Comparison

Bare Reader vs Linea Reader

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

Head to head
About

Bare Reader

Features
Read full description

Bare Reader is a calm, distraction-free way to read your EPUB books on iPhone. No accounts. No ads. No sync nags. No feed pulling you away from the page. Just your library and your books — stored privately on your device. Less than 5MB in size, Bare Reader is as lightweight as it gets. READING, THE WAY IT SHOULD FEEL Open a book and everything else disappears. A clean, paginated reading view lets you move through pages the way that feels natural to you: swipe, tap the edges, or use the on-screen page buttons. PRIVATE BY DESIGN LeafReader works entirely offline. Your books and your reading never leave your device: there's no account to create and no data collected. What you read is nobody's business but yours. Bring your own EPUBs and enjoy a reader that gets out of the way. Bare Reader is completely free to use. If you enjoy the app, you can optionally purchase a one-time license to remove the occasional support reminder. Purchasing doesn't unlock anything or change how the app works; it's simply a way to support ongoing development.

About

Linea Reader

Features
Read full description

Linea is a calm reading workspace for difficult material. Import PDFs, EPUBs, MOBI files, DOCX documents, Markdown, images, scans, and web pages. Read with thoughtful typography, highlight and annotate passages, listen from your current position, and ask questions without losing your place. Your library stays organized around the work in front of you. Resume where you stopped, move between chapters, and keep your reading progress together. Features: • Import documents and URLs • Read PDFs, ebooks, Markdown, and more • Highlight passages and add notes • Listen from your current reading position • Ask document-aware questions while reading or listening • Keep reading progress and annotations together • Choose from four reading palettes AI and your data: Linea uses AI only when you ask it to. It does not run your documents through AI in the background. Eligible signed-in Linea accounts can use Linea's rate-limited managed Ask without a personal API key: the question and relevant document context are processed by Linea, which may call an upstream model. For a user-owned cloud provider, Linea sends your question and relevant document context directly from your device to that provider using the API key you supplied; Linea's developer does not receive those direct-to-provider requests. When available and selected, on-device Apple Intelligence requests stay on your device. Linea is built for sustained attention: fewer distractions, better context, and a clear path back to the thread.

Screenshots

Bare Reader4 screens
Linea Reader3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Linea Reader at none against Bare Reader's 1. Bare Reader's advantage is update cadence (every 5 days vs monthly) and iOS requirement (16.6 vs 26.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. Bare Reader sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Linea Reader asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Bare Reader ships an update every 5 days, Linea Reader monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 9, 2026 and September 26, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences Ā· 3 level
Bare Reader versus Linea Reader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBare ReaderLinea Reader
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 5 days — betterMonthly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.6 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size3 MB16 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperNathaniel Rayestu AbdulrachmanArach Tchoupani

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Bare Reader

One-time1
  • Support Development$1.99
None

Linea Reader

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Bare Reader free?
Bare Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Linea Reader free?
Linea Reader is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Bare Reader or Linea Reader have ads?
Neither Bare Reader nor Linea Reader shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Bare Reader or Linea Reader?
Bare Reader ships an update every 5 days, and Linea Reader monthly. Most recently, Bare Reader was updated on October 9, 2026 and Linea Reader on September 26, 2026.

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