 3D bookcase view, a flexible grid with adjustable cover size and spacing, or a detailed list. Customize progress indicators, goal badges, and shelf appearance down to the smallest detail. READING TIMER & SESSION TRACKING Start the built-in reading timer whenever you pick up a book. Use the stopwatch for open-ended sessions or set a countdown alarm for timed reading. Log pages read, reading percentage, and session duration. Track audiobooks with chapter-level, minute-precise listening sessions. Re-reading a favorite? Track multiple readings per book. Quick-start a session right from your home screen widget. QUOTES, NOTES & REVIEWS Save your favorite quotes by typing or scanning straight from the page with OCR text recognition. Attach photos to your notes for a richer book journal. Write reviews and rate every book you finish. FLEXIBLE READING GOALS Set goals for pages, reading time, or number of books across any date range - daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or anything in between. Pin your most important goals, show visual badges on book covers, and celebrate completions with animated confetti. DEEP STATS & INSIGHTS Explore your reading like never before: reading pace and velocity, rating trends, abandoned-book rate, genre and author distribution charts, a reading-pattern clock showing when you read best, milestones, history, and year-over-year comparisons. Unlock tiered achievements as your library grows. MONTHLY & YEARLY RECAPS Beautiful monthly summaries and full yearly recaps - your longest and shortest books, five-star reads, first and last finishes, top quotes, genre breakdowns, streaks, and month-by-month highlights. Like Spotify Wrapped, but for your reading life. Export and share as an image or PDF. PURCHASE LOGS Track purchases, borrowed books, and lending history. Set return-date reminders so you never forget to return - or get back - a book. Log price, location, and personal notes. READING FEED Follow friends and explore their shelves, reviews, and stats. Stay inspired with a feed of reading activity from people you follow and the global community. Control exactly what's visible on your public profile. HOME SCREEN WIDGETS Keep your reading front and center with customizable home screen widgets for your current reads and reading timer. 18 STUNNING THEMES Choose from themes like Nordic, Forest, Cyberpunk, Lavender, Pink, and more - each in light and dark. Decorate your shelves with 50+ adorable book nooks across 11 categories. Personalize shelf size, spacing, progress indicators, and your profile widget layout. EASY IMPORT Import from Goodreads or StoryGraph with a CSV file, or scan your physical books with the built-in barcode scanner. Sync your reading across devices, with Kobo e-reader sync supported. Build your shelves. Set your goals. Track your reading streak. Fall in love with reading again. https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Papyrus

Features
Read full description

Papyrus turns everything you've read into a warm, real bookshelf — right on your iPhone home screen. A cozy private library you actually want to look at. BRING YOUR LIBRARY HOME Every book you've read, standing on a beautiful shelf you can glance at without opening anything. As you finish books, the newest ones slide to the front — so your home screen quietly tells the story of what you've been reading, all year long. Still fully customizable, move the books around how you want, make changes to the shelf and background. THE WIDGET One of our premium paid features is to add the Papyrus widget in small, medium, or large. Your shelf lives on your home screen, gorgeous and glanceable. If you aren't interested in seeing the books then you can see your reading statistics - how many books and pages you've read this year. IMPORT IN SECONDS Bring your reading history over from Goodreads, StoryGraph, or any CSV in a single tap. Your past library fills your shelf instantly. No problem if you don't have any accounts - you can add books individually from our massive library. THREE WAYS TO SEE YOUR SHELF - Spine view with procedurally illustrated, cover-matched spines - Cover view to show off your front covers - A 3/4 perspective "crate" mode that feels like a real shelf Press and scrub to browse, and drag to reorder your books exactly how you like them. STATS THAT FEEL LIKE A FOLIO, NOT A DASHBOARD See how you rate, your fiction vs. nonfiction split, the decades you read across, and your favorite authors and genres — all rendered in big serif numerals with room to breathe. Look back on your year with Reading Wrapped. YOUR DATA STAYS YOURS Export your whole library any time — as a spreadsheet (CSV/XLSX) or a self-contained offline webpage. Free or Pro, your library is always yours to take with you. FREE TO START Try everything with up to 10 books in your collection — a real, full-fidelity trial, not a locked demo. Your wishlist is always unlimited and free. Upgrade to Pro to remove the collection cap and unlock your full library. Upgrade to Pro to unlock the full experience: - Unlimited collection — shelve every book you've ever read, no cap - Your complete library on every widget size and display mode - Full reading stats and Reading Wrapped across your entire history - Export your whole library any time — CSV, XLSX, or a self-contained offline webpage - No ads, no tracking, and your data is never sold — free or Pro Built by one person who wanted their bookshelf on their home screen. No ads. Your data is not sold. Just a beautiful place to keep the books you love. Bring your library home. Terms of Use (EULA): https://papyrus-b03fd.web.app/terms.html Privacy Policy: https://papyrus-b03fd.web.app/privacy.html

Screenshots

Bookshelf4 screens
Papyrus4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: Bookshelf at 3 against Papyrus's 1. Bookshelf also leads on iOS requirement (15.5 vs 17.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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. Bookshelf sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $2.49 per month and Papyrus sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Bookshelf versus Papyrus: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBookshelfPapyrus
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (27 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews87.5% of reviews—
Number of ratings27 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.5 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size171 MB20 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperTiago AlmeidaTyler Nam

In-app purchases

6 purchases

Bookshelf

Subscriptions4
  • Premium Features$2.491 Month
  • Premium Features$2.991 Month
  • Premium Features$22.991 Year
Show 1 more
  • Premium Features$29.991 Year
One-time2
  • Lifetime (promo)$99.99
  • Lifetime$199.99
3 purchases

Papyrus

Subscriptions2
  • Papyrus_monthly$1.991 Month
  • papyrus yearly$14.991 Year
One-time1
  • papyrus lifetime$39.99

Questions

Is Bookshelf free?
Bookshelf is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Papyrus free?
Papyrus is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Bookshelf or Papyrus have ads?
Neither Bookshelf nor Papyrus shows ads.

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