Comparison

BookShelves eBook Reader vs HopeScroll

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

Head to head
About

BookShelves eBook Reader

This app allows you to read EPUB, PDF, and comic books with access to over 1.5 million free public domain books. Organize your library, customize your reading experience with multiple themes and fonts, and sync your progress across devices.

Highlights
  • 1.5 million+ free books
  • EPUB, PDF, and comic reader
  • Customizable themes and fonts
  • iCloud sync across devices
  • Smart library management
  • Highlighting and note-taking
  • Export highlights
Features
Read full description

BookShelves is an EPUB, PDF, and comic book reader with a built-in catalog of 1.5 million free books. Discover public domain classics, organize your digital library, and sync seamlessly across iPhone, iPad, and Mac with iCloud (Pro). WHAT READERS SAY "Phenomenal book reading and management app, 'just works'." "My everlasting search for the perfect ePub reader might be coming to an end." "Among the best and actively developed." DISCOVER 1.5 MILLION+ FREE BOOKS • 1.5 million+ classic works — Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, more • 1,100+ premium editions from Standard Ebooks • Internet Archive — millions of historical texts and rare books • 1,200+ Spanish classics from the Biblioteca Nacional de España • 16,000+ Japanese classics from Aozora Bunko • Browse OPDS catalogs from external libraries and servers One tap to download. No account required. POWERFUL READING EXPERIENCE • Paginated or continuous scroll — read your way • 10 themes including Sepia, Dark Academia, Night Sky, and more • 10 bundled fonts including OpenDyslexic for accessible reading • Adjustable line spacing, margins, text justification, and font weight • Highlight in 5 colors and add notes to any passage • Export highlights to Markdown, JSON, or CSV • Dictionary look-up with language detection • Full-text search across chapters • Nested table of contents navigation • Bookmarks (iCloud sync with Pro) • Vertical text (tategaki) for Japanese and CJK books • Right-to-left reading for Arabic, Hebrew, and CJK texts • Full keyboard and trackpad support • Multi-window reading on Mac COMIC BOOKS AND MANGA • CBZ, CBR, and CB7 format support • Two-page spreads for landscape reading • Right-to-left mode for manga with reversed tap zones and swipes • Auto-detected from metadata or toggled manually SEAMLESS ICLOUD SYNC (Pro) • Books and cover images • Reading progress and current page • Shelves, tags, and ratings • Highlights, notes, and bookmarks • Reader preferences (font, theme, layout) Start reading on your iPhone, continue on your iPad, finish on your Mac. SMART LIBRARY MANAGEMENT • Edit metadata -- title, author, series, publisher, ISBN, and cover image • Automatic metadata and cover art fetching • System shelves: All Books, Recently Added, Reading, Finished, Favorites • Custom shelves for any collection • Color-coded tags for categorization • Search and filter by title, author, or tag • Grid and list views • 5-star ratings • Drag-and-drop import, Files app sharing, or OPDS catalogs • EPUB repair — auto-fixes broken navigation and missing metadata • Import from Calibre libraries with best-format selection FORMAT SUPPORT • EPUB — professional rendering with beautiful typography • PDF — native viewer with smooth scrolling and search • CBZ / CBR / CB7 — comic book archives • FB2 — FictionBook 2 format (auto-converts to EPUB) • MOBI / AZW3 / KF8 / KEPUB — auto-converts to EPUB for reading • TXT / Markdown — plain text and Markdown files (auto-converts to EPUB) MAC EXTRAS • Calibre wireless sync — connect KOReader or other devices over Wi-Fi • OPDS server — share your library on your local network PRIVACY FIRST • Your data stays on your devices • No personal data collected • No ads — clean, distraction-free reading • iCloud keeps your library private and secure FREE AND PRO Free: 10 books with all reading features. Pro unlocks unlimited books, iCloud sync, email to Kindle/reMarkable, highlight export, and OPDS server. Pro is available as a one-time purchase or subscription (monthly/annual, select regions). Subscriptions auto-renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage subscriptions in Apple ID account settings. Privacy Policy: https://getbookshelves.app/privacy/ Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Terms of Service: https://getbookshelves.app/terms/ All books from discovery sources are public domain or openly licensed.

About

HopeScroll

This app offers an offline, ad-free scripture reading experience with a unique scrolling interface. It includes a daily scripture game, customizable reading plans, and tools for highlighting, note-taking, and sharing verses. An optional studio feature allows for creative verse sharing.

