Comparison

Vellum Reader vs PixComic

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

Head to head
About

Vellum Reader

Read full description

Vellum is a minimalistic and elegant book reader designed for readers who appreciate a classy, distraction-free reading experience on iPhone and iPad. Your Personal Library Import your favorite books and documents with ease. Vellum supports PDF, EPUB, TXT, and RTF files. Smart metadata extraction automatically pulls titles, authors, and cover images from your PDFs. Organize Your Way • Create custom collections to group your reading • Mark favorites for quick access • Search and sort your library effortlessly • Track your reading progress across all documents A Beautiful Reading Experience • Choose from 8 elegant fonts including Georgia, Palatino, and Baskerville • 4 page themes: Light, Sepia, Dark, and Black (OLED) • Adjustable font size, line spacing, margins, and text alignment • Tap edges to turn pages or swipe naturally Thoughtful Features • Search Public Domains like "Project Gutenberg" and "StandardEbooks" for thousands of classics to import to your library • Automatic progress saving — pick up right where you left off • Bookmarks to mark important pages • Keep Screen Awake mode for uninterrupted reading • Visual progress bar and page numbers • Continue Reading section for quick access to current books • Utilize the AI recommendation feature to get book suggestions based on the current works in your library Five Beautiful App Themes Personalize Vellum with Sepia, Midnight, Ocean, Forest, or Lavender accent themes. Privacy First Vellum respects your privacy completely. All your books and reading data stay on your device. No accounts required. No data collection. Just you and your books. Download Vellum and rediscover the joy of reading.

About

PixComic

Features
Read full description

PixComic is a local comic reader. It does not provide any comics — it reads the archives you already own, and it reads them fast. WI-FI TRANSFER, NO CABLE Start the server on your phone, open the address it shows in your computer's browser, and drag your files in. Uploads are chunked and resumable, so a multi-gigabyte archive survives a dropped connection, a locked screen or a closed tab — it picks up where it left off. The same page lets you browse what is on the device, pull a book back to your computer, delete one, and check free space. Importing from the Files app, AirDrop and "Open in" from other apps all work too. EVERY FORMAT, NO MOJIBAKE CBZ / ZIP, CBR / RAR, PDF, and plain folders of images. Scan releases from Japan and Greater China routinely store filenames in Shift-JIS or GBK rather than UTF-8, which turns into garbage text in most readers. PixComic detects the encoding automatically, and sorts chapters naturally — page 2 comes before page 10, not after it. THREE READING MODES Ā· Manga: right-to-left, automatic two-page spreads in landscape, cover on its own page so the spreads line up the way print does Ā· Standard: left-to-right Ā· Webtoon: seamless vertical scrolling, pinch to set the page width A wide double-page scan can also be split into two screens, so spreads are comfortable to read on a phone held upright. BUILT TO STAY SMOOTH Every image is decoded off the main thread and downsampled to your screen, with pages preloaded in both directions. Page dimensions are measured once in the background — you can read the whole time it runs — and cached, so reopening the same book skips the rescan, the "Analyzing pages" strip along the bottom, and the one relayout that lands when it finishes. FOUR THEMES Standard, Sci-fi, Pixel and Paper. Not just a tint — corners, borders, typeface and light/dark all change together. ALSO Double-tap for a quick zoom and pinch all the way to native pixels (6x at most on very large scans), thumbnail navigation, bookmarks, a scrubber with page preview, automatic border trimming, screen-awake and brightness lock. PixComic is free and ad-supported: a banner on the shelf and an occasional interstitial before a book opens — never while you are reading.

Screenshots

Vellum Reader4 screens
PixComic4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: Vellum Reader at none against PixComic's shown. On price, in-app purchases, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard1 real difference Ā· 4 level
Vellum Reader versus PixComic: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterVellum ReaderPixComic
PriceFreeFree
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size1 MB8 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSUZETTE RENEE COPLEY DE SCHRYVERPIXDYNE PTY LTD

In-app purchases

None

Vellum Reader

No in-app purchases

None

PixComic

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Vellum Reader free?
Vellum Reader is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is PixComic free?
PixComic is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Vellum Reader or PixComic have ads?
PixComic shows ads; Vellum Reader does not.

Other comparisons