The Best Book Tracking App for iPhone (2026): 8 Apps Tested

TL;DR: Eight iPhone book trackers, eight different jobs. Reading more, not just logging more: booksense (our app, iOS only, and the reason we built it). Deepest stats and recommendations: The StoryGraph. Book clubs: Fable. Free forever with no Amazon: Hardcover. Solo timing: Bookly. A quiet private log: Bookmory. Widgets, Watch, and Shortcuts: Book Tracker. Biggest catalogue and most friends: Goodreads, still, whatever its app feels like. Two apps we tested and cut are named at the bottom, because knowing what not to install saves you a migration.

The iPhone is where most book tracking actually happens. It is the device in your hand when you close the cover, the one that scans the barcode in the shop, and the one that decides whether logging a session takes three seconds or thirty. So “best book tracking app” and “best book tracking app for iPhone” are not the same question. The second one cares about widgets, Live Activities, offline behaviour, iCloud, and whether the app feels like iOS or like a website in a wrapper.

This piece tests eight apps against that question. Every price below was read off the app’s own App Store listing in August 2026, and every feature claim links to the developer’s documentation or a named review. Prices and features change constantly in this category, so check on the day you install. If you want the wider, platform-agnostic version of this comparison, we keep it at the best book tracking apps of 2026; if you are specifically escaping Goodreads, start with our Goodreads alternatives roundup.

How we judged them

Four things, in this order.

1. Does it hold a real library? Statuses, DNF, ratings, reviews, custom shelves, a catalogue that can find your book.
2. Does it change your reading? A tracker that only records is a diary. Timers, streaks, goals, and accountability are what move the number of books finished.
3. Does it respect the iPhone? Widgets, Lock Screen, Shortcuts, Watch, offline use, and sensible sync.
4. Can you leave? Import in, export out. Any app that takes your Goodreads history and will not give it back has failed the only test that matters in five years.

Full disclosure before the table: booksense is our app. We have put it first for habit building because that is the one thing it is genuinely best at on iOS, and we have been specific below about the four or five places where you should install something else instead.

The comparison table

Two tables, because eight apps in one grid is unreadable. Both scroll sideways on a phone. Prices are US App Store, August 2026.

The basics

	booksense	StoryGraph	Fable	Hardcover	Bookly	Bookmory	Book Tracker	Goodreads
Price	Free; optional Elite	Free; Plus $4.99/mo, $49.99/yr	Free; Plus $5.99/mo, $49.99/yr	Free; Supporter $4.99/mo, $49.99/yr	Free (approx. 10-book cap); Pro $4.99/mo, $29.99/yr	Free with ads; Premium $3.49/mo, $30.99/yr	Free; Pro $15.99 once	Free, no in-app purchases
App Store rating	New and small	4.5 (3.5K)	4.8 (77K)	4.2 (58)	4.6 (60K)	4.8 (16K)	4.7 (6K)	4.8 (743K)
Also on	iOS only	Web, Android	Android, partial web	Web, Android	Android, iPad, Watch, Vision	Android	iPad, Mac, Watch	Web, Android
Statuses and DNF	Yes, plus custom shelves	Yes, including DNF	Yes, list based	Yes, four statuses incl. DNF	Yes	Yes, incl. “Gave Up”	Yes	Yes, DNF shelf added March 2026
Rating granularity	Stars	Quarter and half stars	Stars, plus spice rating	Half stars	Stars	Stars	Stars	Whole stars only
Goodreads CSV import	Yes, parsed on device	Yes, reportedly Plus only	Yes, CSV beta plus account import	Yes, plus StoryGraph and generic CSV	Added late 2025, rough	Yes, statuses assigned by hand	Yes, plus StoryGraph and others	N/A
Barcode scanner	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reading stats	Per-book charts, pace, streak history	Deepest in category	Recaps and reader summaries	Goals plus Year in Review	Speed, session infographics	Monthly and annual graphs, book spend	Stats and widgets	Basic, plus yearly challenge

