Comparison

Highlit vs Athene Reader

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

Head to head
About

Highlit

Features
Read full description

Your Kindle and Kobo highlights, finally in one clean place. Highlit turns the messy My Clippings.txt from your Kindle and the KoboReader.sqlite database from your Kobo into a tidy, searchable library you'll actually enjoy opening. WHAT YOU CAN DO • Import in seconds: Kindle My Clippings.txt and Kobo KoboReader.sqlite. Duplicates are removed automatically. • Browse by book: every highlight is grouped under the book it came from. • Search everything: find that one quote across your whole library. • Random highlight: rediscover passages you forgot you saved. • Favorites: keep your best lines one tap away, and review only those at random. • Make it yours: add or edit highlights by hand and pick a color for each one. • Share as an image: choose the size and background color, then send it anywhere. FREE. NO ADS. NO ACCOUNT. Highlit is free, with no sign-up, no subscription and no ads. Your highlights stay on your device and the app works fully offline. They only leave your device when you choose to share them. WHO IT'S FOR Avid readers, students who take notes from books, and anyone who highlights on a Kindle or Kobo e-reader and wants to read those passages again. HOW TO IMPORT Connect your Kindle to a computer and copy "documents/My Clippings.txt", or copy "KoboReader.sqlite" from the ".kobo" folder on your Kobo. Then open the file in Highlit. Highlit is an independent app and is not affiliated with Amazon or Rakuten Kobo. Kindle is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. Kobo is a trademark of Rakuten Kobo Inc. --- By using Highlit, you agree to: - Privacy Policy: https://tomoi.app/highlit/privacy-policy - Terms of Service: https://tomoi.app/highlit/terms-of-service - EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Athene Reader

Organize and read your personal book collection, including EPUB, PDF, and MOBI formats. Features include customizable reading settings, note-taking, drawing on pages, and an AI-powered assistant for context-aware questions. Listen to your books with a natural-sounding text-to-speech engine.

Highlights
  • Import EPUB, PDF, MOBI, and more
  • Customizable reading experience
  • Highlighting and note-taking
  • Drawing and markup on PDFs
  • AI-powered page assistant
  • Text-to-speech for audiobooks
  • Calibre server integration
Features
Read full description

Athene is a reader for the books you already own. Bring your books from Files, from Mail, from your computer over Wi‑Fi, from a link, or from anywhere that can share a file, and they go on a shelf that looks like one. EPUB and PDF open as they are; MOBI, AZW3, Word, FB2, TXT and HTML files become books as they arrive. Free classics from Project Gutenberg are a tap away. If you keep your library on a calibre server, Athene browses that shelf too, from + in your Library — on your home network, or from anywhere through your own VPN such as Tailscale. THE PAGE Open a book and the app steps back. Just the page, on white, sepia or night paper, or paper in any colour you like, in the typeface and size you read best, including any Google Font. Highlight a passage, add a note, drop a bookmark, and find them all again under Marks. Select a passage in another language to translate it. The shelf itself follows the time of day — Morning, Sunset, Night — or stays on the one you pick. NOTES YOU CAN DRAW Type a note in the margin, or sketch in it. On a PDF, mark up the page itself with Apple Pencil. THE NOTEBOOK Every highlight, note and drawing from every book you read, in one place, with filters and search. Write what stayed with you after a chapter, a reading session or a whole book, typed or drawn; your reflections stay even if the book leaves your shelf. LISTEN Any book, read aloud in a warm, natural voice that runs entirely on your device, and keeps reading with the screen locked. PDFs too: Listen skips the running heads, page numbers and footnotes, reads scanned pages, and describes the pictures and tables as it reaches them. The voice is a one-time download of about 242 MB. A DICTIONARY Select a word to see what it means and how to say it. It is built in, and it works offline. ASK THE PAGE Tap the owl while you read and ask about what is in front of you. Who is she again? What did that word mean? What just happened? The Owl answers from the pages around where you are — this chapter at most, never the whole book, never your other books — and if the pages do not say, it tells you that instead of guessing. YOUR MODEL, YOUR CHOICE On a device with Apple Intelligence, the Owl thinks on the device and nothing you ask is sent anywhere. Or point it at your own Ollama server on your own network. Or bring a key from Claude, OpenRouter or OpenAI. Athene asks before the first question leaves the device, names the address it would send to, and remembers your answer. ON EVERY DEVICE Turn on iCloud Sync and your place, highlights, notes, drawings, collections and reading settings follow you between your iPhone and iPad. It goes only to your own private iCloud, and what you wrote is encrypted on your device first. With a calibre server, highlights go both ways: yours to your calibre library, and the ones you make in calibre's own reader to Athene. With KOReader on an e-reader, your books, your place, and your highlights, notes and bookmarks stay in step through a sync server of your own. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION Athene has no account, no analytics and no servers of its own. Your books, your notes and your questions stay on your device or go only where you have pointed them. The privacy policy says the same, in plain words. FREE Reading is free. No account, no subscription, no limit: the shelf, the reader, Listen, the dictionary, the Owl, the Notebook, iCloud Sync, calibre and KOReader, your highlights and notes. Nothing is locked. WHAT READERS SAY “The app works perfectly with my Calibre library.” (ZenoNow) “It was very simple to connect to my existing calibre website.” (linux0117) “I’d happily pay for Athene if it weren’t free.” (Momji_iphone) Athene requires iOS 26. The on-device Owl requires Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro and later, M-series iPad, iPad mini A17 Pro); on other devices the Owl works with your own Ollama server or an API key. Pictures in PDFs are described on iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence.

Screenshots

Highlit4 screens
Athene Reader4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Highlit at 15.0 against Athene Reader's 26.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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

Highlit ships an update every 2 days, Athene Reader daily. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
Highlit versus Athene Reader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHighlitAthene Reader
PriceFreeFree
Rating—4.6 (13 ratings) — better
Positive reviews—90.0% of reviews
Number of ratings—13 — better
Update frequencyEvery 2 daysDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size31 MB55 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperQuoc Truong PhuAditya Sreedhar

In-app purchases

None

Highlit

No in-app purchases

None

Athene Reader

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Highlit free?
Highlit is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Athene Reader free?
Athene Reader is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Highlit or Athene Reader have ads?
Neither Highlit nor Athene Reader shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Highlit or Athene Reader?
Highlit ships an update every 2 days, and Athene Reader daily. Most recently, Highlit was updated on October 8, 2026 and Athene Reader on November 1, 2026.

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