JustReader vs Persimmon Reader
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
JustReader
A free, native reader for Mac, iPad, and iPhone that supports various file formats. It offers a customizable reading experience with multiple themes, fonts, and scroll options, plus on-device translation and no ads or tracking.
- Supports EPUB, FB2, MOBI, HTML, TXT, RTF, DOC/DOCX
- Customizable themes, typefaces, and palettes
- Continuous scroll, paged, or two-page spread
- On-device translation
- Chapter navigation and in-book search
- No ads or tracking
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JustReader is a free, native reader for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Open a book file and read it the way it should look — one book at a time, no library to manage, no account, no ads. OPENS WHAT YOU HAVE EPUB, FB2, MOBI, AZW3, PDF, Markdown, HTML, TXT, RTF and DOC/DOCX (on the Mac), including inside ZIP and RAR archives. Chapters, footnotes and pictures come through, and the app works out the encoding by itself. Manga and comics in CBZ and CBR open as two-page spreads, and Japanese manga reads right to left. Chinese and Japanese books open too, old encodings like GB18030 and Shift_JIS included. Furigana sits above the kanji. THE FULL READING EXPERIENCE Nine typefaces and 41 themes across five palettes, plus Typewriter and Terminal. Continuous scroll, paged, or two-page spread. Real hyphenation in Latin, Cyrillic, CJK, Arabic, and Greek. Read Aloud with word-by-word highlighting. On-device translation — nothing leaves your device. Chapter navigation, in-book search, an image gallery, and a fullscreen mode with multiple clock styles. PRIVATE BY DEFAULT No analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, no ads. Files stay on your device. WANT YOUR LIBRARY TO FOLLOW YOU? ContinuousReader is the full version: an iCloud-synced library with your reading position to the exact paragraph on every device, bookmarks and notes, OPDS catalogs, reading statistics, folders, and more. Free.
Persimmon Reader
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Persimmon is a simple, focused ebook reader built around one thing: reading. The interface stays out of your way and leaves as much room as possible for the book. No annotations, no AI features, no clutter—just open a book and read. Page turns are carefully tuned to feel responsive and natural. They follow your finger, stay smooth through fast repeated swipes, and are designed for people who read quickly. You can also rapidly flip through pages, a bit like thumbing backward through a paperback. Your library and reading progress can sync for free through your own cloud storage, so there’s no separate Persimmon account to create. Just use your existing cloud drive and keep reading across devices. Your books and reading data stay on your device unless you choose to sync them. Even then, they go directly to your own cloud drive.
Screenshots
Verdict
JustReader and Persimmon Reader are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 weeks. Both last shipped on October 29, 2026.
| Parameter | JustReader | Persimmon Reader |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 21 MB | 77 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Oleksii Koshkin | Qihang Yang |
Customer experience
JustReader
Persimmon Reader
In-app purchases
JustReader
No in-app purchases
Persimmon Reader
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is JustReader free?
Is Persimmon Reader free?
Do JustReader or Persimmon Reader have ads?
Which is updated more often, JustReader or Persimmon Reader?
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