Bukon vs OpenBookshelf
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bukon
Easily manage your reading lists. Track books you've read and those you want to read. Search online, scan ISBNs, or add manually, then rate and organize your collection.
- Track read books
- Track books to read
- Search and add books online
- Scan ISBN codes
- Manually create books
- Rate books
- Export lists
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Bukon lets you track and manage your books: • Track books you've read • Track books you want to read • Manage the two lists of books Bukon is an intentionally simple book tracker: No accounts. No social features. No statistics. No ads. Just the books you’ve read and the ones you want to read. What Bukon offers • Track books you’ve read • Track books you want to read • Search for books online and add them to your lists • Scan ISBN codes to add books even quicker to your lists (Pro-Feature) • Manually create books and add them to your lists • Rate books • Maintain a read date for the books you've read • Move books between lists • Search for books in your lists • Share books • Share lists and export lists to multiple formats • Store the lists on iCloud or locally • Have the two lists always with you on your Apple Watch What Bukon does not offer • No social features • No statistics or gamification • No ads or tracking To help you finding books, Bukon connects to Open Library and allows you to search its wide library of books. Book-information from Open Library like descriptions and cover-images can be used in Bukon.
OpenBookshelf
Organize your reading list with a clean, focused book tracker. Easily search millions of titles, import your history from other platforms, and sync across devices without ads or subscriptions. Focus solely on your books.
- Track reading progress
- Search millions of books
- Import from Goodreads
- Sync across devices
- No ads or subscriptions
- Organize reading lists
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Your books. Without the noise. OpenBookshelf is a clean, focused book tracker for readers who want to organize what they read — not be sold a subscription, shown ads, or pushed into a social network. Track your reading in three taps. Search for a book, add it to your shelf, mark it as read. No onboarding wizard, no account creation, no tutorial. Just your books. SEARCH MILLIONS OF BOOKS Find books instantly by title, author, or ISBN — powered by Open Library, the world's largest open book database. No proprietary database, no lock-in. IMPORT FROM GOODREADS Bring your entire reading history with you. Export your Goodreads data and import it into OpenBookshelf in seconds. Keep your shelves, ratings, and reading dates without starting over. SYNC ACROSS DEVICES Your library stays up to date on every device automatically with iCloud. Add a book on your iPhone, see it on your iPad. No account required. WHAT YOU WON'T FIND HERE No algorithmic recommendations. No social feed. No reading challenges designed to make you feel guilty. No ads. No behavioral tracking. No subscription. OpenBookshelf does one thing well: it helps you keep track of what you've read, what you're reading, and what you want to read next. Nothing more. Nothing less. Completely free. No account. No tracking. No catch.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: OpenBookshelf at free against Bukon's freemium. On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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. Bukon sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and OpenBookshelf sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Bukon against 5.0 for OpenBookshelf. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 11, 2026 and September 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Bukon | OpenBookshelf |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 9 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Marc Menges | Jared Floersch |
Customer experience
Bukon
OpenBookshelf
In-app purchases
Bukon
- Bukon Pro$2.99
OpenBookshelf
- Unlock$2.99









