Comparison

BookTales vs Casebound

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

Head to head
About

BookTales

This app provides a cozy space to organize your books, set reading goals, and connect with a community of readers. Share recommendations, join book clubs, and discover new reads through a unique 'Blind Date With a Book' feature.

Highlights
  • Cozy bookshelf organization
  • Reading goal setting
  • Community feed for sharing
  • Blind Date With a Book discovery
  • Book club creation and joining
  • Detailed book reflections
  • Direct messaging
Features
Read full description

Tales is your cozy corner of the reading world. It's a soft, welcoming space where your books, your thoughts, and your community all live together. Build a cozy bookshelf filled with the stories you’ve finished, the ones you’re savoring, and the titles waiting patiently on your TBR. Set gentle reading goals, keep track of your reading streak, and watch your reading life bloom. Share your favorite reads, recommendations, and bookish moments through the Tales feed, a friendly community space made just for readers. Tag books in your posts so your followers can easily add them to their own shelves, or send a personal recommendation straight to a friend when a story reminds you of them. Feeling adventurous? Tap the little globe on your shelf to try Blind Date With a Book, where you discover a surprise read wrapped in mystery and vibes. Join or create a clubs to connect with readers nearby or across the country. Chat through threaded discussions, track your club’s reads, and enjoy the feeling of reading together — even when you’re apart. You can also directly message friends for one‑on‑one conversations. When you finish a book, reflect on it your way. Give it a simple star rating or dive deeper with optional details like feelings, spice level, trigger warnings, and tags. Tales is more than a tracker, it’s a cozy home for your reading life, built for connection, discovery, and the simple joy of books.

About

Casebound

Organize your physical and digital book collection with detailed tracking of ownership, formats, and reading progress. Visualize your library on a customizable bookshelf and track reading sessions with detailed statistics. Capture new books quickly via barcode or cover scanning.

Highlights
  • Separate library and custom lists
  • Track multiple formats per book
  • Customizable bookshelf visualization
  • Session-based reading time and page tracking
  • Barcode and cover scanning for fast entry
  • Book club and lending features
Read full description

For serious readers and library builders. People with real shelves who want to know exactly what they own, track their reading honestly, and enjoy the collection they have built. LIBRARY AND LISTS, FINALLY SEPARATE Most book apps blend your shelves, your reading state, and your custom lists into one jumble. When you own 500 books across overlapping shelves, you cannot cleanly answer "what do I actually own?" Casebound keeps your library, a real catalogue with ownership, format, and reading status, separate from your lists, which are tags you layer on top. A book lives in your library once. Lists are zero or many tags applied to it. ONE BOOK, EVERY FORMAT Own the hardcover. Listening to the audiobook. Halfway through the Kindle. That is one library entry with three format records, each tracked separately. Ownership lives on the format, so you can own the hardcover and borrow the audiobook from the library. Stats stay honest: hours for audio, pages for physical, locations or percent for ebooks. No lossy conversion between them. Books finished counts any format. A SHELF WORTH SHOWING Your library is not just a spreadsheet. Arrange it on a real bookshelf, in a floating or framed case, with spine widths that scale to actual page counts. Stack books the way you do at home. Photograph your real spines and see them on the shelf. Earn decor as you read and place it where you like. SESSIONS THAT COUNT Track reading time and pages session by session. Pause, resume, or log a session you forgot to start. See weekly, monthly, yearly, and lifetime stats, plus a reading calendar built from your book covers and a year in review when the year closes. Goals are measured in pages and time, never in book counts. CAPTURE A LIBRARY FAST Scan a barcode and Casebound looks up the metadata automatically. Point the camera at a cover when there is no barcode. Pair a Bluetooth scanner and add a whole shelf in one sitting. Quick add drops a book in with a single tap. Found a wrong page count? Fix it once and the correction improves the shared record for everyone. READ WITH OTHER PEOPLE, OR DO NOT Follow readers whose taste you trust and see what they are finishing. Rate and review books, and read reviews from everyone else. Start or join a book club with real discussion threads. Lend a book and track who has it and how far along they are. Send a book straight to a friend when you know it is for them. None of it is mandatory. Privacy is per book, there is no public profile by default, and you decide what, if anything, is visible. FREE IS USEFUL. PRO IS POWER. Free includes your unlimited library on every device you sign in on, session tracking, streaks and goals, ISBN and cover scanning, reviews, following, lending, friend recommendations, import and export, per-book privacy, and up to 5 custom lists. Pro ($4.99/month or $29.99/year) unlocks unlimited custom lists, advanced stats and insights, unlimited book clubs, the customizable bookshelf, and the Sepia theme. OPINIONATED Casebound measures reading in pages and hours, not in books finished, because book-count goals quietly push people toward shorter books. Your library and your lists stay separate structures, because collapsing them is what broke every app that came before. If those choices are not for you, this is not the right app, and that is okay. Casebound is a product of Pixel Master Technologies LLC. Contact: support@pixel-master.com Casebound Pro is an auto-renewing subscription. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase and renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Manage or cancel in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://casebound.co/privacy

Screenshots

BookTales4 screens
Casebound4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: BookTales at none against Casebound's 2. On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume 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. Casebound sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. BookTales asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for BookTales against 5.0 for Casebound. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 2 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
BookTales versus Casebound: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBookTalesCasebound
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (3 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings3 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 2 months—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFreemium
DevicesiPhone, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.1 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size55 MB87 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperOWEN JOHN STOKES CAWLEYPixel Master Technologies LLC

Customer experience

BookTales

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Casebound

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

BookTales

No in-app purchases

2 purchases

Casebound

Subscriptions2
  • Casebound Pro Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Casebound Pro Annual$29.991 Year

Questions

Is BookTales free?
BookTales is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Casebound free?
Casebound is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, BookTales or Casebound?
BookTales and Casebound are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 3 and 2 ratings respectively.
Do BookTales or Casebound have ads?
Neither BookTales nor Casebound shows ads.

Other comparisons