Cleave for EPUB vs Embertale
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Cleave for EPUB
This app helps organize your EPUB book collection by automatically cleaning and enriching metadata like titles, authors, and descriptions. It allows for custom renaming and directory structuring, all processed on your device for maximum privacy.
- Auto-clean EPUB metadata
- Web enrichment for book details
- Customizable cover selection
- Remove source-watermark pages
- Rename files by template
- Organize into directory structures
- Share sheet integration
- Batch processing
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Cleave is an on-device EPUB metadata editor for iPhone and iPad. Drop a book in, and it cleans up the messy title, author, and publisher fields in seconds — no account, no uploads, no tracking. Designed for readers who sideload books onto a Kindle, a Boox, a Palma, a Kobo, or into KOReader and Calibre. If you've ever had a library full of files named "The_Book_(z-lib.org)_(1).epub" with title "The Book (z-lib.org) - Copy", Cleave fixes them. FEATURES • Auto-clean on load Strips source-site watermarks from title, author, and publisher. Normalizes author-name order ("Austen, Jane" → "Jane Austen" or vice versa). Cleans file junk like "(1)", " - copy", " final". All rules are configurable. • Web enrichment Fills missing description, publisher, date, ISBN, series, and subjects from Apple Books, Open Library, and optionally Google Books. Anonymous queries — no account, no identifier sent. • Cover picker Fetches candidate covers from Apple Books and Open Library in one tap. Pick one, revert anytime, or use your own image from Photos. • Source-watermark page stripping Detects and removes the one-page "downloaded from" ad pages that some redistributors inject. • Rename by template Rebuild filenames from {author}, {title}, {series}, {seriesIndex}, {year}. Presets: Default, Calibre, Year-suffix, Series-first, Title-only. • Directory structure Save directly into a Calibre-style Author/ subfolder if your reader expects it. • Share sheet integration Share any EPUB from Files, Safari, Mail, or another app — Cleave picks it up, cleans it, and hands it back for saving. • Batch support Drop a bunch of files at once. Cleave walks you through them one by one with a running counter. PRIVACY Cleave does not collect any personal data. There is no account, no backend, no analytics, and no advertising SDK. The only network requests are anonymous metadata/cover queries to three public APIs (Apple Books, Open Library, Google Books) — none of which receive any user identifier. File processing happens entirely on your device. Your books never leave your iPhone or iPad. For power users: a diagnostics screen shows the share-extension log, the App Group inbox, and all settings. Everything is editable. SUPPORT Questions, bug reports, feature requests: cleave-whidbey.vercel.app/support Privacy policy: cleave-whidbey.vercel.app/privacy Cleave is designed by a small team who sideload books every week. If it saves you ten minutes a month, it's doing its job.
Embertale
This reading app learns your preferences to provide personalized book recommendations. Manage your reading list, discover new titles, and visualize your reading habits with insightful statistics. It offers an AI assistant for book-related queries and a private community feature.
- Personalized book recommendations
- AI reading assistant (Spark)
- Natural language book search
- TBR management and smart collections
- Reading statistics and visualizations
- Private or public community features
- Deep book insights and 10-dimensional reviews
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Embertale is the reading app that knows your taste. Track what you read, tame your TBR, and get recommendations that actually fit you. Free, no ads, and your data is never sold. BUILT AROUND YOUR TASTE Every book you log sharpens your reading profile. Embertale learns the genres, moods, and pacing you love, then recommends books with a clear reason for every pick. MEET SPARK, YOUR READING ASSISTANT Find personalized recommendations, sort out your TBR, or chat about any book without spoilers. Ask for "a cozy mystery under 300 pages", tell it to add all Harry Potter books to your shelf or the top 10 hottest romantasy, talk through an ending of a philosophical book, tell it how to organize your shelves or ask it to suggest an organization. Anything you can do manually in the app, Spark can do in a sentence. (Don't like AI? It's also easy to opt out!) SEARCH LIKE YOU TALK, OR BY VIBE "Astronaut stranded on Mars." "Fantasy about an epic heist." "Easy reads under 250 pages." "Cozy winter reads". Describe the book you want and Embertale finds it. Turn any search into a smart collection that keeps itself up to date as your library grows. A TBR YOU CAN ACTUALLY MANAGE Beautiful shelves and collections, smart collections that fill themselves from rules you describe in simple language, and series tracking that knows every volume, even the ones not released yet. Want to select your own cover or edition for a book? No problem! Audiobooks supported, of course. DISCOVER YOUR TBR Our discovery features allow you to find new and trending releases, or just browsing by genre (filtered by era if wanted), but we also allow you to uncover what's already there in your TBR. "If you are in the mood for more existential Sci-Fi, try this book from your TBR", "If you loved the plot twists at the end of X, try Y", 10 complete personalized recommendations from the depths of your TBR, based on what you already finished, refreshed daily. YOUR READING LIFE VISUALIZED Reading heatmaps, genre mix, pages per day, complexity breakdowns, a timeline of every book you've read, a calendar month breakdown of your reads. These are just some of the graphs we have. Set goals at your own pace and earn tiered achievements from bronze to platinum. We work on a reward basis, not punishment basis. Lost your streak? If you want, you can log a day in the past and restore it, we won't judge! LOVELY COMMUNITY, PRIVATE BY DEFAULT No leaderboards, and no public profile unless you turn one on. Follow friends if you like, or keep your reading life entirely to yourself. If you do follow your friends, you can track their reading activity in a beautiful feed. Want to highlight some shelves you are proud of? Let's do it. Want to showcase your full library, or hide anything? Also possible! Embertale lets you take full control over what you share. DEEP BOOK INSIGHTS Moods, accolades, reviews, a 10-dimensional review (worldbuilding, prose, emotional depth, narration, character growth, plot twists, pacing, and 2 tailored dimensions per book!), how familiar you are with this genre, a "feel & match" panel that lets you know whether this book would suit your known tastes or not and what to look out for, thematic and linguistic complexity, how long we expect you will need for this book based on your average velocity, books similar to this one, the list goes on. You can tag books with your own custom made tags as well. SWITCHING IS EASY Take a picture of your bookshelf or import your Goodreads or StoryGraph library in minutes, and export everything back whenever you want. We don't lock in your data, if you want to move somewhere else, that's fine. SO MUCH MORE There is so much more going on at Embertale that is too much to describe. We're crazy feature complete and deliver new features daily. Embertale is made by an indie team for the love of it. No ads, no data selling, no catch. We are not for profit. Don't like AI? It's easy to opt out.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Embertale at Free against Cleave for EPUB's $1.99. Cleave for EPUB's advantage is chart position (#73 vs unranked). On rating, review sentiment, ratings volume and ads 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
Embertale is free to download; Cleave for EPUB costs $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Cleave for EPUB against 5.0 for Embertale. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 5 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
| Parameter | Cleave for EPUB | Embertale |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 5 — better |
| Update frequency | — | Every 3 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #73 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 2 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Samuel Painter | Horjus IT Solutions BV |
Customer experience
Cleave for EPUB
Embertale
In-app purchases
Cleave for EPUB
No in-app purchases
Embertale
No in-app purchases