Habit, social, and Apple integration

	booksense	StoryGraph	Fable	Hardcover	Bookly	Bookmory	Book Tracker	Goodreads
Live reading timer	Yes, core feature	No	No	No	Yes, core feature	Yes	Yes	No
Timed session log	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Streaks	Yes; Elite adds streak freeze and vacation mode	Yes	Daily streaks	No	Yes	Reading calendar	No	No
Goals	Books, pages, or minutes per period	Books, pages, or hours	Yearly and daily	Yearly	Daily, monthly, yearly	Daily and yearly	Yearly	Yearly challenge only
Notes and quotes	Page-anchored notes, shareable image cards, spaced review	Notes and reviews	Highlights and club posts	Reviews and lists	Quotes and word lists	Journal with OCR capture	Quotes	Notes and reviews
Social feed and follows	Yes: feed, follows, comments	Light	Yes, club feeds and threads	Yes, follows and For You feed	No	No, deliberately private	No	Yes, the biggest
Book clubs or group reads	Live reading tables, challenges, tournaments	Buddy reads, readalongs	Core feature, 100,000+ clubs	Lists and community	No	No	No	Groups, largely dormant
Leaderboards and leagues	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Leveling system	70-level reading journey	No	No	No	Achievement badges	No	No	No
Widgets, Watch, Shortcuts	No	No	No	No	Apple Watch app	No	Widgets, Live Activity, Controls, Watch, Shortcuts	No

Three things stand out from those grids. First, the timer split: booksense, Bookly, Bookmory, and Book Tracker track the sitting itself, while StoryGraph, Fable, Hardcover, and Goodreads only track the book. Second, the Apple gap: almost nobody has built serious iOS integration, and the one app that has is the smallest name on the list. Third, the incumbent has the ratings. Goodreads sits at 4.8 stars from 743,000 reviewers on the App Store, which is worth remembering the next time you read that everyone hates it. Plenty of people are perfectly happy.

1. booksense: best for actually reading more

Best for: iPhone readers whose problem is consistency, not cataloguing.

This is our app, so read this section with the appropriate squint. The honest positioning is that booksense is the only app on this list that puts the reading habit and the social layer in the same place. Bookly and Bookmory time your sessions but leave you alone with them. StoryGraph and Fable have communities but no stopwatch. booksense does both: a timer at the centre, every book accumulating a log of timed sessions and per-book stats, and then a feed, follows, comments, and competition on top.

Underneath sits a full tracker. A library with statuses and custom shelves, ratings and reviews, barcode scanning, category browsing, and book pages assembled from merged Google Books and Open Library data. Your Goodreads history comes with you: the CSV is parsed on your phone rather than uploaded to a server, it keeps your ratings, reviews, and read dates, and imported reads are backdated so a decade of history lands as history instead of flooding the feed.

The habit machinery is where the effort has gone. Reading streaks, with a streak freeze and vacation mode for Elite members so one bad week does not erase a year. Goals in books, pages, or minutes per period. Challenges, tournaments, leaderboards, and leagues. A 70-level reading journey that turns months of consistency into something you can see. And live reading tables, where you sit down and read in real time alongside other people, which is the closest thing to a study hall anyone has shipped in a reading app. Nothing else here has an equivalent. Notes are page-anchored, exportable as clean image cards you can share, and resurfaced later with spaced review, which is our answer to forgetting the book a month after finishing it. Readers have logged more than 480,000 minutes, finished over 12,000 timed sessions, and taken more than 16,000 notes so far. booksense is a free download on the App Store.

Honest limits. iOS only, which is the point of this article but a real wall if half your friends are on Android. No Home Screen widgets, no Apple Watch app, and no Live Activity yet, so Book Tracker beats us squarely on Apple integration. No Kindle sync exists. No mood tags or content warnings. And the community is young next to StoryGraph’s five million signups. If you want a web-browsable archive you can open on a laptop, install Hardcover or StoryGraph instead and we will happily point you at our migration guide. If the sentence “I keep meaning to read and then don’t” describes your year, that is the exact problem we built for, and the mechanics are explained here.

