Comparison

SlowRead vs Casebound

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

Head to head
About

SlowRead

This app helps you track your reading, manage your TBR list, and journal your reading experience with a visually appealing digital bookshelf. It also facilitates book club discussions and provides insightful reading statistics. Enjoy a free trial to explore all features before subscribing.

Highlights
  • Customizable digital bookshelf
  • TBR list and reading journal
  • Book club creation and discussion
  • Monthly and yearly reading wrap-ups
  • Reading streak and challenge tracking
  • Import from other reading apps
  • Library loan tracking
Features
Read full description

SlowRead is the book tracker with a bookshelf you will want to show off. Every book you read stands on your own shelf, with its real spine and cover. Keep your TBR, your reading journal and your reading log in one place, and share your bookshelf on BookTok and Instagram. YOUR BOOKSHELF • Every book stands on the shelf as a spine or as a cover. • Photograph your own copy to show its real spine, cover and sprayed edges, or use a photo another reader already shared. • Arrange your books by hand, lay them flat in piles and keep a series together. • Decorate with plants, candles, lights and more, and pick a theme for the wall and the wood. • Share a picture of your bookcase to your Stories on TikTok or Instagram. • Get a public profile at slowreadapp.com/@you with the bookcases you choose to show. BOOK CLUBS • Create a club or join one and read the same book together. • Talk in a channel for each part of the book, so nobody spoils what comes next. • Hide the parts of a message that are spoilers. • Vote on the club's next book. YOUR READING YEAR • Monthly and yearly wrap ups: cards to swipe through and share. • Your reader type, worked out from the books you finish. • A yearly reading challenge, and your year next to the last one. • Stats for pages, time and books, your reading speed and your top genres. • A reading streak, with past days you can fill in by hand. TRACKING WITHOUT EFFORT • Search millions of books or scan the barcode to add one in seconds. • Import your library from Goodreads, The StoryGraph, Bookmory, Fable or Libib. • Paperback, ebook and audiobook, even for the same book. • Track library loans with the due date and a reminder the day before. • Series grouped together, with your progress through each one. • Notes, quotes scanned from the page with your camera, and characters with a portrait and their relationships. • Half star ratings, rereads and did not finish. WIDGETS • Your bookshelf, what you are reading, your streak, your challenge and a daily quote on your Home Screen and Lock Screen. READING SESSIONS • Start a timed session from any book and log the page where you stop. • If you want, block the apps that distract you while you read, with Screen Time. All features described above require a subscription. A free trial is included, so you can try everything before paying. TERMS: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Casebound

Organize your physical and digital book collection with detailed tracking of ownership, formats, and reading progress. Visualize your library on a customizable bookshelf and track reading sessions with detailed statistics. Capture new books quickly via barcode or cover scanning.

Highlights
  • Separate library and custom lists
  • Track multiple formats per book
  • Customizable bookshelf visualization
  • Session-based reading time and page tracking
  • Barcode and cover scanning for fast entry
  • Book club and lending features
Read full description

