Comparison

Leaf & Spine vs Afterglow

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

Head to head
About

Leaf & Spine

Enhance your reading experience with a distraction-free app that supports various formats like PDFs, EPUBs, audiobooks, and comics. Build daily reading habits with powerful tools, track your progress with detailed analytics, and personalize your digital library.

Highlights
  • Supports PDF, EPUB, CBR, CBZ, and Audiobooks
  • Smart EPUB annotation and note-taking
  • Text-to-Speech for audiobooks
  • Customizable themes and 3D bookshelf
  • Daily reading habit tracking and analytics
  • Immersive focus sessions with ambient environments
Read full description

Your library, your shelf, your reading habit. Leaf & Spine is a calm, distraction-free home for your EPUBs, PDFs, comics and audiobooks. Arrange them on a 3D bookshelf, read with highlights, notes and drawings, listen with the screen off, and watch a daily reading habit take shape. Read for free, or upgrade to Premium for stats, focus sessions, backups and your own servers. BRING IN YOUR BOOKS • Read EPUB, PDF, CBZ and CBR, and listen to audiobooks. Audiobooks require Premium. • Add a whole folder at once, or pick files yourself. • Discover free public-domain books and audiobooks from Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks and LibriVox. • Connect your own server (Premium): Calibre, Calibre-Web, Kavita, Komga, Audiobookshelf, or a WebDAV folder such as Nextcloud or a NAS. Browse it, search it as you type, and download books to read offline. READ YOUR WAY • Highlight, take notes, draw with pen, pencil and highlighter, and look words up in the dictionary or translator. • Listen: the page is read aloud with the sentence lit up, using natural voices made on your device, and an EPUB that comes with a recording plays the narrator. • Focus mode for reading a sentence at a time, and a reading ruler. • Presets, typefaces (including Atkinson Hyperlegible and OpenDyslexic), heading styles and page-turn speed. Premium readers can import their own fonts. AUDIOBOOKS THAT KEEP PLAYING • Keep listening with your phone locked or while you use another app, with play, pause and skip on the lock screen. • Chapters, bookmarks, notes, speed and a sleep timer that works with the screen off. ORGANISE YOUR SHELF • A 3D bookshelf with categories, sub-categories, tags and series, sorted and grouped by author or series, with bookends you can fold into a box set. • Spines take their colour from each book's cover, or customise spines, patterns and covers yourself. • A page for every book: progress, the next in its series, description, chapters and your marks. • Fix a book's details, or fill them in from Open Library (Premium). • The Notebook gathers every highlight, note, drawing and looked-up word from your whole library, and one search covers it all. BUILD A HABIT • Goals in minutes a day or days a week, reminders at a time you choose, and streak freezes so one missed day doesn't erase months. • Home follows the series you are reading, and finishing a book offers the next one. • Home screen widgets with your current book and a highlight worth rereading. • Premium stats: time read and listened, pages, chapters, books finished, genres, highlights and words looked up, by week, month, year or all time. FOCUS SESSIONS (Premium) • Set a timer and read inside an immersive environment: a fireplace, a beach, a waterfall or a rainy window, each with its own ambience and music, which keep playing with the screen locked. YOUR PLACE, EVERYWHERE (Premium) • Back up automatically to iCloud or Google Drive, and keep your place across your devices. • Sync your progress with Audiobookshelf, Komga, Kavita and KOReader. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • No account or sign-up needed to start reading. • Your books, highlights, notes and progress stay on your device. Backups go to your own iCloud or Google Drive, never to our servers. • Six themes, light and dark (two free), and the app in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. PERFECT FOR • Students who highlight, draw and track study time. • Fiction readers who want EPUBs and audiobooks in one place. • Comic and manga readers with CBZ and CBR collections. • Anyone with a Calibre, Kavita, Komga or Audiobookshelf library. CONTENT NOTICE Leaf & Spine does not sell or host books. Discover lists free public-domain titles from Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks and LibriVox; everything else is your own files and your own servers. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Afterglow

Experience ebooks with a personalized ambiance. This reader intelligently creates unique themes from book cover art, offering a clean interface with customizable typography and layout for comfortable reading.

Highlights
  • Ebook reading interface
  • Cover Tone themes
  • Custom ambiance per book
  • Typography controls
  • Layout controls
  • Light and dark modes
Features
Read full description

A beautiful way to read ebooks. With Afterglow, give each book it's own ambience with Cover Tone themes, intelligently created from the book's cover art. Key features • Ebook reading with a clean, focused interface • Custom ambience for each book • Typography and layout controls for comfort and style • Light and dark reading options

Screenshots

Leaf & Spine4 screens
Afterglow4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Afterglow at 5.0 against Leaf & Spine's 4.3. Afterglow also leads on in-app purchases (none vs 11) and update cadence (every 6 days vs every 2 weeks). Leaf & Spine's advantage is ratings volume (7 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.5 vs 26.4). On price, ads and device support 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. Leaf & Spine sells 11 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Afterglow asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Afterglow holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Leaf & Spine has 7 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Leaf & Spine ships an update every 2 weeks, Afterglow every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Leaf & Spine versus Afterglow: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLeaf & SpineAfterglow
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.3 (7 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews54.5% of reviews—
Number of ratings7 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksEvery 6 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFreemiumFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.5 — better26.4
Further details — not scored
Size119 MB14 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAqeeb RizwanMohammad Qureshi

Customer experience

Leaf & Spine

All ratings7 ratings
Positive71.4%
Neutral14.3%
Negative14.3%
Written reviews11 reviews
Positive54.5%
Neutral18.2%
Negative27.3%

Afterglow

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

11 purchases

Leaf & Spine

Subscriptions2
  • Premium Monthly7 Days trial$0.991 Month
  • Premium Yearly7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time9
  • Teal Stripes$0.79
  • Teal Labels$0.99
  • Teal Hearts$0.99
Show 6 more
  • Teal Duotone$0.99
  • Teal Diamonds$1.49
  • Teal Stars$1.49
  • Teal Leaves$1.49
  • Teal Spiral$1.99
  • Premium Unlock$14.99
None

Afterglow

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Leaf & Spine free?
Leaf & Spine is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Afterglow free?
Afterglow is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Leaf & Spine or Afterglow?
Afterglow is rated higher. Leaf & Spine averages 4.3 out of 5 from 7 ratings, while Afterglow averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do Leaf & Spine or Afterglow have ads?
Neither Leaf & Spine nor Afterglow shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Leaf & Spine or Afterglow?
Leaf & Spine ships an update every 2 weeks, and Afterglow every 6 days. Most recently, Leaf & Spine was updated on October 25, 2026 and Afterglow on October 24, 2026.

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