Banana Viewer vs TransRead
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Banana Viewer
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Banana is a fast, private PDF viewer and editor for iPhone and iPad. View, edit, mark up and organise your PDFs — all offline, all on your device. Nothing is uploaded. There is no account to make and no cloud to sign into. Banana works exactly the same with the network off. FREE FOREVER • PDF viewer — smooth scrolling, pinch to zoom, thumbnails and a page grid • Search inside a document, with highlighted results, and Go to Page • Rotate, reorder, delete and extract pages • Merge several PDFs into one, or split one into many • Compress a PDF down to a size you can actually email • Add page numbers, or copy a page out as an image • Sign documents — draw your signature, place it, save it for reuse • Notes — add timestamped notes to any document • Password protection — lock with open and owner passwords • Group share — select several PDFs and send them by AirDrop, Mail or Messages • Open from anywhere — Banana appears in the Open In menu across iOS • Undo and redo any change, from the buttons beside the back arrow • Revert to the original — discard every edit and go back to the file as you imported it • Export the original untouched, whatever you have done to your copy Signatures and notes are written into the PDF itself, so they open the same way in Preview, Acrobat or anything else. ON iPAD AS WELL • Split View with side-by-side PDF comparison • Highlight, underline and strike through text WHAT COSTS MONEY Four things. Everything above stays free. • Document Scanner — camera scanning with edge detection and multi-page capture, $0.99 • Fill Forms — fill in form fields and keep the result, $0.99 • Text to PDF — comes with the unlock • Version history — save a version by name and restore it later; comes with the unlock Open a document and all four are free to try for 30 days. After that, one $2.99 purchase unlocks all of them, forever. It is a Universal Purchase: buy it on your iPhone and it is already unlocked on your iPad and on the Mac app, and the other way round. Already bought the Document Scanner or Fill Forms? You pay only the difference to move up to the full unlock, and you keep what you bought. No subscriptions. Ever. PRIVACY • 100% offline — documents never leave your device • No analytics, no tracking, no cloud uploads • No account required 14 LANGUAGES English, Deutsch, Français, 简体中文, 日本語, Español, 한국어, Português (Portugal), Português (Brasil), Italiano, Nederlands, Türkçe, Polski, Русский Also available on Mac, with more tools, workspaces, and split view with PDF comparison. The unlock covers both.
TransRead
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TransRead is a browser extension built for full-text comprehension. Unlike standard translators that process text paragraph by paragraph—often leading to lost context and semantic errors—Transread analyzes the entire page as a whole. This ensures that every sentence is translated with professional accuracy and logical consistency. Key Features: - Context-Aware Translation: Understands the connection between paragraphs to prevent translation errors caused by fragmented text. - Smart Layout: Delivers a clean, bilingual reading experience optimized for long articles, research papers, and eBooks. - Native Integration: Designed exclusively for Safari for a fast, seamless, and lightweight browsing experience. Privacy Policy: https://www.taosoftinc.com/privacy Terms of Service: https://www.taosoftinc.com/terms support:https://www.taosoftinc.com/support
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: TransRead at none against Banana Viewer's 13. TransRead also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence, 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
Both are free to download. Banana Viewer sells 12 one-off in-app purchases. TransRead asks for nothing beyond the download.
Banana Viewer ships an update every 5 weeks, TransRead every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on October 28, 2026.
| Parameter | Banana Viewer | TransRead |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Frank Pimenta | Tao Soft Inc. |
In-app purchases
Banana Viewer
- Upgrade to Everything$0.99
- English2 variants$0.99
- Filling Form Feature$0.99
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- Upgrade to Everything$1.99
- Crop and Flatten feature$1.99
- Annotate Feature$1.99
- Redact Feature$1.99
- OCR feature$1.99
- batch processing feature$1.99
- Unlock Everything$2.99
- Password protection feature$4.99
- Full Version$4.99
TransRead
No in-app purchases









