Comparison

Y/n vs Refrain

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

Head to head
About

Y/n

Engage with interactive stories where your choices shape the narrative and character relationships. Explore a vast library of community-created tales or write and publish your own.

Highlights
  • Play interactive stories
  • Choices affect story and characters
  • Rewind and change decisions
  • Explore 1M+ community stories
  • Write and publish own stories
Features
Read full description

On Y/n, you play a character in your story. Be a boarding school student and get the boys to fall in love with you, or plan a jailbreak with Sherlock Holmes. Stories are made for you. Your texts change the plot and how characters feel about you (oops!). No two playthroughs are the same (but you can rewind). There's a Y/n story for every taste: romance, fanfiction, fluff, mystery, and more. Discover 10M+ stories created by the community. Can't find the one you want? Write and publish your own. Download Y/n for free and play your story! 
EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Refrain

Rediscover your Kindle highlights daily. This app organizes your marked passages, reveals connections across your reading, and allows for deep dives into your thoughts and the wider literary canon. Your reading life is private and offline.

Highlights
  • Daily return of highlighted passages
  • Discovery of connections (Threads, Rhymes)
  • Search by meaning
  • Integration with Kindle and My Clippings.txt
  • Offline access to library
  • Private iCloud sync
  • Home Screen widget and Apple Watch app
Features
Read full description

Your Kindle highlights, back in your life. You marked those passages because they mattered. Refrain brings a few of them back each day — seamlessly imported, beautifully set, and read entirely on your own devices. THE DAILY RETURN A few passages come back each day. Not a backlog. Not a reading assignment. A short deck, waiting for you when you have a minute: one you dog-eared opens it, and a rediscovery from a book you haven't visited in months closes it. AND THEN YOU START TO NOTICE THE CONNECTIONS Your passages aren't random. They're a record of what caught your attention — across books, years, authors, and ideas. Refrain reads your library on your device and finds what runs through it. THREADS — the lines of thought running through your books. You may have been thinking about something longer than you realized. RHYMES — passages that resonate by meaning, not by matching words. Somewhere in your library, you already said this. SEARCH BY MEANING — search finds your words. Rhymes find your meaning. Search for "paying attention" and Refrain can find passages about attention that never use those words. ECHOES — the deck closes with a line from the wider canon that resonates with what you've been reading. If there's no good Echo, there is no Echo. A quiet day is better than a false connection. INSIGHTS — your thoughts belong here, too. Keep them with the passage or Thread that sparked them. GO DEEPER — some passages deserve more than a highlight. Refrain gathers the passage, your note, its Rhymes, and its Thread into a research brief. You decide who reads it. Every count in the free app is real. You'll see what Refrain found before you pay a cent. IMPORT IS PLUMBING. IT JUST WORKS. Sign in to Amazon inside Refrain and your Kindle highlights come across with their books, notes, and real covers. Every book gets a cover, even the ones that never had one. Older Kindle, or sideloaded books? Bring over your My Clippings.txt file. No duplicate passages. No fiddling. A LITTLE REFRAIN, RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE. One passage a day on your Home Screen. Your library on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Your passages and Insights stay in sync through your own iCloud. And once your library is imported, everything important works offline. YOUR READING LIFE BELONGS TO YOU. There is no Refrain account and no Refrain server. Your library lives on your devices and syncs through your own private iCloud. Every feature that reads your passages runs on your device. No tracking. No analytics. That's not a privacy policy — it's the architecture. ONE PURCHASE. YOURS. Refrain is complete for free: Kindle import, My Clippings import, your whole library, exact-text search, the daily return, iCloud sync, the widget, and Apple Watch. The $4.99 unlock adds the discovery layer — Threads, Rhymes, Search by meaning, Echoes, Insights, and Go Deeper — with future discovery features included. Never a subscription. You already did the hard part. You found the passages worth keeping. Refrain gives them a way to come back — and a way to show you what you couldn't see the first time.

Screenshots

Y/n4 screens
Refrain4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Refrain at 5.0 against Y/n's 4.5. Refrain also leads on device support (4 vs 2). Y/n's advantage is ratings volume (6K vs 1) and chart position (#13 vs unranked). On price, update cadence, 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. Y/n sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per 7 days and Refrain sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Refrain holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Y/n has 6K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 weeks. Both last shipped on November 6, 2026.

Scorecard5 real differences · 6 level
Y/n versus Refrain: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterY/nRefrain
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (6K ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews60.3% of reviews—
Number of ratings6K — better1
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank#13 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS16.4 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size64 MB57 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperEmittance Inc.Don Browning

Customer experience

Y/n

All ratings5,825 ratings
Positive86.5%
Neutral5.4%
Negative8.1%
Written reviews2,177 reviews
Positive60.3%
Neutral18.0%
Negative21.7%

Refrain

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Y/n

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • Continue button not working
  • Incompatibility with older devices

Requested features

2 requests
  • Private and delete characters
  • Email sign-up option

Refrain

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Y/n

Subscriptions2
  • Y/n+ Weekly$4.997 Days
  • Y/n+ Monthly$14.991 Month
1 purchases

Refrain

One-time1
  • The intelligence layer$4.99

Questions

Is Y/n free?
Y/n is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Refrain free?
Refrain is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Y/n or Refrain?
Refrain is rated higher. Y/n averages 4.5 out of 5 from 6K ratings, while Refrain averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Y/n or Refrain have ads?
Neither Y/n nor Refrain shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Y/n or Refrain?
Y/n ships an update every 2 weeks, and Refrain every 2 weeks. Most recently, Y/n was updated on November 6, 2026 and Refrain on November 6, 2026.

Other comparisons