Comparison

BookWrite vs Bookhand

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

Head to head
About

BookWrite

This app transforms your writing experience by allowing you to craft books with customizable aesthetics, from cover design to page style. It offers tools for organizing stories, drawing, illustrating, and exporting your work in various formats. It also includes features to help you maintain writing habits and ensure your work remains private.

Highlights
  • Customizable book aesthetics (cover, pages, pen)
  • Locked diary with Face ID/passcode
  • Drawing and illustration tools
  • Story organization (plot board, story bible)
  • Export to PDF, EPUB, TXT, audiobook
  • Writing goal tracking and prompts
  • Privacy-focused with no ads or tracking
Features
Read full description

Step through the door of an old bookshop and write. Open ScribeMe and you're standing at the door of a bookshop. Push it open, step inside, and your library is waiting on the shelf - every book you've written, standing spine-out, in whatever order you like. MAKE A BOOK, NOT A DOCUMENT Choose how a book feels before you write a word: hardcover, leather, cloth or paperback; the colour of the boards; cream, white or parchment pages; and the pen in your hand - fountain pen, ballpoint, pencil or marker, each with its own ink and weight of line. Pick a typeface with real character. Every cover gets its own grain, so no two books on your shelf look alike. Tall, square and wide picture-book shapes are all here. A DIARY THAT LOCKS Any book can be locked with Face ID or your passcode - a private diary that stays private. Night pages give you dark paper and light ink for writing after bedtime. WRITE, DRAW, ILLUSTRATE Real styling: bold, italics, centred lines, scene breaks. Draw straight onto the page with Apple Pencil or a fingertip, and add photo illustrations wherever you like. Draw your own cover, too. ORGANIZE A REAL STORY Chapters with a contents sheet. A plot board that lays your pages out at a glance. A story bible that interviews your characters and remembers your places. Story templates - three acts, hero's journey, fairy tale, mystery - that scaffold the chapters for you. Find and replace, and search across the whole shelf. TAKE IT OFF THE DEVICE Export a typeset PDF with cover, dedication, contents and illustration plates. Print a fold-at-home booklet. Make an EPUB ebook, a plain-text file, or an audiobook read aloud. Back up your whole library to a single file and carry it to another device. KEEP GOING Daily goals, streaks, milestones and writing sprints. A home-screen widget with your shelf and your streak. An evening writing prompt if you want one. Read a finished book with a real page curl, or have it read to you. YOURS, AND PRIVATE No account, no sign-up, no ads, no tracking, no subscriptions, and nothing is ever collected. Your books live on your device. Turn on iCloud sync (beta) and they sync through your own private iCloud - still nobody else's. Automatic version snapshots mean nothing you write is ever really lost. Everything in ScribeMe is included, free. It always will be. Made for iPhone and iPad.

About

Bookhand

Features
Read full description

Bookhand is a free app for writing little books: journals, notes, ideas, short stories, poetry, philosophical treatises or anything else you feel like writing. The idea is that your words live on something like actual paper. Your text is typeset onto real pages with proper margins and page numbers, the pages curl as you turn them, and every notebook gets its own paper size, typefaces, colors and a cover you design yourself. READING A notebook opens in Page Mode, laid out the way it would be set on printed paper, from pocket A6 up to A4. There's also a full-screen e-reader mode with the same page-turning, an outline for jumping to a chapter or section, in-book search, and a page grid for finding your place visually. WRITING Edit Mode is a full-screen, distraction-free editor for your award-winning novel, thrilling memoir or truly revolutionary shopping list, whichever the case may be. Paragraphs can be headings, body text or block quotes; add images and control how they sit on the page. A rearrange mode lets you move, copy and cut whole paragraphs at once. MAKE IT YOURS Choose from seventeen carefully picked typefaces, set your paper size and margins, pick paper and ink colors, style the page numbers, then design the cover: board color, patterns, foil stamping, frames, flourishes and your own lettering. YOUR WORDS ARE YOURS Notebooks are stored on your device. There are no accounts, no servers and no database, and your text goes nowhere unless you want it to. Export to PDF, EPUB, Markdown or plain text, or as a .bookhand file for handing a notebook to someone else (or storing a backup for yourself). Import works too: bring in Markdown, plain text or EPUB. Notebooks can also be locked or hidden behind a PIN. FREE, REALLY Bookhand is made by one person as a personal project, so it's free, with no ads, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions and no upsell pop-ups. I just wanted an app where it's fun to sit down and write little books. I imagine you do too, so here we are.

Screenshots

BookWrite2 screens
Bookhand4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Bookhand at weekly against BookWrite's every 3 weeks. BookWrite's advantage is iOS requirement (18.1 vs 26.5). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

BookWrite ships an update every 3 weeks, Bookhand weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
BookWrite versus Bookhand: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBookWriteBookhand
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.1 — better26.5
Further details — not scored
Size5 MB17 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperRichard WheatleyBruno Takahashi Carvalhas de Oliveira

In-app purchases

None

BookWrite

No in-app purchases

None

Bookhand

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is BookWrite free?
BookWrite is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Bookhand free?
Bookhand is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do BookWrite or Bookhand have ads?
Neither BookWrite nor Bookhand shows ads.
Which is updated more often, BookWrite or Bookhand?
BookWrite ships an update every 3 weeks, and Bookhand weekly. Most recently, BookWrite was updated on October 8, 2026 and Bookhand on October 5, 2026.

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