BaseSpace vs Paperpile
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
BaseSpace
Monitor your sequencing Runs and Analyses from anywhere. Receive push notifications for completion and track the status of your projects with key metrics and charts.
- Real-time progress monitoring
- Push notifications for completion
- Status tracking for Runs and Analyses
- View metrics and SAV charts
- Detailed analysis status
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Easily monitor the progress of your BaseSpace sequencing Runs and Analyses from anywhere. - Get push notifications the moment they are complete - Monitor the status of Runs including metrics & SAV charts - View the detailed status of Analyses
Paperpile
Organize and manage your research papers effortlessly. Collect, read, and annotate PDFs from millions of academic journals. Beat paper chaos with a tidy digital library.
- Search millions of academic papers
- Collect PDFs with one tap
- Organize with folders and labels
- Read and annotate PDFs
- Highlight and add notes
- Browser integration for saving
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Get a head start for you research and finally beat the paper chaos on your desk. With Paperpile you have all your research PDFs in one place — nice and tidy. Paperpile makes it easier than ever to collect, manage, read, and annotate your papers. FIND & COLLECT - Search millions of papers from 20,000+ academic journals right in the app. - Add new papers to your collection with one tap and the PDF will be downloaded automatically. - Save directly from your browser to your Paperpile library - User your university's off-campus proxy access to get restricted content behind paywalls. MANAGE & ORGANIZE - Bring structure to your library with folders and subfolders - Organize your library visually with colored labels - Mark important papers with stars. - Search your library to find the paper you need fast. READ & ANNOTATE - Read like on paper with a fast and slick PDF viewer experience - Highlight important sections in different colors - Add notes and never forget an important idea. - Add hand-drawn annotations - with your fingers or your Apple Pencil The Paperpile App requires a Paperpile account.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Paperpile at 72% against BaseSpace's 25%. Paperpile also leads on rating (4.5 vs 2.7) and ratings volume (129 vs 12). BaseSpace's advantage is iOS requirement (8.0 vs 12.0). 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Paperpile holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 2.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Paperpile has 129 ratings behind it against 12, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 25% of BaseSpace's written reviews are positive against 72% of Paperpile's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on September 16, 2026 and September 21, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | BaseSpace | Paperpile |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 2.7 (12 ratings) | 4.5 (129 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 25.0% of reviews | 71.6% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 12 | 129 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 8.0 — better | 12.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 11 MB | 242 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Illumina, Inc. | Paperpile LLC |
Customer experience
BaseSpace
Paperpile
Bugs and requests
BaseSpace
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Paperpile
Reported bugs
12 issues- App crashes frequently on iPad and iOS devices
- Highlighting disappears when revisiting papers
- Overlapping annotations delete together when removing one
- Sync failures requiring logout/login cycles
- Annotations not syncing between iPad and web versions
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- PDF metadata recognition failures when adding papers
- Settings reset when returning to previously edited files
- App incompatible with older iOS versions (iOS 12)
- Login authentication errors with university accounts
- App crashes without reliable internet connection
- Search functionality broken after updates
- Annotations not saving/loading on iOS 14.4.2
Requested features
17 requests- Dark mode implementation
- Edit citation metadata on mobile app
- Change PDF file functionality
- Save to downloads feature
- Dictionary/lookup function for reading
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- Cite while you write feature
- BibTeX export capability
- Ability to upload PDFs directly from mobile app
- Support for Safari and other browsers
- Desktop application version
- Shared library access in mobile app
- Advanced sorting options (by title, author, date)
- Custom color options for annotations
- Paste images into PDFs
- Shape snapping for drawing tools
- University email authentication
- Paper rating system beyond stars
In-app purchases
BaseSpace
No in-app purchases
Paperpile
No in-app purchases
