Gutenberg Project vs The Complete Shakespeare
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Gutenberg Project
Access over 60,000 classic books and 7,000 human-read audiobooks from Project Gutenberg. Enjoy a beautiful reading experience with synchronized audio and text, intelligent table of contents, and personalized recommendations based on user data. Export books with notes and bookmarks.
- Access 60,000+ classic books
- 7,000+ human-read audiobooks
- Synchronized read-along audio/text
- Intelligent Table of Contents
- Big data-driven recommendations
- Export books with notes/bookmarks
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【Premier Reader】: This app costs $6, and our users are paying for it each and every day. Why? It is the best Gutenberg Reader: beautiful images, elegant formatting, and graceful page turning. Contents live from Project Gutenberg with last-minute update, more than 60,000 most important books ever published in history. Plus more than 7,000 human-read audio books. 【Audio books】: There are more than 7,000 human-read audio books, all for the price of a cup of coffee. Alternatively you could pay $3-5 for a single audiobook as some of the "Audio app" would ask you to pay. 【Book recommendation】: Every app gives you a list of book recommendation, but where did they find the list? dreamed up in 'lala' land? We base our recommendation solidly on big data, tens of millions of pages actually read by our users. Downloading or page flipping has no effect on the ranking of our recommendation list. 【Number of Books】: No other apps have more Gutenberg books, and many competitors are missing some classic Gutenberg books, and many competitors use outdated data from Gutenberg. 【Reading】: Texts and images are presented by a sophisticated book reader: beautiful presentation, graceful page turning, and the most intelligent Table of Contents (better than any other book reader for the same book). 【Read-along】: Audio and Text are synchronized when possible. You can read, listen, or read-Along, and switch between them at will. 【Export】: Export a book together with bookmarks and the notes you inserted into the book to anyone and any device, or save it i the cloud (google drive, one drive, or iCloud). * The PAID version "Gutenberg Books" allows unlimited reading and listening.
The Complete Shakespeare
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Shakespeare's complete works — 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and every narrative poem — in a clean, native iOS reader designed to feel like Apple built it. Read every play in full, navigate by act and scene, browse the sonnets by first line, and follow the long narrative poems as continuous, scrollable pages. The reading experience uses Apple's typography, Dynamic Type, and the iOS edit menu; with no clutter, no ads, nothing to log into. Select any passage with iOS's standard text selection and tap "Explain" in the menu to get just that line or speech explained, with proper context: the speaker, the scene, the surrounding lines. Everything happens on-device. There are no accounts, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases. One price, one app, the complete canon. Search every line of every work — find "wherefore art thou Romeo" or "to be or not to be" instantly across 114,000+ lines. Includes the complete plays (Tragedies, Comedies, Histories, Romances), all 154 Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, A Lover's Complaint, and The Passionate Pilgrim. Source texts are public domain editions. Requires iPhone with Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro or later) for the Explain feature. The reader, search, and complete library work on every iOS 26 device.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Gutenberg Project at Free against The Complete Shakespeare's $0.99. Gutenberg Project also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). The Complete Shakespeare's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2). On ads and device support 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
Gutenberg Project is free to download; The Complete Shakespeare costs $0.99 up front. Gutenberg Project sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. The Complete Shakespeare asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | Gutenberg Project | The Complete Shakespeare |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 3.3 (43 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 40.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 43 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 26 MB | 16 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 12+ |
| Developer | himalaya-soft | Samuel Rulon-Miller |
Bugs and requests
Gutenberg Project
Reported bugs
16 issues- 504 bad gateway errors
- App not working at all
- App not showing any pages
- Search doesn't find anything but error 404
- Stopped working, will not load catalog
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- Close when attempt to open current book
- Could not download more than four pages
- Downloaded books became confused
- Every time you touch the screen wrong it flips the page
- Sets you back to page one
- Deleted all offline books and audiobook
- Missing offline books
- Cannot read the description of the book
- Books open at the end
- Too many redirects
- Most buttons go to an 'email a friend' page or 'Access forbidden'
Requested features
10 requests- Ability to choose favorite colors for reading
- Paid premium version with custom color combinations
- Sourcing more Gutenberg sites
- Option to make text black on white
- Continuous ad at bottom or top instead of full page
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- Less stylized page turn option (swipe or continuous scroll)
- One app for finding, downloading, and reading
- Ability to search Audiobooks by Genre
- Ability to favorite and build a library
- Night reading mode facility
The Complete Shakespeare
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Gutenberg Project
- Unlimited Reading$2.99
- Unlimited Listening$2.99
The Complete Shakespeare
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Gutenberg Project free?
Is The Complete Shakespeare free?
Do Gutenberg Project or The Complete Shakespeare have ads?
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