PHD Helper vs Scollr
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side β with what reviewers say about each.
PHD Helper
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PhD life is a lot: deadlines, reading lists, writing targets, supervisor meetings, and endless admin. PhD Helper is a completely free app designed to help you manage your research journey in one calm, organised place. Built by a PhD student for PhD students, PhD Helper helps you plan your timeline, capture what youβre reading, track your writing, and keep all the little tasks and notes from slipping through the cracks. Key features PhD Roadmap: Enter your start and target finish dates and get an auto-generated timeline. Customise it with tasks, track progress, see if youβre ahead/behind, and use a countdown to stay motivated. Share with your supervisor: Export your roadmap or share it through the app so your supervisor can view it. Reading Library: Add papers and documents, tag whatβs useful, take notes, and keep your sources organised. Automatic Harvard referencing: Generate Harvard references automatically and export a reference list. Writing Tracker: Time your writing sessions, add time manually if you forgot, and view stats like your top writing days and streaks. To-Dos (PhD admin included): Capture university tasks and classify them so you always know what they relate to. Brain Dump: Save ideas, paper titles, supervisor notes and more. Add images/screenshots, and capture voice notes with transcription. Profile & data control: Stay in control of your data and delete your account when youβre done. Pricing Free. No subscription required. If you want a clearer plan, a cleaner reading workflow, and a simple way to track your writing β PhD Helper is here to help.
Scollr
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Scollr is a personalized feed for discovering research papers from journals, preprint servers, and academic repositories. Follow the topics, authors, and journals that matter to you. Scollr learns from the signals you give it - what you follow, save, and read - to build a research feed that fits your interests. PERSONALIZED RESEARCH FEED See papers shaped by your topics, authors, journals, bookmarks, and reading signals. Two researchers in the same field can get meaningfully different feeds based on what they care about. FOLLOW TOPICS, AUTHORS, AND JOURNALS Track broad fields, niche topics, specific researchers, journals, and preprint sources. Refine your follows anytime as your projects change. PLAIN-LANGUAGE PAPER SUMMARIES Many papers include short TLDR summaries so you can quickly decide what deserves a deeper read. SAVE PAPERS TO COLLECTIONS Organize papers by project, theme, class, lab meeting, or read-later list. Keep collections private or share them publicly. DISCUSS RESEARCH Comment on papers, ask questions, and point other readers to related work. FOLLOWING, DISCOVER, AND LATEST Use Following for personalized papers, Discover for broader recommendations, and Latest for new arrivals in your fields. BUILT FOR SCHOLARS AND CURIOUS READERS Scollr is for PhD students, researchers, clinicians, engineers, students, and anyone who wants a better way to keep up with academic papers. Scollr indexes millions of papers from OpenAlex across disciplines, journals, preprints, and repositories. New papers are added daily. Free to use. No paywall. No ads.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Scollr at none against PHD Helper's 1. Scollr also leads on device support. On price and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price Β· Rating Β· Positive reviews Β· Number of ratings Β· Update frequency Β· Ads Β· In-app purchases Β· Monetization Β· Best chart rank Β· Devices Β· Requires iOS
Both are free to download. PHD Helper sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Scollr asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | PHD Helper | Scollr |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | β | Fortnightly |
| Ads | β | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No β better |
| Devices | β | iPhone, iPad, iPod β better |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 | 15.1 |
| Further details β not scored | ||
| Size | 41 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lauren Gilman | Chris Colpitts |
In-app purchases
PHD Helper
- Buy Me A Coffee$4.99
Scollr
No in-app purchases









