Commonplace vs Underlined
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Commonplace
Log books, magazines, and short fiction, track your reading progress, and capture notes. Visualize your reading year with stats and a timeline. Your library is private and syncs via iCloud.
- Log books, magazines, and short fiction
- Track reading progress (To Read, Started, Finished)
- Record start/finish dates and ratings
- Capture notes before, during, and after reading
- Yearly reading statistics and timeline
- Private iCloud sync, no account needed
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Commonplace is a personal reading tracker for books, science fiction/fantasy magazines, and short fiction. Log what you're reading, keep notes as you go, and look back on your reading year. BOOKS • Add books instantly by search, or share a link from Safari, Libby, or any bookstore page. • Track your pile: To Read, Started, Finished, Did Not Finish. • Record start and finish dates, rate books, and tag them print, audio, or digital. • Track the books you re-read. Commonplace can count and log multiple readings. MAGAZINES & SHORT FICTION • Import issues from Clarkesworld, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. • Track every story you read with its own rating and notes. • Add stories by hand or from an EPUB. NOTES • Capture thoughts during each phase of reading: before, during, and after. Commonplace will tag and sort them. • Search and filter notes across your whole library, and export them all as Markdown. YOUR READING YEAR • Yearly stats: books, stories, pages, ratings, and month-by-month charts. • A Reading Timeline that lays your whole year out visually. YOURS, PRIVATELY • No account. No ads. No tracking. Your library lives on your device and syncs privately through your own iCloud. • Import your history from Goodreads or Libby CSV exports; back up everything to JSON anytime. • Optionally connect micro.blog to share your bookshelves. Commonplace is for readers who want to remember what they read and how they felt about it.
Underlined
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You underline as you read. Then the lines stay in the book, because typing one out is more work than it is worth in the moment. Underlined is a reading tracker built around getting them out. Photograph the page, draw a box round the passage, and it is yours. A PASSAGE WITHOUT TYPING IT • Photograph the page and draw a box round what you underlined. Nothing is retyped. • The box is coarse on purpose: it only has to contain the passage. The words are trimmed back to whole sentences, so a box that clips a few still gives a clean quotation. • The page number is read off the photograph, so keeping a line from page 214 moves your reading progress to 214. When it cannot be read, the app asks. • Text read off a page is never quietly corrected. A word that looks wrong is offered as a suggestion — against word lists carried on the phone, in twenty-six languages — and nothing changes until you say so. • Star the ones that matter. Add a thought underneath while it is still fresh. A SHELF IN ONE PHOTOGRAPH • Point the camera at a row of spines instead of typing forty titles. • Books standing up, books lying flat, a shelf shot at an angle, all without turning the picture. • A single cover works too, for the book in your hand. • Everything found is shown to you first. You choose which go on the shelf and which shelf. YOUR READING YEAR • One goal for the year, paced against how far into the year it actually is — not against a flat count. • Three shelves and no ceremony: want to read, reading, finished. Your TBR is just a shelf. • Keep the page you are on; the last page finishes the book on its own. • Write down how a book left you, in a sentence or two. • Statistics about reading, not about scores: passages kept this month, this year and all time; how many you starred; how long they run; books finished, by year. WHAT YOU KEEP COMES BACK • A passage resurfaces each day, from your own collection. • Search every line you ever kept, with your words marked where they were found. • The ones you return to rise: the app counts which passages you come back to. • Dig into a passage with a model that runs on your phone, never a server. (Recent iPhones.) • Read a passage in another language through Apple's own translation sheet. DISCOVER • Passages other readers underlined, narrowed by subject, in the languages you read. • Keep the ones that stay with you; they join your own shelf. • Find the book behind a line: what it is about, more by the author, books shelved beside it, and where to buy a copy. • Offer a passage of your own if you like — a button you press, never something the app does on its own. Anything can be reported and taken down. TAKE IT WITH YOU • Send a passage as a picture, set as a page rather than a screenshot. • Export one book's passages, or everything you have ever kept, as a PDF set at paperback size. YOUR LIBRARY STAYS YOURS • No account. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to sign in to. • Your books, your progress and your passages live on your phone. • The app does not upload your notes and it does not track you. • Eight languages in the app itself, and passages in twenty-six. • A colour for every book; paper by day, ink by night. FREE AND PRO Five books, free, with every feature working — the camera included. Keeping passages is free without limit and always will be: it is what the app is for. Underlined Pro opens the shelf to as many books as you keep. SUBSCRIPTION Underlined Pro is an auto-renewing subscription: $2.99 a month, or $19.99 a year. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically unless turned off at least 24 hours before the period ends; manage or cancel it in your Apple Account settings. Privacy policy: https://www.threedollarclub.com/underlined/privacy.html Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Discover passages come from Wikiquote, used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Book information comes from Open Library.
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Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Commonplace at none against Underlined's 2. Commonplace also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs fortnightly). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement 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. Underlined sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Commonplace asks for nothing beyond the download.
Commonplace ships an update every 3 days, Underlined fortnightly. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | Commonplace | Underlined |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 23 MB | 24 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tim Lockridge | Mert Arman |
In-app purchases
Commonplace
No in-app purchases
Underlined
- Underlined - Monthly$2.991 Month
- Underlined - Yearly$19.991 Year