2. The StoryGraph: best stats and recommendations

Best for: readers who want data, mood-based discovery, and the most credible single replacement for Goodreads.

The StoryGraph is the strongest all-round tracker in the category and it is not especially close. Founded by Nadia Odunayo in 2019, it passed five million signups in January 2026 and its iOS app was a recipient of the 2025 App Store Awards, which is the only Apple endorsement anyone on this list has. Scale matters here because the good stuff is community-generated: mood tags, pace, and three-level content warnings only work when enough people have read the book.

You rate in quarter and half stars, tag by mood, and the recommendation engine works from that texture rather than a single number. The iOS app also syncs Kobo reading progress automatically, which is the closest thing to e-reader integration anyone offers. Social features are deliberately quiet: buddy reads, readalongs, and community challenges, all on the free tier. Plus is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year for custom charts, advanced stat filters, and roadmap voting.

Honest limits. No live timer. Time exists as a goal unit, not a stopwatch, so there is nothing that asks you to sit down tonight. The interface is dense, which stats people love and casual readers bounce off. And watch the import: recent guides report that bringing your Goodreads library across now requires Plus, though StoryGraph’s own Plus page does not list import among its paid features, so verify before you pay. Our head-to-head is at StoryGraph vs Goodreads.

3. Fable: best for book clubs

Best for: readers whose reading life is social, and anyone who wants a low-effort club.

Fable is the community app. When Everand acquired it in June 2025, Publishers Weekly reported roughly three million users running more than 100,000 clubs, and clubs remain the product: threaded, spoiler-gated discussion pinned to sections of the book. On iPhone it is a polished, heavily used app, 4.8 stars from 77,000 ratings, with an in-app ebook reader, TV club tracking, daily streaks, spice ratings, and shareable monthly recaps. Migration in is the easiest of any app here: a CSV importer plus a direct import that signs into your Goodreads account and pulls lists and reviews without a file. Fable Plus is $5.99 a month or $49.99 a year, and individual premium clubs are sold separately.

Honest limits. Tracking depth is thin next to StoryGraph, with no mood data or content warnings. The habit tooling stops at streaks: no timer, no session log. And two things belong on the record. In January 2025 Fable’s AI reader summaries produced racist output; the company apologised and pulled the features. And Fable is now owned by Scribd’s Everand, so readers who left Goodreads to escape platform ownership should know the independent era ended. We compare it directly in booksense vs Fable.

4. Hardcover: best free Goodreads replacement

Best for: ex-Goodreads readers who want their whole archive somewhere fast, ad-free, and not owned by Amazon.

Hardcover is the principled pick. It is free with no caps and no ads, permanently, built by a small independent team around founder Adam Fortuna, with a public roadmap, monthly dev reports, and a published income page. The optional Supporter tier at $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year buys librarian editing access and Discord perks, and exists to fund the project rather than to gate it. That model deserves rewarding, especially if Amazon’s ownership of Goodreads is what sent you looking.

Feature-wise you get four statuses including DNF, half-star ratings, per-book privacy controls, custom lists, a For You feed, and a year-end Wrapped. The importer is the broadest here: Goodreads, StoryGraph, and generic CSV all land, and imported history feeds your stats retroactively.

Honest limits. The iPhone app is the least-reviewed on this list at 4.2 stars from 58 ratings, which tells you the userbase is mostly on the web. The catalogue is smaller than Goodreads’, so niche editions sometimes need fixing by hand after import, and the Goodreads import is a one-time transfer rather than a sync. Like StoryGraph, it answers “what have I read” and not “did I read today.”

5. Bookly: best solo reading timer

Best for: readers who want session timing, speed stats, and badges, with no community anywhere near them.

