BookOwl vs Seekquel
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
BookOwl
Organize your reading life with this free companion app. Build your personal library, track your progress, and customize your profile. Import data from other services and scan books instantly. Enjoy personalized recommendations and share your reading insights.
- Barcode scanner for instant book addition
- Import from Goodreads, StoryGraph, Audible, Libby
- Customizable profile with aurora colors
- Half and quarter-star rating system
- Custom shelves and curated book lists
- Reading progress tracking
- Yearly reading goals and streaks
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Your reading life, delightfully organized. BookOwl is a free reading companion for people who love books. Build your personal library, track what you're reading, and make the app feel like yours, all without ads, clutter, or data harvesting. Available on iOS and at bookowlapp.com. NEW: THE SIT TAB The Sit tab gives reading sessions a home. Start a sit, set a timer, and read. BookOwl keeps you company. Capture a mood, a scene, or a pinned moment mid-read without losing your place (speak it instead of typing, if you like). When you close the book, a wrap-up card logs how far you got and how the sit felt. A COMPLETELY REDESIGNED LIBRARY: Your library now opens like a magazine. A masthead greets you with the books you're reading now, The Lead carousel keeps your current reads one swipe away, and your shelves sit beneath. Pinch to zoom from big covers down to a compact index. The new Contents view puts shelves, filters, and sorting in one place, with breadcrumb chips showing what's active. YOUR THOUGHTS, ORGANIZED BY BOOK: Everything you capture lands where you'll find it again: pinned passages on the book's page, your moods across the book's arc, even why you set a book down. Make the capture chips your own with custom moods and scenes. Your written thoughts stay private, always. TRACK PROGRESS WITHOUT THE FUSS: Update your page, your status, and your reading dates in one place with the new progress editor. Edit or delete any past read. Your history stays accurate and syncs everywhere. MAKE IT YOURS WITH 12 THEMES: Every theme hand-tuned, from the warm sepia of Quiet Warmth to the banker's-lamp green of Reading Room, all meeting accessibility contrast standards. YOUR PROFILE, YOUR WAY: Five tabbed sections: Overview, Collections, Reviews, Stats, and Personal. Choose which reading stats sit front and center. Pick your aurora colors. Arrange your sections. PRIVACY THAT MAKES SENSE: One toggle. Three options: Public, Friends Only, or Private. Visitors see a friendly banner explaining what's shared. IMPORT FROM ANYWHERE: Switching from another app? Import your full reading history from Goodreads, StoryGraph, Audible (via OCR), or Libby. Your ratings, shelves, and reading dates all come with you. Export to CSV or JSON anytime. Your data belongs to you. SCAN BOOKS IN SECONDS: Point your camera at any barcode. BookOwl identifies it instantly and adds it to your library. Stack of books at a used bookstore? Scan them all in one session. ORGANIZE YOUR WAY: Custom shelves and curated lists for any purpose: "Beach Reads," "Book Club," "Lent to Friends." FIND YOUR NEXT READ: Personalized recommendations, author pages, series with reading order, and a catalog of millions of books. USE IT ANYWHERE: Web app at bookowlapp.com with the same profile and achievements. Your data syncs across devices. BUILT FOR READERS, NOT ADVERTISERS: No ads. No engagement tricks. No data selling. Just a calm, thoughtful space for your reading life, built by a reader, for readers. • Sit tab: timed reading sessions with a wrap-up card • Capture moods, scenes, and pinned moments mid-read • Voice capture: speak your thoughts without stopping • Redesigned Library: The Lead carousel and pinch-to-zoom shelves • Barcode scanner: add books in seconds • Import from Goodreads, StoryGraph, Audible, or Libby • Export your library to CSV or JSON • Progress editor: pages, status, and dates in one place • Edit or delete past reads anytime • 12 hand-tuned themes and alternate app icons • Customizable profile with aurora colors and hero stats • Half-star and quarter-star ratings • Custom shelves, collections, and curated book lists • Yearly reading goals and streaks • Year in Review: shareable reading personality cards • Series tracking with reading order • Privacy controls: Public, Friends Only, or Private • Social features: follow friends, reviews, profiles Whether you read 5 books a year or 50, BookOwl helps you remember every one. Whooo's ready to get started?
