Comparison

Grim Reader vs Rowa

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

Head to head
About

Grim Reader

Organize and enrich your personal library of e-books, comics, and audiobooks. This app allows you to manage your collection locally or via your own servers, adding details like covers and author information. Enjoy a seamless reading and listening experience across all your content.

Highlights
  • Library management for e-books, comics, and audiobooks
  • Enrich library with online book and author data
  • Supports local files and personal servers (WebDAV, OPDS)
  • Cross-device reading and listening progress tracking
  • Organize by author, series, and genre
  • Mark favorites
Features
Read full description

Your books. Your library. Your way. Privacy By Design. Made in the EU. Grim Reader is a modern reader and library manager for e-books, comics and audiobooks. Keep your collection on your device, connect to your own servers, and turn even a simple collection of files into a rich, beautifully organised library. A library that feels alive Browse your collection by books, authors, series and more. See covers, reading progress and detailed information at a glance, continue where you left off, mark favourites and quickly find what you want to read next. Grim Reader is designed for both iPhone and iPad, with an interface that adapts to the device you are using. Enrich your books Missing a cover, description or other information? Grim Reader can help enrich your library using online book and author sources. Depending on the available information, Grim Reader can help you find and add details such as: • Covers and book descriptions • Authors and author information • Series information • Publisher and publication details • ISBN and other identifiers • Genres, categories and tags • Additional book metadata You remain in control and can review and edit your library information. More than e-books Grim Reader brings different types of reading together in one library: • Read e-books • Browse and read comics • Listen to audiobooks • Keep track of reading progress • Continue reading or listening across your library • Organise books by author and series • Mark books and authors as favourites Your files, your servers You don’t need to hand your library over to a commercial book platform. Grim Reader can work with books stored locally and supports personal libraries through WebDAV and OPDS, as well as the optional Grimmory server. This makes Grim Reader equally useful for a small collection on your iPhone or iPad and for a large self-hosted library. Made for readers Grim Reader focuses on your books rather than a store. There are no books to sell you and no ecosystem you need to buy into. Build the library you want, enrich it, organise it and enjoy reading it. Grim Reader — your library belongs to you.

About

Rowa

Features
Read full description

Rowa is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by OpenWrt, AdGuard Home, Tailscale, GL.iNet or Telegram. Rowa turns your own router into something you can actually see and steer, from your phone. WHAT YOU CAN DO • See every device on the network, grouped by how it connects and under the name it announces for itself — what it is, and how much it is pulling right now. • Cut the internet for one device with a tap, and give it back the same way. • Deny a device the router altogether when cutting the internet is not enough: nothing forwarded, no address handed out. • Schedule those cuts by day and hour. Useful for a child's tablet at bedtime. • Block websites for one device only, with rules pinned to its hardware address. • See how much data went out today, or over 7, 30, 90 or 365 days, counted on the router itself. • Measure the line itself: three seconds each way against the nearest speed test server. • Change Wi-Fi names and passwords, quickly or in full detail, and read every change before it is applied. • Watch the mobile link on a router with a SIM: signal graded on RSRP, SINR and RSRQ, band, carrier, data used — and read or send SIM messages. • Set up a new router’s connection in a few steps; see every uplink at once, including one ready but not in use; switch an Ethernet port between WAN and LAN. • Get told when the router drops off the network or loses mains power, when the battery runs low, when an unknown device joins, when a text arrives or when the public address changes — in a Telegram bot of your own that also answers questions and can reboot the router, and, if you unlock it, on your phone with Rowa closed, which also covers a router gone quiet. • Block ads for the whole house through AdGuard Home, if your router has it. • Combine several uplinks — balance traffic across fibre, mobile and Wi-Fi repeater, reorder their priority, or fail over between them. • Restart the router on a schedule. • See real CPU use on every core and which processes are eating it — named in plain language — and end one from the app. • Set the fan on a router that has one: quiet, medium, maximum, or left to the kernel. • Reach the router from anywhere over Tailscale, with no Tailscale app to install. FREE, AND STAYING FREE Router status, the device list, cutting and restoring internet by hand, data usage, the process list, fan control, Wi-Fi, alerts while the app is open, Telegram alerts, SIM messages and the diagnostics report cost nothing, now or later. Seven advanced features are free for 30 days, then a single purchase unlocks them for good — no subscription, nothing to renew: • Scheduled cuts by the hour • Ad blocking (needs AdGuard Home) • Per-device website blocking • Multi-WAN load balancing • Automatic cache trimming • Scheduled router reboots • Alerts with the app closed WHAT YOU NEED • A router running OpenWrt 22.03 or newer (or GL.iNet firmware 4.x) that you administer; 21.02 works once nftables is installed. It can route for the whole house, or just serve Wi-Fi as an access point. • The first pairing has to happen on the same Wi-Fi as the router: Rowa shows you the router's certificate fingerprint and trusts only that one afterwards. • Rowa installs a small helper on the router the first time, with your permission and your own SSH password. There is a button to remove it again. PRIVACY Your router password and SSH key never leave your phone — they live in the Keychain and go only to your own router. There are no ads, no analytics, and no account to create. The diagnostics report is never sent anywhere on its own: you see all of it first and choose who gets it. Rowa works with routers running OpenWrt (openwrt.org), and with the optional packages AdGuard Home (adguard.com) and Tailscale (tailscale.com) where they are installed. Telegram (telegram.org) is a service the router sends alerts to, not a package on it. Those are separate projects and services; Rowa is not one of them.

Screenshots

Grim Reader3 screens
Rowa4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Grim Reader at none against Rowa's 1. Rowa's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 3 weeks) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and device support 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. Rowa sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Grim Reader asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Grim Reader ships an update every 3 weeks, Rowa every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and September 15, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
Grim Reader versus Rowa: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterGrim ReaderRowa
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (3 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings3 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS17.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size15 MB48 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperMaarten de KreijLong Hoang Tuan

In-app purchases

None

Grim Reader

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Rowa

One-time1
  • Rowa Full Unlock$9.99

Questions

Is Grim Reader free?
Grim Reader is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Rowa free?
Rowa is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Grim Reader or Rowa have ads?
Neither Grim Reader nor Rowa shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Grim Reader or Rowa?
Grim Reader ships an update every 3 weeks, and Rowa every 2 days. Most recently, Grim Reader was updated on September 24, 2026 and Rowa on September 15, 2026.

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