ReadingRate vs Nous
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ReadingRate
This app helps you understand your reading habits through detailed analytics and AI-powered insights. Track your reading speed, difficulty preferences, and genre patterns to discover books that truly match your taste. Capture thoughts and quotes to build a personal literary archive.
- Personal reading analytics
- 9-dimension book difficulty scores
- Reading journal with voice capture
- AI-powered reading insights
- Data-driven book recommendations
- Reading time predictions
- Barcode book scanner
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How hard is this book, and how long will it take you? Every book in ReadingRate carries nine measured difficulty scores, each with a written reason, and a word count turned into hours at your reading speed. Look anything up before you commit a month of evenings to it. No account needed. FREE, FOREVER, NO CARD Import your reading history from Goodreads, StoryGraph, Readwise or Notion. Log every reading day, in the app, by Siri, or by telling ChatGPT or Claude. Keep your library, your journal and your quotes. Read difficulty scores and reading-time estimates on every book. Export all of it whenever you want. Nothing here runs out after a week. NINE MEASURED DIMENSIONS Four for how hard the prose is to parse: vocabulary complexity, syntactic complexity, abstraction level, information density. Five for how hard the meaning is to reach: narrative indirection, symbolic density, ironic distance, resolution withholding, structural complexity. Each one scored 0 to 100 for that specific book, each with a written reason. YOU READ THE BOOK WHEREVER YOU READ BOOKS Paper, Kindle, library copy, audiobook. ReadingRate is not where you read. It is where the reading is kept: what you finished, how long it took, and the lines you marked. LOGGING TAKES ONE TAP Tap the book and the page you reached. Or tell Siri. Or say it to ChatGPT or Claude and it lands here. No timer, and nothing to fill in while you are trying to read. YOUR READING JOURNAL Capture thoughts and connections as you read. Save a passage and it is anchored to its page for citation later. Build a record of your relationship with a book, for reviews, essays, or just remembering why it mattered. BARCODE AND SHELF SCANNING Add a book by scanning its barcode. Members can photograph a whole bookshelf and have it read the spines. APPLE WATCH AND WIDGETS Log pages and check progress from your wrist. Currently reading and reading pace on your home and lock screens. BROWSE AND DISCOVER Curated lists, prize winners, and thousands of books with full difficulty analysis. Free to explore without an account. WHAT A MEMBERSHIP ADDS Deep analysis of any book, the Insight Lab, the full Eras atlas and literary map, book clubs, thirty shelf scans a day, the WhatsApp bot, and asking Claude or ChatGPT about your own reading history. Putting your reading in is always free. A membership is for getting more back out.
Nous
This app helps you actively track your reading by taking notes, capturing highlights, and organizing your library. It offers features for reflection, goal setting, and seamless integration with other services to enhance your reading experience.
- Real-time reading notes and thoughts
- Book library organization
- Highlight capture via typing or OCR
- Reading session reflection and summary
- Goal setting and streak tracking
- Sync with Obsidian and Kindle
- Homescreen widgets
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TRACK READING THOUGHTS IN REAL TIME • Read actively by taking notes and thoughts during a session • Type or dictate your session book notes, and capture mid-session thoughts without breaking flow • Add highlights and book quotes by typing or scanning the book with OCR • Struggle to remember what you read? Actively recall previous reading sessions to enhance memory YOUR LIBRARY • Organize your books: includes TBR, Next, Reading, Finished, Paused, and Did Not Finish (DNF) • Search by title or author, scan an ISBN, or library import from other apps • Track print by pages, ebooks by percentage location, audiobooks by listening time • Categorize books with personal tags • Sync your library on iCloud — access on all your devices • Connect to Kindle for seamless highlight capture DON'T JUST RECORD — REFLECT • Each book has a session history so you can see progress over time • Finishing a book opens a reflection: rate it, write a summary or book review, and see your reading pace charted over time • Half-star ratings supported • Weekly, monthly, and yearly views show what you've actually read • Search highlights and session notes to look back on your thinking ENHANCE MOTIVATION AND REACH YOUR READING GOALS • Keep your daily streak going — or don't — streaks are optional • Set daily or yearly reading goals: build a consistent habit and hit yearly book challenges • Track your focus and energy levels over time • Homescreen widgets: streaks, yearly reading, and reading goal INTEGRATE AND EXPORT YOUR NOTES • Sync with Obsidian to upload book notes, session summaries, and highlights to your vault • Export sessions immediately after they occur • Save all your sessions and export as a whole book, all your notes and reflections • Backup and restore: make sure your notes are always safe. Includes optional iCloud backup Terms of Service: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Nous at 5.0 against ReadingRate's 3.0. On price, ratings volume, update cadence and ads 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. ReadingRate sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month and Nous sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Nous holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 1 respectively.
ReadingRate ships an update every 8 days, Nous weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 10, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | ReadingRate | Nous |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.0 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 8 days | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 45 MB | 31 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Simon Stawski | Caelan Mitchell |
Customer experience
ReadingRate
Nous
In-app purchases
ReadingRate
- Reader Monthly7 Days trial$9.991 Month
- Reader Yearly7 Days trial$99.991 Year
- Lifetime Membership$249.99
Nous
- Nous Plus — Monthly$3.991 Month
- Nous Plus — Yearly7 Days trial$29.991 Year