For serious readers and library builders. People with real shelves who want to know exactly what they own, track their reading honestly, and enjoy the collection they have built. LIBRARY AND LISTS, FINALLY SEPARATE Most book apps blend your shelves, your reading state, and your custom lists into one jumble. When you own 500 books across overlapping shelves, you cannot cleanly answer "what do I actually own?" Casebound keeps your library, a real catalogue with ownership, format, and reading status, separate from your lists, which are tags you layer on top. A book lives in your library once. Lists are zero or many tags applied to it. ONE BOOK, EVERY FORMAT Own the hardcover. Listening to the audiobook. Halfway through the Kindle. That is one library entry with three format records, each tracked separately. Ownership lives on the format, so you can own the hardcover and borrow the audiobook from the library. Stats stay honest: hours for audio, pages for physical, locations or percent for ebooks. No lossy conversion between them. Books finished counts any format. A SHELF WORTH SHOWING Your library is not just a spreadsheet. Arrange it on a real bookshelf, in a floating or framed case, with spine widths that scale to actual page counts. Stack books the way you do at home. Photograph your real spines and see them on the shelf. Earn decor as you read and place it where you like. SESSIONS THAT COUNT Track reading time and pages session by session. Pause, resume, or log a session you forgot to start. See weekly, monthly, yearly, and lifetime stats, plus a reading calendar built from your book covers and a year in review when the year closes. Goals are measured in pages and time, never in book counts. CAPTURE A LIBRARY FAST Scan a barcode and Casebound looks up the metadata automatically. Point the camera at a cover when there is no barcode. Pair a Bluetooth scanner and add a whole shelf in one sitting. Quick add drops a book in with a single tap. Found a wrong page count? Fix it once and the correction improves the shared record for everyone. READ WITH OTHER PEOPLE, OR DO NOT Follow readers whose taste you trust and see what they are finishing. Rate and review books, and read reviews from everyone else. Start or join a book club with real discussion threads. Lend a book and track who has it and how far along they are. Send a book straight to a friend when you know it is for them. None of it is mandatory. Privacy is per book, there is no public profile by default, and you decide what, if anything, is visible. FREE IS USEFUL. PRO IS POWER. Free includes your unlimited library on every device you sign in on, session tracking, streaks and goals, ISBN and cover scanning, reviews, following, lending, friend recommendations, import and export, per-book privacy, and up to 5 custom lists. Pro ($4.99/month or $29.99/year) unlocks unlimited custom lists, advanced stats and insights, unlimited book clubs, the customizable bookshelf, and the Sepia theme. OPINIONATED Casebound measures reading in pages and hours, not in books finished, because book-count goals quietly push people toward shorter books. Your library and your lists stay separate structures, because collapsing them is what broke every app that came before. If those choices are not for you, this is not the right app, and that is okay. Casebound is a product of Pixel Master Technologies LLC. Contact: support@pixel-master.com Casebound Pro is an auto-renewing subscription. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase and renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the current period ends. Manage or cancel in your Apple Account settings. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://casebound.co/privacy

Screenshots

SlowRead4 screens
Casebound4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is review sentiment: Casebound at 100% against SlowRead's 22%. Casebound also leads on ads (none vs shown) and rating (5.0 vs 4.6). SlowRead's advantage is ratings volume (810 vs 2) and chart position (#30 vs unranked). On price, in-app purchases, monetization model 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

Both are free to download. SlowRead sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $8.39 per 7 days and Casebound sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Casebound holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SlowRead has 810 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 22% of SlowRead's written reviews are positive against 100% of Casebound's.

Scorecard6 real differences · 5 level
SlowRead versus Casebound: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSlowReadCasebound
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.6 (810 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews21.6% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings810 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 3 days—
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFreemium
Best chart rank#30 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — betteriPhone
Requires iOS17.616.4 — better
Further details — not scored
Size133 MB87 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperAdrian Martinez MorenoPixel Master Technologies LLC

Customer experience

SlowRead

All ratings810 ratings
Positive91.2%
Neutral1.9%
Negative6.9%
Written reviews116 reviews
Positive21.6%
Neutral6.0%
Negative72.4%

Casebound

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

4 purchases

SlowRead

Subscriptions3
  • Premium Weekly$8.397 Days
  • Premium Annual Offer$32.991 Year
  • Premium Annual3 Days trial$44.991 Year
One-time1
  • Lifetime access to Slowread$149.99
2 purchases

Casebound

Subscriptions2
  • Casebound Pro Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Casebound Pro Annual$29.991 Year

Questions

Is SlowRead free?
SlowRead is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Casebound free?
Casebound is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, SlowRead or Casebound?
Casebound is rated higher. SlowRead averages 4.6 out of 5 from 810 ratings, while Casebound averages 5.0 from 2 ratings.
Do SlowRead or Casebound have ads?
SlowRead shows ads; Casebound does not.

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