Comparison

Leaf & Spine vs Sutra

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

Sutra

Organize and read all your eBooks and comics in one beautiful, calm reader. Connect to self-hosted libraries, explore online catalogs, and customize your reading experience with various display options. Enjoy seamless progress syncing across devices.

Highlights
  • Unified reader for EPUB, PDF, CBZ, MOBI, comics, and manga
  • Connect to Kavita, Komga, Calibre, and OPDS servers
  • Customizable reading experience (fonts, themes, layout)
  • Organized library with Series and Collection views
  • Progress and finished-book sync across devices
  • Offline reading support for comics
Features
Read full description

Sutra is a warm, thoughtful home for every book and comic you love. Bring together your self-hosted library, your manga, your classic EPUBs, and those “just one more chapter” reads in one beautifully calm reader. Connect Kavita, Komga, or Calibre; explore any OPDS catalogue; or discover a new favourite from Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks. READ YOUR WAY • Enjoy EPUB, PDF, CBZ, MOBI, fixed-layout comics, and manga in one place • Move through comics panel by panel, or take in the whole page • Read right-to-left manga and beautiful iPad two-page spreads • Make the page yours with fonts, text size, spacing, themes, auto-scroll, page turns, and Sutra-only brightness control A LIBRARY THAT FEELS LIKE HOME • Browse dedicated Series and Collection views, with Favorites always close by • Sort by Recently Read, Title, Author, or Date Added while staying in a familiar cover grid • Let Sutra recover missing Calibre series details and keep your library beautifully organised • Pick up where you left off with dependable progress and finished-book sync for Kavita and Komga BUILT FOR SELF-HOSTERS • Connect Kavita, Komga, Calibre, Grimmory, or another OPDS server • Stream comic pages from Kavita and Komga when available, or download for offline reading • Keep your highlights and reading progress with you across your Apple devices Sutra is free to enjoy for EPUB and PDF reading, with no ads and no subscription. Unlock unlimited CBZ, MOBI, and Komga reading once, and keep it forever.

Screenshots

Leaf & Spine4 screens
Sutra4 screens

Verdict

The call

Leaf & Spine and Sutra both sit at 4.4 stars, but that hides the real split: 73% of Sutra's written reviews are positive against 55% of Leaf & Spine's. Leaf & Spine's advantage is iOS requirement (15.5 vs 17.0). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Leaf & Spine sells 10 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month and Sutra sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.4 for Leaf & Spine against 4.3 for Sutra. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 18 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 55% of Leaf & Spine's written reviews are positive against 73% of Sutra's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Leaf & Spine ships an update every 2 weeks, Sutra every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 7, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Leaf & Spine versus Sutra: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLeaf & SpineSutra
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.4 (8 ratings) — better4.3 (18 ratings)
Positive reviews54.5% of reviews73.3% of reviews — better
Number of ratings818 — better
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksEvery 8 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemiumFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.5 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size119 MB42 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAqeeb RizwanKoustav Dasgupta

Customer experience

Leaf & Spine

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

Sutra

All ratings18 ratings
Positive77.8%
Neutral16.7%
Negative5.6%
Written reviews15 reviews
Positive73.3%
Neutral13.3%
Negative13.3%

In-app purchases

10 purchases

Leaf & Spine

Subscriptions2
  • Premium Monthly7 Days trial$0.991 Month
  • Premium Yearly7 Days trial$9.991 Year
One-time8
  • Teal Stripes$0.79
  • Teal Hearts$0.99
  • Teal Duotone$0.99
Show 5 more
  • Teal Diamonds$1.49
  • Teal Stars$1.49
  • Teal Leaves$1.49
  • Teal Spiral$1.99
  • Premium Unlock$14.99
4 purchases

Sutra

One-time4
  • Small Tip$1.99
  • Medium Tip$2.99
  • Large Tip$4.99
Show 1 more
  • Sutra Pro$6.99

Questions

Is Leaf & Spine free?
Leaf & Spine is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Sutra free?
Sutra is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Leaf & Spine or Sutra?
Leaf & Spine is rated higher. Leaf & Spine averages 4.4 out of 5 from 8 ratings, while Sutra averages 4.3 from 18 ratings.
Do Leaf & Spine or Sutra have ads?
Neither Leaf & Spine nor Sutra shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Leaf & Spine or Sutra?
Leaf & Spine ships an update every 2 weeks, and Sutra every 8 days. Most recently, Leaf & Spine was updated on October 31, 2026 and Sutra on November 7, 2026.

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