Highlights
  • Offline scripture access
  • Daily scripture quest game
  • Customizable reading plans
  • Verse highlighting and notes
  • Scripture sharing tools
  • Home screen widget support
Features
Read full description

Doomscrolling, redeemed. HopeScroll takes the one thing the endless feed got right — the effortless scroll — and puts scripture in it. One verse fills the screen. Swipe up for the next. Nothing autoplays, nothing interrupts, and there is no feed but scripture. ALL FIVE VOLUMES, FULLY OFFLINE 41,995 verses across 87 books: Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. Every word ships inside the app. No account, no sign-in, no network. It works on a plane, in a canyon, or with the wifi off. SCRIPTURE QUEST — A DAILY GAME A new quest every morning, the same for everyone. Read a verse and find where it lives: the book and the chapter. Five questions, from a warm-up to really hard, with a quest for each volume — plus Scripture Stories, where you get a story, event, or person from anywhere in the scriptures and find the chapter it happens in. Every guess scores out of 100, getting close still counts, and each one gets a reaction, some kind and some a little sassy. Share your score with friends as an image or a row of colored squares without spoiling the answers, then keep your streak going tomorrow. READING, NOT INTERFACE Tap once to bring up the controls and again to send them away, so nothing sits over the words while you read. Drag the rail on the left to scrub through a chapter. Read in New York, Iowan Old Style, Georgia, or San Francisco, and switch between light and dark with one tap. Verses, chapters, and books check themselves off as you go — you never have to tell it what you read. DISCOVER 70 themes in 10 groups — faith, hope, repentance, covenants, temples, the Atonement, trials, family, and more — each a hand-checked list of passages rather than a raw word search. Open a theme and it becomes its own scroll. Search every volume at once, by phrase or by theme name. MAKE IT YOURS • Highlight any run of words in five colors • Write a note on any verse • Named bookmarks you move along as you read • Favorite what you want to come back to • Pin any verse to a home screen widget • Share any verse as a clean image, text, or link A PLAN YOU CAN ACTUALLY KEEP Choose a volume and either a date to finish by or an amount to read each day. HopeScroll works out the rest and tells you where to start — not where you stopped. See the month at a glance, with the chapter to reach printed on every day, your streak, and anything still left behind you. QUIET PROGRESS A ring for each volume. A streak that is honest about the days you missed. And a badge each time you finish a volume, earned by reading the last verse rather than handed to you for showing up. HOPESCROLL STUDIO Turn any verse into something worth sharing. More than 30 fonts, colors, gradients, textures, over 120 photographs or your own, and sizes for posts, stories, and wallpapers. Studio is a single optional purchase — no subscription — and shared with your family through Family Sharing. Everything else in HopeScroll is free. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION No accounts. No ads. No trackers, no analytics, no third-party SDKs of any kind. Your highlights, notes, progress, and quest scores live on your device and nowhere else. Export them to a file whenever you want, and bring them back on a new phone. HopeScroll is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Screenshots

BookShelves eBook Reader4 screens
HopeScroll4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: HopeScroll at 5.0 against BookShelves eBook Reader's 3.8. HopeScroll also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 64%). BookShelves eBook Reader's advantage is ratings volume (19 vs 4) and iOS requirement (17.4 vs 26.5). 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. BookShelves eBook Reader sells 4 one-off in-app purchases and HopeScroll 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

HopeScroll holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.8. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 19 and 4 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 64% of BookShelves eBook Reader's written reviews are positive against 100% of HopeScroll's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

BookShelves eBook Reader ships an update weekly, HopeScroll every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 19, 2026 and October 13, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
BookShelves eBook Reader versus HopeScroll: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBookShelves eBook ReaderHopeScroll
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.8 (19 ratings)5.0 (4 ratings) — better
Positive reviews63.6% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings19 — better4
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 4 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.4 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size56 MB80 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCPE Verm. GmbHMARCUS DANIEL WILLIAMS

Customer experience

BookShelves eBook Reader

All ratings19 ratings
Positive57.9%
Neutral21.1%
Negative21.1%
Written reviews33 reviews
Positive63.6%
Neutral12.1%
Negative24.2%

HopeScroll

All ratings4 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

4 purchases

BookShelves eBook Reader

One-time4
  • Small Tip$2.99
  • Medium Tip$3.99
  • Large Tip$8.99
Show 1 more
  • Unlock Pro$9.99
1 purchases

HopeScroll

One-time1
  • HopeScroll Studio$6.99

Questions

Is BookShelves eBook Reader free?
BookShelves eBook Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is HopeScroll free?
HopeScroll is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, BookShelves eBook Reader or HopeScroll?
HopeScroll is rated higher. BookShelves eBook Reader averages 3.8 out of 5 from 19 ratings, while HopeScroll averages 5.0 from 4 ratings.
Do BookShelves eBook Reader or HopeScroll have ads?
Neither BookShelves eBook Reader nor HopeScroll shows ads.
Which is updated more often, BookShelves eBook Reader or HopeScroll?
BookShelves eBook Reader ships an update weekly, and HopeScroll every 4 days. Most recently, BookShelves eBook Reader was updated on October 19, 2026 and HopeScroll on October 13, 2026.

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