Comparison

Readio vs Vesper

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

Head to head
About

Readio

Transform web articles, PDFs, and documents into audio for a personalized listening experience. Seamlessly add content via links, files, or RSS feeds. Enjoy high-quality text-to-speech and robust playback controls.

Highlights
  • On-device text-to-speech
  • Adjustable playback speed
  • CarPlay integration
  • Import PDFs and documents
  • Customizable themes and fonts
  • Smart playlist creation
Features
Read full description

Readio turns the articles, PDFs, and documents you read into audio you can listen to - like a personal podcast feed built from anything on the web. Share a link from Safari, paste a URL, drop in a PDF, or subscribe to an RSS feed. Built entirely on-device. Runs on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Silicon Mac. No accounts. No tracking. No subscription. One price, yours forever. LISTEN ANYWHERE * High-quality on-device text-to-speech with a full Siri voice picker * Pitch-preserving 0.5x-2x playback - no chipmunk effect * Skip forward / back, jump by paragraph, scrub the timeline * Resumes where you left off, even across reboots * Auto-advance respects your progress - finished articles let the next queued one resume; Skip Next restarts fresh * Adjustable pause between articles, plus a sleep timer with "stop at end of article" PODCASTS & AUDIO * Add a podcast episode by RSS feed, direct audio link, episode page, or a local audio file * Plays right alongside your articles - same player, queue, CarPlay, and Lock Screen controls * Filter your Library to just audio, with a mic badge marking episodes WORKS WITH YOUR LIFE * CarPlay with pre-rendered audio for stutter-free highway driving * Articles render to disk in the background so wireless playback uses a real audio file * Lock screen, Control Center, Bluetooth, AirPods, and car-stereo controls all wired up * Background audio that survives phone calls without auto-resuming * Share extension - send any URL from any app into your queue A PLAYER THAT FEELS RIGHT * Tap the mini player and the artwork flies up into the full player with a matched-geometry morph * Album-style zoom into playlists and detail views * Animated waveform on whichever article is currently playing * Twelve accent palettes and iOS 26 Liquid Glass chrome throughout CLEAN READER VIEW * Five themes (Auto, Light, Sepia, Dark, Black) and eight reading-optimized fonts * Drop-cap opener, wider iPad column, sticky header with a live "X min left" pill * Tap to immerse - toolbars hide for distraction-free reading; one tap brings them back * Long-press any sentence to share it as a beautifully-rendered quote image * Read and listen interchangeably - your position syncs across both modes DOCUMENTS, NOT JUST ARTICLES * Import PDFs, HTML files, plain text, and Markdown * Read in the native viewer or extracted into the reader and listened to * Stored on-device - never sent to a server * Open from Files, AirDrop, or any share sheet KEEP THE WHOLE PAGE * Save full-page snapshots - code blocks, images, and layout intact * Available offline once captured, viewable from inside the article * Per-article default view, or turn it on globally SMART PLAYLISTS * Today, Quick Listens, Long Reads, Recently Played, Unstarted — auto-curated for the time you have * Build your own with a rule editor: by source, by length, by recency * Updates live as your library changes; tap to listen to the whole set ORGANIZE * Continue Listening carousel - pick up where you stopped on every in-progress article * Playlists with custom gradients and SF Symbol icons * Drag-to-reorder queue, swipe-to-remove, Edit button so handles are always visible * Long-press in Library, Search, or Up Next for one-tap Play, Start Over, Add to Queue, Move to Top, Archive, Delete * Auto-archive completed articles - restorable from Archive any time * Search with sort and instant keyboard dismiss * iCloud sync across iPhone and iPad RSS FEEDS * Subscribe to any feed - articles import automatically and are ready to listen * Smart deduplication so the same article never queues twice * "Restored from Archive" indicator when a re-shared article is already in your library PRIVATE BY DESIGN * Articles fetched directly from the source over HTTPS * Nothing leaves your device except the article URL itself * No analytics, no telemetry, no third-party SDKs * One-time payment - no subscription, no ads, ever REQUIRES iOS 17 OR LATER. Designed for iPhone and iPad. Compatible with Apple Silicon Mac.

About

Vesper

Features
Read full description

How did today feel? That's the only question Vesper ever asks. No streaks to protect. No scores to chase. No guilt for the days you miss. Vesper doesn’t gamify your feelings or compete for your attention, it asks once each evening, then gets out of your way. What’s left, over time, is an honest, quiet record of your life worth actually looking back on. WHAT VESPER DOES Every evening, Vesper asks how today felt: Good, Meh or Hard. Add a line if you want to remember why. Your answer becomes one colored dot on a simple monthly grid. Miss a day and nothing happens, no penalty, no broken chain to mourn. Vesper never judges your day. It just holds it. Tap any past day to see what you wrote. Once you’ve kept it up for six months, your memory trail unlocks: every note you’ve ever written, in one place, in your own words. VESPER PLUS For anyone who wants to see the bigger picture, Vesper Plus reveals patterns that only show up over time: • Side by Side, comparing recent months at a glance • Shape of Your Weeks, seeing which days tend to feel harder • Quietest & Fullest, the months that stood apart • Yearly Portrait, one full year, at a glance • On This Day, a quiet echo of what today looked like a month or a year ago Plus also includes: • iCloud sync, so your record follows you across every device • An Apple Watch app, for checking in from your wrist • A home screen widget, a glance at your month without opening the app • Curated themes: Chalk, Marigold, and Ink • Anytime check-in, if evenings aren't when your day actually ends Vesper Plus is available as a monthly or annual subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. YOUR DATA STAYS YOURS With Vesper Plus, your record syncs privately through your own iCloud account. Nothing is shared, sold, or used to train anything. Some days are good. Some are hard. Most are somewhere in between. Vesper is a quiet place to keep track of all of them. For details on subscriptions and purchases, see Apple's Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Readio4 screens
Vesper4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Vesper at Free against Readio's $4.99. Readio's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3) and update cadence (every 10 days vs every 6 weeks). On ads, device support and iOS requirement 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Vesper is free to download; Readio costs $4.99 up front. Vesper sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. Readio asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Readio ships an update every 10 days, Vesper every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Readio versus Vesper: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterReadioVesper
Price$4.99Free — better
Rating5.0 (2 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 10 days — betterEvery 6 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, Apple Watch
Requires iOS18.017.6 — better
Further details — not scored
Size25 MB9 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJaswanth ReddyCalvin Ng

In-app purchases

None

Readio

No in-app purchases

3 purchases

Vesper

Subscriptions2
  • Vesper Plus Monthly$1.991 Month
  • Vesper Plus Annual$14.991 Year
One-time1
  • Vesper Plus Lifetime$49.99

Questions

Is Readio free?
Readio costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Vesper free?
Vesper is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Readio or Vesper have ads?
Neither Readio nor Vesper shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Readio or Vesper?
Readio ships an update every 10 days, and Vesper every 6 weeks. Most recently, Readio was updated on October 31, 2026 and Vesper on October 25, 2026.

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