Side by side
Only things you can check yourself by opening both apps.
Goodreads alternative
A place for your books that doesn't sell anything to you
Goodreads is where most of us started, and it holds an enormous amount of reading history. If you have started looking for somewhere else to keep yours, the reasons are usually the same three: the advertising, the account, and the feeling that the library you spent years building is not really yours.
BooksLove is built the other way round. There is no account to create, nothing is advertised to you, and your library lives on your own device and syncs through your own iCloud — a place we cannot read. You can take all of it back out in one tap, on any day, without paying anything.
| BooksLove | Goodreads | |
|---|---|---|
| Account required | No — the app opens straight into your library | Yes, an Amazon or Goodreads account |
| Advertising | None, and no advertising SDK in the app | Ad-supported |
| Where your library lives | On your device, synced through your own private iCloud | On Goodreads servers, owned by Amazon |
| Getting your data out | CSV and complete JSON, one tap, free, any time | CSV export from the website |
| Works offline | Yes — the library is on the device | Needs a connection for most things |
| Half-star ratings | Yes, 0.5 to 5 | Whole stars only |
| Book clubs and a friend feed | Not today | Yes, and a large community |
| Community reviews | Average rating and count only | Millions of written reviews |
Three things that change when you move
Nothing is being sold in the middle of your shelves
An ad-supported service has to fill space, and the space it fills is the page you came to read. BooksLove has no advertising and no advertising SDK, so there is nothing to place, nothing to target and no reason for anyone to profile what you read.
There is no account to lose, leak or be locked out of
No sign-up, no password, no profile. Your library is a file on your device that syncs through your own iCloud. Nothing about it exists on a server of ours, because we do not run one. That also means there is nothing of yours for us to hand over, sell or accidentally expose.
The door out is as wide as the door in
Export everything to a Goodreads-compatible CSV or a complete JSON file, free, at any moment, without a subscription. This is deliberate: the fear that a service will disappear in two years and take your reading history with it is a real reason people stay put. Being easy to leave is the only honest answer to it.
What BooksLove does not have
Written plainly, so nobody downloads it expecting something else.
- No book clubs and no friend feed. BooksLove is a personal reading tracker. If a social layer is ever built, it will be something you opt into.
- No database of written reviews. You see an average rating and how many people rated a book; the reviews themselves stay where they are.
- No giveaways, no author pages, no groups. None of that is planned.
- No Android and no web version. iPhone and iPad only, on iOS 17.6 or later.
If book clubs and the community are the reason you use Goodreads, keep using Goodreads. Plenty of people run both: the community over there, the private library over here. The import can be repeated any time, so nothing forces a choice today.
Bring your library over in one step
Shelves, ratings, dates and reviews come across from a Goodreads CSV. Re-import later and updates merge instead of duplicating.