Comparison

ScrollWizard vs Bare Reader

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
Read full description

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

Bare Reader

Features
Read full description

Bare Reader is a calm, distraction-free way to read your EPUB books on iPhone. No accounts. No ads. No sync nags. No feed pulling you away from the page. Just your library and your books โ€” stored privately on your device. Less than 5MB in size, Bare Reader is as lightweight as it gets. READING, THE WAY IT SHOULD FEEL Open a book and everything else disappears. A clean, paginated reading view lets you move through pages the way that feels natural to you: swipe, tap the edges, or use the on-screen page buttons. PRIVATE BY DESIGN LeafReader works entirely offline. Your books and your reading never leave your device: there's no account to create and no data collected. What you read is nobody's business but yours. Bring your own EPUBs and enjoy a reader that gets out of the way. Bare Reader is completely free to use. If you enjoy the app, you can optionally purchase a one-time license to remove the occasional support reminder. Purchasing doesn't unlock anything or change how the app works; it's simply a way to support ongoing development.

Screenshots

ScrollWizard4 screens
Bare Reader4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Bare Reader at every 5 days against ScrollWizard's every 2 weeks. On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

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 Bare Reader sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ScrollWizard ships an update every 2 weeks, Bare Reader every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference ยท 5 level
ScrollWizard versus Bare Reader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterScrollWizardBare Reader
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksEvery 5 days โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.2 โ€” better16.6
Further details โ€” not scored
Size50 MB3 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMerijn DouwesNathaniel Rayestu Abdulrachman

In-app purchases

1 purchases

ScrollWizard

One-time1
  • Advanced Wizard Mode$4.99
1 purchases

Bare Reader

One-time1
  • Support Development$1.99

Questions

Is ScrollWizard free?
ScrollWizard is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Bare Reader free?
Bare Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do ScrollWizard or Bare Reader have ads?
Neither ScrollWizard nor Bare Reader shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ScrollWizard or Bare Reader?
ScrollWizard ships an update every 2 weeks, and Bare Reader every 5 days. Most recently, ScrollWizard was updated on October 7, 2026 and Bare Reader on October 9, 2026.

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