Seekquel
This app helps readers meticulously track their reading habits, organize their book collections, and discover new titles based on personalized recommendations. It allows users to log progress, set reading goals, and connect with a community of fellow book lovers.
- Track reading progress by page
- Organize library with custom shelves and tags
- Personalized book recommendations
- Camera OCR for capturing quotes
- Reading session timer and Focus Mode
- Build reading habits with goals and challenges
- Connect with other readers and buddy reads
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Seekquel is a book tracker you set up yourself. There is a lot in it and none of it is compulsory: build your home screen from the parts you use, switch off the rest, and keep the community on its own tab. Plenty of readers run it as a plain reading log and never touch anything else. SET UP THE HOME SCREEN • More than thirty cards: currently reading, daily goals, your streak, recommendations, your reading calendar and more • Drag them into the order you want and switch off the ones you never use • Arrange your stats page and public profile the same way • 21 themes, from Dark Academia to Cottagecore, and more than twenty app icons • Home screen widgets, adjustable text size, reduced motion and reduced transparency DECIDE WHO SEES WHAT • Public, followers only, or private, then set each part of your profile on its own • Show your reviews but hide your stats, or turn a whole profile tab off • Choose who can message you and approve followers before they see anything • No ads, no data selling, and analytics you can decline • Export everything you have added, whenever you want TRACK YOUR LIBRARY • Add books by title, author, ISBN, or barcode scan • Want to Read, Reading, Paused, Read, and Did Not Finish • Log progress by page, percent, or time listened, in the edition you actually own • Custom shelves, shelves that fill themselves from rules you set, tags, and notes • Track what you own, what you borrowed, and what you lent out • Coming from elsewhere? Import from Goodreads, StoryGraph, or Hardcover, with your shelves, ratings and reviews SYNC YOUR E-READER • KOReader on Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook or Android sends your place, reading time, highlights and finished books • Readest and Xteink pocket readers connect too • Calibre keeps shelves, ratings, reviews and reading dates in step in both directions DISCOVER YOUR NEXT READ • A taste profile built from your genres, moods, themes and pacing • Browse by mood, trope and pace, not just broad genres • Pick For Me: a few quick questions, one considered recommendation • Shelve a book before it is published and hear the day it comes out • See the films and series a book was turned into • Mood, pace and content notes gathered from real reader reviews BUILD A READING HABIT • A reading timer, with ambient sounds like rain or a fireplace • Daily page or minute targets, and a streak with freeze days built in • Yearly goals and custom challenges, on your own or shared with friends • A monthly reading bingo card, and badges from Bronze to Platinum SEE YOUR READING • Books, pages, hours, streaks and genres at a glance • A Monthly Wrapped recap of the month just gone • Share cards for a finished book, a month or your whole year • With Pro: build your own charts, compare one period against another, and see reading heatmaps, pacing and mood trends THE COMMUNITY, ON ITS OWN TAB • Nothing social reaches your home screen unless you put it there • Rate books with stars, plus writing, plot, characters, atmosphere and impact • Follow readers, build shareable lists, and recommend books directly • Buddy reads with milestones and chat, and book clubs • Ask the community for a book and shelve their suggestions in one tap • Fix catalog mistakes yourself and build your reputation as a contributor Free on iPhone, Android and the web. Pro adds more themes, custom charts, deeper stats and higher limits. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://seekquel.app/privacy
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Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: BookOwl at none against Seekquel's 3. BookOwl also leads on ratings volume (44 vs 14). Seekquel's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 11 days) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.0). On price, rating, review sentiment 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
Both are free to download. Seekquel sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. BookOwl asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for BookOwl against 4.9 for Seekquel. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 44 and 14 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 92% of BookOwl's written reviews are positive against 89% of Seekquel's.
BookOwl ships an update every 11 days, Seekquel every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | BookOwl | Seekquel |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (44 ratings) | 4.9 (14 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 92.3% of reviews — better | 88.9% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 44 — better | 14 |
| Update frequency | Every 11 days | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 50 MB | 76 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Phil Getzen | Mohamed Sabri Ben Chaabane |
Customer experience
BookOwl
Seekquel
In-app purchases
BookOwl
No in-app purchases
Seekquel
- Seekquel Pro (Monthly)14 Days trial$3.991 Month
- Seekquel Pro Yearly14 Days trial$39.991 Year
- Seekquel Pro Lifetime$119.99









