Bookends vs PDFGenius
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bookends
Manage your research references and PDFs on your mobile device. Search online databases, import metadata, annotate PDFs, and organize your library. Offers basic functionality for free with optional one-time purchase and yearly subscription for advanced features like cloud sync and unlimited imports.
- Search online reference databases
- Import metadata and PDFs
- PDF annotation and markup
- Barcode scanning for references
- Cloud sync across devices
- Share online libraries
- Create multiple libraries
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Bookends is the reference management app you've been looking for. The basic version offers: • Search online sites directly (arXiv, Google Books, Google Scholar, JSTOR, the Library of Congress, PubMed, PubMed Central, and Semantic Scholar) or use the built-in browser (EZProxy-compliant) to download reference metadata and PDFs (access privileges required). Searches can return a maximum of 20 references, and only 50 references can be stored in your personal database. • Use unique identifiers such as DOI, PMID, ISBN, or arXiv id to autofill references. • View the text of PDF annotations in a note stream, and create your own with our powerful PDF markup engine. • Barcode scanning, one per day. • And many more features designed to help you discover, organize, and use reference information. Standard, one-time purchase ($14.99): • No limit on searches or importing. Premium, yearly subscription ($14.99). Requires a Standard purchase. • Cloud sync with all your iOS devices and Bookends for Mac (separate purchase). • Share online libraries with colleagues. • Scan documents with Mellel Mobile*. • Create multiple libraries. • Unlimited barcode scanning. • Extract PDF annotations with deep links to annotations and text. • Convenient UI to add PDF notes to the library. • Automate your actions with Shortcuts. * iPad-only. Requires a Mellel Mobile Premium subscription. Subscription is for one year and has an auto-renew option. The subscription can be managed in iOS -> Settings > [your name] > Subscriptions. A subscription will renew if it isn't canceled at least 24 hours before the renewal date. If the subscription is not renewed, Premium will be disabled but Standard will continue to work. Terms of Service: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
PDFGenius
This app offers a comprehensive suite of tools for manipulating PDF documents. It allows users to combine, split, compress, convert PDFs to images, extract pages, and edit content like inserting, deleting, and reordering pages. Advanced features include password protection, page cropping, and text extraction.
- Combine multiple PDFs
- Split PDFs by various criteria
- Compress PDF file size
- Convert PDF to images (JPG, PNG, TIFF)
- Extract text from PDFs
- Edit pages (insert, delete, reorder, rotate, crop)
- Add/remove password security
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PDFGenius is an easy-to-use, intuitive and powerful PDF manipulation utility app that you will ever need. PDFGenius offer features like combining PDFs, splitting PDFs into multiple files, PDF compression to reduce file size, convert PDF into images, extract pages from a PDF to create another PDF and extract text from PDF document. * * * PDFGenius for Mac is also available on the Mac App Store. * * * PDF editing features that allows you to insert new pages from images and PDF files, delete, rotate and reorder pages within PDF. In addition, you can crop and divide PDF pages, remove links, modify metadata, add/remove password security. PDFGenius performs all manipulating operations on PDF by preserving contents (i.e. structure of the file, color profiles, fonts, links, bookmarks) without losing document’s integrity and does it very fast. ◆ MERGE : Combine multiple files into single PDF document. Alternate page merge supported. ◆ SPLIT : Split PDF into multiple PDF files. Five divide criteria along with file labelling options 1) Split by number of pages per file. 2) Split by file size. 3) Split by outline level. Use outline titles as PDF filenames. 4) Split by page size. 5) Split by comma separated page range. ◆ CONVERT: - Convert PDF into each page as images (JPG, PNG, TIFF). - Specify JPEG image quality, resolution and color model. - You can save converted images into Photos Album. - Include annotations control to enable display annotations into converted images. ◆ COMPRESSION: - Compress large image and graphics heavy PDF using extensive set of options. - Controls to change JPEG quality, color model, image resolution and Optimise graphics level to decrease the file size dramatically. New Optimize graphics option removes superfluous information to reduce vector graphics heavy PDF. - Inbuilt side-by-side preview to compare original and compressed PDF for iPad. ◆ COPY/PASTE PDF pages between PDF documents. You can duplicate selected pages within PDF. ◆ EXTRACT PAGES: Reuse selected pages from one PDF document to create new PDF document. - Open to extract each PDF page as separate PDF document. ◆ INSERT: Insert new pages into existing PDF by inserting images and pages from another PDF. - Tool to insert blank page. ◆ DELETE: Delete pages from PDF file. Tool to delete blank pages. ◆ PASSWORD SECURITY: - Add or remove password security with file restriction controls. ◆ PAGE BOXES: Set CropBox and other display box margins of the PDF pages. - Options to remove white margins. - Option to divide(cut) PDF pages horizontally and vertically. ◆ REMOVE LINKS: Remove annotations, internal links, external hyperlinks. ◆ PAGE SELECTION: Most helpful page selection variations to speed up page manipulations. ◆ ARRANGE, SHUFFLE, REORDER and ROTATE PAGES ◆ Modify PDF document METADATA. ◆ Extract plain text. Much more… PDF VIEWER: - Very powerful and fast PDF reader with fully selectable and searchable text contents. - Pinch out and Pinch in to ZoomIn and ZoomOut view. - Navigate within PDF using slide over thumbnail view, outlines and Go to page feature. ◆ TRANSFER AND SHARE FILES - You can share new generated files or archive multiple files into zip. You can send file(s) as Mail attachment, Open In… another app and Send to cloud storage. - Use Copy to iTunes to save and share files with your computer. - Fully supports iPad Drag & Drop feature across the app to transfer files and images between apps. Note: PDFGenius is standalone application running natively to manipulate PDF documents securely on your iOS device. *The free version allow you to open, view and work with PDF using various operations and manipulating tools. Get Premium to enable sharing of resultant PDFs, Images and text documents without any restrictions. Privacy Policy: http://rootrisetech.com/app-privacy-policy Terms of Use(EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Bookends at 4.7 against PDFGenius's 4.3. Bookends also leads on review sentiment (76% vs 63%) and update cadence (every 2 months vs every 4 months). PDFGenius's advantage is iOS requirement (15.6 vs 18.6). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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
Both are free to download. Bookends sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $14.99 per year and PDFGenius sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Bookends holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Bookends has 398 ratings behind it against 35, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 76% of Bookends's written reviews are positive against 63% of PDFGenius's.
Bookends ships an update every 2 months, PDFGenius every 4 months. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Bookends | PDFGenius |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (398 ratings) — better | 4.3 (35 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 76.4% of reviews — better | 62.5% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 398 — better | 35 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 4 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 114 MB | 12 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sonny Software, LLC | RootRise Technologies Pvt. Ltd. |
Customer experience
Bookends
PDFGenius
Bugs and requests
Bookends
Reported bugs
3 issues- Incompatibility with iCloud Optimized Storage
- Unreliable sync between desktop and mobile versions
- Occasional data loss or corruption
Requested features
4 requests- Nested folders and tags for better organization
- Automatic PDF metadata extraction
- Improved search and filtering capabilities
- Seamless integration with third-party services
PDFGenius
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Bookends
- Premium3 Months trial$14.991 Year
- Standard$14.99
PDFGenius
- Premium : Monthly Access$0.991 Month
- Premium : Yearly Access3 Days trial$6.991 Year
- Premium : Lifetime Access$9.99
Questions
Is Bookends free?
Is PDFGenius free?
Which has better reviews, Bookends or PDFGenius?
Do Bookends or PDFGenius have ads?
Which is updated more often, Bookends or PDFGenius?
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