Comparison

ScrollWizard vs Gloss

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

ScrollWizard

Features
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Your books deserve a better home. ScrollWizard is a full EPUB and PDF reader for people who care how they read -- not just what. Tune the type to taste -- font, size, line height, spacing, reading width, margins, alignment, hyphenation -- and override any of it per book. Speed-read with a built-in focus engine. No subscription, ever. Pay once, own it forever. READING, YOUR WAY -- 12 fonts including OpenDyslexic, with size, line height, and letter and word spacing -- Text alignment, paragraph indent and spacing, hyphenation -- Reading Width control sets your line length and centres the column on wide screens, plus top and bottom margins -- 5 built-in themes (Light, Dark, Sepia, Solarized Dark, Nord) plus unlimited custom themes -- Page-turn animations: slide, fade, or none -- Per-book overrides -- some books just read better in a different font -- A Lock Screen Live Activity shows your reading progress at a glance FOCUS READING (RSVP SPEED READER) -- Words appear one at a time at the pace you set, from 100 to 1500 WPM -- A focus mode: fewer distractions, one word at a time, your pace -- Adjustable word highlighting and a tunable pause curve -- Sentence navigation: swipe back or forward with full context -- Eases back up to speed after a pause, so you never lose the thread SPLIT READER (iPad) -- Two books side by side with a draggable divider -- Paragraph-proportional sync keeps both sides aligned -- Reference pane: open footnotes or an appendix beside the text without losing your place VOCABULARY & ANNOTATIONS -- Select any word for an instant dictionary definition -- Save words with their sentence and book attached, then export them to a flashcard file (Anki, TSV, or JSON) -- Highlight in 5 colors, with optional notes -- Export every annotation to Markdown, Obsidian, Notion, Logseq, or JSON -- no caps, no publisher limits -- Full-text search within any book YOUR LIBRARY -- Smart collections that sort themselves by your rules -- Browse free books from Project Gutenberg, ManyBooks, and Feedbooks, plus Standard Ebooks for Patrons Circle members -- Connect your own Calibre server -- iCloud sync for books and reading position, in a folder you can actually see -- Cover grid with sorting, filtering, metadata editing, and batch actions READING STATISTICS -- Daily reading charts with 7- and 30-day views, goals, pages, and time -- See how far you have come -- not how far you have to go No ads. No analytics. No feed pulling you somewhere else. No account to make. Just you and the book. The base reader is completely free. Advanced Wizard Mode -- the RSVP Speed Reader, the iPad Split Reader, and custom font import -- is a one-time purchase. No subscription. No recurring charges. One wizard, one price, forever. Reflowable EPUB and PDF. App available in 12 languages.

About

Gloss

Features
Read full description

Gloss turns anything you read into a conversation with its author. Highlight any passage โ€” in a book, a PDF, an article you saved, or your own notes โ€” and a margin note appears, explaining it more deeply in a voice informed by the author's style (or a thoughtful guide when there's no single author). Ask a follow-up and the note answers, staying right beside the text. The AI lives in the margins, never as a chat window โ€” it reads like a thoughtful annotation, beside the text. Read anything: โ€ข EPUB books (DRM-free) โ€” your files, Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, author-direct. (Kindle and Apple Books DRM files aren't supported.) โ€ข PDFs โ€” papers, manuals, anything you've saved. โ€ข Articles โ€” paste a link and Gloss pulls the readable text to annotate. โ€ข Your notes โ€” write or paste text and gloss it like a book. โ€ข Select text โ†’ Gloss, Go deeper, Define, or Ask โ€” the note streams into the margin (a side column on iPad, an anchored card on iPhone). โ€ข Distraction-free reading โ€” three themes (light, sepia, dark), adjustable font, size, spacing, and margins. โ€ข Your highlights and notes are saved on your device and travel with each document. Reading is free forever. Your first 10 glosses are free; Gloss Unlimited ($5.99/month or $49.99/year) unlocks unlimited notes. Your files stay on your device โ€” only the highlighted passage and a small amount of surrounding text are sent to generate a note. Author "voices" are an AI interpretation, not the real author, and may be inaccurate. Gloss Unlimited is an auto-renewable subscription: $5.99/month or $49.99/year. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at purchase confirmation. The subscription renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; manage or cancel anytime in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://gloss.nyrai.ai/terms.html Privacy Policy: https://gloss.nyrai.ai/privacy.html

Screenshots

ScrollWizard4 screens
Gloss4 screens

Verdict

The call

ScrollWizard and Gloss are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters โ€” price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them โ€” neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. ScrollWizard sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Gloss sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $5.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
ScrollWizard versus Gloss: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterScrollWizardGloss
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksโ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.2 โ€” better17.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size50 MB13 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperMerijn DouwesNYRAI LLC

In-app purchases

1 purchases

ScrollWizard

One-time1
  • Advanced Wizard Mode$4.99
2 purchases

Gloss

Subscriptions2
  • Gloss Monthly$5.991 Month
  • Gloss Yearly$49.991 Year

Questions

Is ScrollWizard free?
ScrollWizard is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Gloss free?
Gloss is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do ScrollWizard or Gloss have ads?
Neither ScrollWizard nor Gloss shows ads.

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