Comparison

ShelfMark vs RookReader

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

Head to head
About

ShelfMark

Features
Read full description

A quiet reading tracker for people who love books more than apps. ShelfMark keeps your reading life in one calm, paper-warm place. Log the page you are on, keep a streak alive, and save the lines worth keeping. No account, no feed, no noise. MADE FOR READERS - Three shelves: to be read, reading, and finished. Move a book with a tap. - Quick page updates with percent complete, pages a day, and time left at your current pace. - A daily page goal beside your grace-day reading streak. - Search your library, filter by genre, and sort by recency, title, author, or progress. - A quote wall with the book, page number, and an optional photo of the page. - A yearly reading goal and Wrapped view with pages, streaks, genres, fastest reads, and monthly activity. - A private Home and Lock Screen widget for your current book, pages today, goal, and streak. - A complete local backup, additive restore, and Delete All My Data control. FREE AND LIFETIME ShelfMark is free for up to 3 books and 5 saved quotes. Reading progress, streaks, daily and yearly goals, search, backup, restore, deletion, and the widget stay useful without paying. A single Lifetime purchase unlocks unlimited books and quotes, the 30-day Reading Pulse, finish-date pace plans, full Wrapped statistics, and the one-page Reading Year PDF. It is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Existing records always remain readable and editable. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your reading library stays locally on your iPhone or iPad. No account, no analytics, and no tracking. Widget content uses Apple's private on-device App Group storage and is marked privacy sensitive.

About

RookReader

Features
Read full description

You don't just read. You disappear into books. RookReader is built for that. Beautiful typography, immersive themes, nothing standing between you and the story. EVERY BOOK. ONE APP. EPUBs, PDFs, comics, web serials, whatever format it arrives in. Pull them from Files, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Calibre-Web or any free catalog. One shelf for everything you own, sorted into collections and smart shelves that fill themselves. Don't own it yet? Scan the barcode or paste a link and it waits on your Want to read list until the file is real. Out of books? Over 20,000 audiobooks are already inside, free. MEET ROOK AI Forgot who that character is? Lost the thread three chapters back? Just ask. Rook AI has read every page you have and not one page more. Zero spoilers, ever. It catches you up, explains what just happened, and still remembers the character introduced 200 chapters ago. Bring your own key (Claude, OpenAI or any compatible provider) so your books stay between you and your provider. READING THAT FEELS LIKE READING • Eight reader themes, from crisp white to warm sepia to true black • Your font, size, spacing and margins, saved as profiles you switch in a tap. Import your own typefaces too • Turn pages by swipe, scroll or tap, wherever your thumb already rests • Auto-scroll that flows at your pace, so you never lift a finger • Bionic reading bolds the start of each word so your eyes glide instead of grind • Speed reading feeds you one word at a time when you want to move • Ambient rain, cafe hum and cinematic calm playing under the page • Vertical text for CJK, and clean-up for curly quotes and ALL-CAPS shouting "WAIT, WHERE WAS THAT SCENE?" You remember the moment, not the page. Describe it, like "they argued on the rooftop in the rain", and RookReader jumps you straight to it. Can't recall which book? Search your whole library at once. LISTEN INSTEAD Have any book read aloud, or bring your own audiobooks in. Real chapters, sleep timer, lock screen controls. Own both formats? Switch between reading and listening and pick up in the same spot. KEEP EVERY LINE YOU LOVED Highlight it, note it, tag it, and actually keep it. Your Notebook searches every highlight and note across your whole library at once. Export to Markdown or Readwise, or turn a line into a quote card worth sharing. Switching from another reader? Bring your highlights with you. EVERY WORD, EVERY NAME Hard words get a plain-English hint right above them, no flow broken. Look one up enough times and it lands in your vocabulary deck for review. Offline dictionary and translation are built in. Too many invented names to track? Write your own glossary entry once and RookReader reminds you every time it reappears. ONE ACCOUNT. EVERY DEVICE. iPhone, iPad, and every other device you read on all pull from the same shelf. Your library, collections and reading stats follow you everywhere, free — and so does your place in one book, so you can watch sync work before you pay for it. Go Pro and your exact page, every highlight and every note sync too, on every book, quietly in the background. KOReader users can sync positions as well. A READING HABIT YOU CAN SEE Streaks, minutes, books finished, and a year in reading worth showing off. Commit to a finish-by date and get tonight's page count. Close the last page of a book and the next one in the series is already waiting. OWN IT. DON'T RENT IT. Pay once. That's it, forever. No subscription creeping onto your card. No features locked away next year. Just a reading app that's actually yours, for less than a coffee. Privacy: https://www.cosmiklore.com/rookreader/privacy Audiobooks are public-domain recordings from LibriVox and the Internet Archive. Web serials are read from each publisher's own RSS or Atom feed.

Screenshots

ShelfMark4 screens
RookReader4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: RookReader at 15.5 against ShelfMark's 18.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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. ShelfMark sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and RookReader sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ShelfMark ships an update weekly, RookReader every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 3, 2026 and October 21, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference Ā· 5 level
ShelfMark versus RookReader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterShelfMarkRookReader
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS18.015.5 — better
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB68 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperInnovaLabWorksAnsh Sharma

In-app purchases

1 purchases

ShelfMark

One-time1
  • ShelfMark Lifetime$12.99
4 purchases

RookReader

One-time4
  • 60 Rook AI credits$2.99
  • 180 Rook AI credits$7.99
  • RookReader Pro$8.99
Show 1 more
  • 500 Rook AI credits$19.99

Questions

Is ShelfMark free?
ShelfMark is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is RookReader free?
RookReader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do ShelfMark or RookReader have ads?
Neither ShelfMark nor RookReader shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ShelfMark or RookReader?
ShelfMark ships an update weekly, and RookReader every 5 days. Most recently, ShelfMark was updated on October 3, 2026 and RookReader on October 21, 2026.

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