ShelfBuddy vs My Library
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ShelfBuddy
Manage your physical book collection digitally with virtual shelves, wishlists, and reading timelines. Track borrowed books with return reminders and view reading statistics. Easily add books by scanning, searching, or manual entry.
- Virtual shelves and wishlists
- ISBN barcode scanning
- Reading progress tracking
- Borrowed book management
- Customizable notes and genres
- Multilingual interface
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ShelfBuddy is your digital bookshelf: beautiful, calm and built entirely around reading. Keep track of every book and audiobook you own, are reading, have lent out or still want. Your whole library, neatly organized, and your data always stays in your hands. YOUR LIBRARY, ORGANIZED Create as many shelves as you like, for example Fantasy, Thrillers or Classics, keep wishlists, and plan what to read next with a reading list. A book may sit on several shelves, and copies marked "collected only" count neither as read nor as unread. Manage genres and tags across all your books at once, and "Edit fields" sets author, genres and tags for several books in one step. Filter your TBR pile by shelf, format, genre, tag or language. BOOKS AND AUDIOBOOKS The overview keeps books and audiobooks apart: audiobooks get their own series, wishlists, loans and statistics. Count them as read if you like, and keep manga and comics separate. BOOK SERIES AT A GLANCE See for every series which volumes you own and which are still missing, and add them to your wishlist or a shelf with one tap. Discover suggests book series and audiobook series picked by your taste, search puts the series you look for first, and you get notified when a new volume is released. RATINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Rate your books in quarter stars and see ratings from Thalia and other ShelfBuddy readers alongside. "Popular on ShelfBuddy" shows what the community is reading a lot right now, next to recommendations picked by your taste and "Next in your series". TRACK YOUR READING Reading tracker and reading journal in one: status, start and finish dates, reading progress, notes and quotes, also for books you have read more than once. "Read as" remembers when you read a book as an eBook or a borrowed copy while the print edition stays on your shelf. READING SESSIONS WITH A READING TIMER Start a reading session and the timer runs along. When you're done, enter your page and ShelfBuddy updates your progress and reading pace. Log past reading time after the fact, and start your next session from the home screen, the app icon or a widget, with a Live Activity on the Lock Screen. INSIGHTS: GET TO KNOW YOUR READING HABITS A reading calendar shows which days you read and how much. See the time of day and the weekdays you read most, which genres get most of your reading time, your records, your spending per week, month and year, and a short written summary of your reading year. Insights are part of ShelfBuddy Premium. YOUR READING RECAP Share your reading year or month as an image: six templates, headline styles, reading time or pages, your covers and highlights. ADD BOOKS IN SECONDS Scan the ISBN barcode, search millions of books or add books by hand. Import your library from Goodreads, StoryGraph, Reado and other apps, genres and covers included. "Missing details" fills in page counts and publishers, and you can export your whole library as a .csv spreadsheet. AUTHORS AND LENDING Follow your favorite authors in several languages and get notified about new titles. Lending remembers who has which book, with a reminder to get it back, and borrowed books remember when you got them. YOUR DATA, YOUR CHOICE Keep everything 100% local on your device, or sync via iCloud or Google Drive. Export a complete backup at any time. With ShelfBuddy Premium you can also open your library in the browser on your computer at app.shelfbuddy.de, linked with a QR code, no account needed and encrypted on your device. ON IPHONE, IPAD AND IPHONE DUO On iPad you work with a sidebar and the book page side by side. Optimized for iPhone Duo: unfolded, ShelfBuddy uses the large screen like a tablet. ALL YOURS Dark mode, selectable accent colors and available in four languages.
My Library
Easily catalog your book collection by scanning barcodes or searching manually. Track your reading progress, organize books into collections, and save favorite passages. Visualize your reading habits with smart statistics.
- Barcode scanning for book entry
- Manual book entry with photos
- Reading progress tracking
- Virtual bookshelf visualization
- Book collections by author/series
- Save and extract favorite passages
- Detailed reading statistics
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Your entire bookshelf in your pocket. My Library makes cataloging your books a pleasure: point the camera at a book's barcode — one beep, and it's in. Title, author, cover and page count are filled in automatically. No barcode? Search by title, or add it by hand with a photo of the cover. TRACK YOUR READING • Start and finish books with one tap, and see how long each one took • Set the page you're on and watch the progress bar move • See what percentage of your library you've read, and how long it'll take to read it all A SHELF THAT FILLS WITH COLOR Your books appear as spines on a virtual shelf. Unread books stay gray; every book you finish adds color. Share your shelf as an image with one tap. COLLECTIONS Group your books by author and series. See what percentage of an author's best-known works you own, and which volumes are still missing from a series. KEEP THE PASSAGES YOU LOVE Photograph a page and the text is extracted automatically. Crop it to the quote you want, add the page number, done. Mark the best ones to memorize and review them in their own tab. SMART STATS Charts of books and pages finished per week, month or year. Average time per book, time per 1,000 pages, reading speed, top authors, books by genre — and an estimate of how long your whole library will take. YOURS, TRULY No account. No cloud. No subscription. Your library lives on your iPhone, and you can export it to a file anytime for backup. The free version holds 50 books — a single one-time purchase unlocks unlimited.
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Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: ShelfBuddy at 5.0 against My Library's 4.5. ShelfBuddy also leads on update cadence (every 2 days vs every 5 days) and device support (3 vs 1). My Library's advantage is ads (none vs shown). On price, in-app purchases and monetization model 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. ShelfBuddy sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and My Library sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
ShelfBuddy holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 6 and 2 respectively.
ShelfBuddy ships an update every 2 days, My Library every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | ShelfBuddy | My Library |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (6 ratings) — better | 4.5 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Every 5 days |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 57 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | JAN-HENNING BUNS | MANUEL NOVO LOPES |
In-app purchases
ShelfBuddy
- ShelfBuddy Freischaltung$19.99
My Library
- My Library Unlimited$4.99







