Comparison

Leaf & Spine vs Reader King

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

Reader King

Features
Read full description

Reader King is a local-first eBook reader for organizing, importing and reading personal files on iPhone, iPad and Mac. It does not require registration, sign-in or a cloud account. Your books, reading progress, bookmarks and reading history stay in the app sandbox on your device. You can import common document and eBook files from Files, Finder or system sharing, including PDF, EPUB, TXT, Markdown, RTF, MOBI, AZW, AZW3, CBZ, FB2 and HTML. Reader King copies imported files into its local sandbox so access does not depend on temporary external file permissions. The built-in reader focuses on PDF reading in this release, with automatic page progress, search, outline, bookmarks, page jump, single-page and double-page layouts, and reader preferences. Other supported eBook formats can be imported, archived, downloaded and managed locally. Reader King also supports network subscriptions. Add a direct eBook download link, or provide a JSON, CSV or plain text manifest to parse and download multiple books into your shelf. Downloads only happen from links you enter. Highlights: - Local import from iPhone, iPad and Mac. - PDF reading with progress, search, outline, bookmarks and page jump. - Direct link downloads and batch manifest subscriptions. - Responsive shelf layouts for phone, tablet and desktop. - Mac support for Finder import, drag and drop, menu shortcuts and Settings. - No account, no third-party analytics and no uploaded reading records.

Screenshots

Leaf & Spine4 screens
Reader King4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Leaf & Spine at every 2 weeks against Reader King's every 4 weeks. Leaf & Spine also leads on iOS requirement (15.5 vs 18.6). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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 and Reader King sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Leaf & Spine ships an update every 2 weeks, Reader King every 4 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Leaf & Spine versus Reader King: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLeaf & SpineReader King
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.3 (7 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews54.5% of reviews—
Number of ratings7 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeks — betterEvery 4 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS15.5 — better18.6
Further details — not scored
Size119 MB6 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAqeeb Rizwanlecoo

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
1 purchases

Reader King

One-time1
  • Reader King Enhanced$0.99

Questions

Is Leaf & Spine free?
Leaf & Spine is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Reader King free?
Reader King is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Leaf & Spine or Reader King have ads?
Neither Leaf & Spine nor Reader King shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Leaf & Spine or Reader King?
Leaf & Spine ships an update every 2 weeks, and Reader King every 4 weeks. Most recently, Leaf & Spine was updated on October 25, 2026 and Reader King on October 28, 2026.

Other comparisons