Comparison

Booktime vs Lantern Tales

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

Head to head
About

Booktime

Explore thousands of beautifully illustrated fiction and non-fiction books for children. This app brings stories to life with imaginative audiovisual storytelling, stunning illustrations, and high-resolution photography, all completely free.

Highlights
  • Beautiful illustrations
  • Fiction and non-fiction books
  • Audiovisual storytelling
  • High-resolution photography
  • Classic titles
  • Offline reading and listening
Read full description

Thousands of beautifully illustrated fiction and non-fiction books for children! Booktime brings fact and fiction to life through imaginative audiovisual storytelling, beautiful illustrations, and high-resolution photography. All completely free! ---------------------------------- With Booktime you get: • Beautiful illustrations • Fiction books including classic bedtime stories • Nonfiction books about animals, vehicles, places, and more • Content for children and young readers • Classic titles such as Little Red Riding Hood and Aladdin • High quality narrations • Offline reading and listening A book for everyone • Relax with a bedtime story or spark your curiosity with astonishing facts about the natural world and human achievements. Exciting illustrations • Each book includes beautiful and unique illustrations or high-resolution photos. A beautiful and immersive experience • Bold visual designs and optional audio narrations make every story easily accessible and highly interactive. ---------------------------------- Download Booktime to access a world of creative and visual storytelling. If you’re enjoying Booktime, please leave a review to help spread the word. We also love feedback! If you have any suggestions or see something we don’t have, feel free to email booktime@booktime.org.

About

Lantern Tales

Features
Read full description

Bedtime folk tales from around the world, gently retold for young children — and read aloud in the one voice your child actually wants to hear: yours. There is no narrator in this app. That is the point. HAND-PICKED, GENTLY RETOLD Twenty-seven tales from eighteen places: Russia, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Iran, India, China, Korea, Japan, Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Jamaica and Hawaii. Every one was chosen from public-domain collections — Grimm, Ozaki's Japanese Fairy Tales, Lorimer's Persian Tales, Dayrell's Nigerian folk stories, Jekyll's Jamaican Annancy tales — and retold for reading aloud, with the scary edges softened and every ending safe and calm. An AI writes the retelling from those old sources — and then a person reads every story and every picture before it ships. We would rather publish fewer tales than unread ones. Each tale is illustrated in a single warm style, so the library feels like one book rather than a pile of clip art. BUILT FOR READING ALOUD The reader is the whole app, and everything else gets out of its way. • Big serif type, sized to be read at arm's length in a dim room • One thought per card — tap the right side to turn, the left to go back • Night theme by default, with a day option for naptime • Adjustable text size that stays exactly the size you chose • The screen stays awake while you read • Progress dots that fade away, and no chrome at all while reading • Ends with "The End" and a goodnight in the tale's own language — "Oyasumi nasai, goodnight from Japan" QUIET BY DESIGN No ads. No accounts. No sign-up. No tracking, no analytics, nothing collected — there is no server that stores anything about you or your child. No autoplay, no sounds, no links out of the app, nothing that can startle a sleepy child. Everything works offline, so aeroplanes and holiday cottages are fine. ELEVEN LANGUAGES The whole app and every story is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Persian. Stories follow your phone's language, or pick one yourself — expat families and bilingual households can read the same tale in either language. WHAT'S FREE Ten tales are free forever, two from every part of the world, plus one more premium tale unlocked every week. A subscription opens the whole library and every tale added afterwards. New tales every month. SUBSCRIPTION Lantern Tales Premium opens the whole library and every tale added afterwards. • Monthly — $6.99 per month • Yearly — $39.99 per year, which is $3.33 a month Prices are in US dollars and vary by country; your own price is shown in the app before you buy. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation. It renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the period. Manage or cancel it any time in your Apple Account settings. WITH THANKS To the collectors and translators who wrote these stories down and kept them alive. Every source is credited in the app under Settings, because knowing where a story comes from is part of the story. Terms of Use: https://lanterntales-app.web.app/terms Privacy: https://lanterntales-app.web.app/privacy

Screenshots

Booktime4 screens
Lantern Tales4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Booktime at none against Lantern Tales's 2. Booktime also leads on device support (4 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price and ads 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. Lantern Tales sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $6.99 per month. Booktime asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Booktime versus Lantern Tales: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBooktimeLantern Tales
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (176 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings176 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeks—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size80 MB28 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHindawi FoundationPeter Gregor Pohlmann

In-app purchases

None

Booktime

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Lantern Tales

Subscriptions2
  • Bedtime Stories – Monthly$6.991 Month
  • Bedtime Stories – Yearly$39.991 Year

Questions

Is Booktime free?
Booktime is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Lantern Tales free?
Lantern Tales is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Booktime or Lantern Tales have ads?
Neither Booktime nor Lantern Tales shows ads.

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