Bookly has owned the timer niche for years and the iPhone version is mature: 4.6 stars from 60,000 ratings, plus iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro builds. You start a timer when you open the book and the app derives everything from that: reading speed, time-to-finish estimates, session infographics, daily and monthly goals, streaks, achievements, and ambient sounds to read to. There is even character tracking with relationship mapping, which readers of doorstop fantasy will appreciate.

Pro is $4.99 a month, $19.99 for six months, or $29.99 a year, with a $9.99 family plan. You will need it: the free tier caps you at roughly ten books and deletion is gated too, so free Bookly is a trial rather than a tracker.

Honest limits. Everything is solo. Streaks and badges compete against your own history, and if external accountability is the thing that keeps you reading, Bookly only goes halfway. Its Goodreads import arrived in late 2025 and reports describe it as rough, with export not yet available, which is the wrong direction on the one test that matters. We break the comparison down further in booksense vs Bookly.

6. Bookmory: best private log

Best for: readers who want to track everything and be seen by nobody.

Bookmory is the introvert’s tracker and it is very good at it: 4.8 stars from 16,000 ratings, no feed, no follows, no audience. Headway’s review covers the shape of it, and the App Store listing fills in the rest: a reading timer, a calendar of your reading days, custom tags, collections and series, an app lock, iCloud backup, themes, monthly and annual graphs, an annual Rewind, and a running total of what you have spent on books. The journal is the standout, with OCR so you photograph a page instead of typing the quote. Premium is $3.49 a month or $30.99 a year, the cheapest subscription in this comparison, and it removes ads and adds cross-device sync.

Honest limits. Total privacy means zero accountability. No community, no recommendations, no challenges, nobody who notices you stopped. Its Goodreads import works but you assign each book’s status by hand afterwards, which gets old somewhere around book fifty.

7. Book Tracker: best Apple integration

Best for: readers who want the app to feel like it shipped with the phone, and who hate subscriptions.

This is the one most roundups miss. Book Tracker, from indie developer Simone Montalto, is the most Apple-native reading app on the store: Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, a Live Activity for the current session, iOS Controls, Siri Shortcuts and App Intents, a real Apple Watch app, and a real Mac app, with iCloud sync that requires no account at all. Those are the developer’s own claims about breadth, but the App Store listing backs the substance, and the 4.7 rating from 6,000 reviewers suggests it holds up.

Two more things in its favour. Pro is a one-time $15.99 rather than a subscription, which over three years undercuts everything else here. And the privacy stance is unusually clean: the listing states the app collects no personal data and does not track you. It imports from Goodreads, StoryGraph, BookBuddy, and others.

Honest limits. No social layer of any kind, no recommendations, no clubs, and no challenges. It is a beautifully built solo instrument. If your reading needs witnesses or discovery, it will not provide either.

8. Goodreads: still the biggest, still the incumbent

Best for: readers who want the largest catalogue, the most reviews, and the friends they already have.

The contrarian truth about Goodreads on iPhone is that most of its users are content. The app holds 4.8 stars from 743,000 ratings, it is free with no in-app purchases at all, and the catalogue and review corpus are still unmatched by anything on this list. It also finally moved: the Did Not Finish shelf rolled out from March 12, 2026, the top-requested feature for over a decade, and DNF books with logged progress count toward your goal.

Honest limits. Whole stars only, still, so a 4.5 book rounds somewhere it does not belong. Reviewers routinely describe a clunky flow, with one App Store review counting five taps to shelve a book. Search remains weak, there is no timer, no session tracking, no streaks, and the yearly challenge is the entire habit feature set. And it belongs to Amazon, which for many readers is the whole argument. If you are on the fence, booksense vs Goodreads lays out the case both ways.

Two we tested and cut

Literal. Lovely design, once the smoothest importer in the category, and now abandoned. The App Store listing shows the last update as version 1.21 in August 2022, the rating has sagged to 3.3, and recent reviews describe imports that hang at “0 of 0 books” for days. No shutdown was ever announced, which is worse than one being announced. Do not start a library there. If minimalism is what drew you, Book Tracker is the living answer.

Basmo. Frequently recommended in older listicles, and its ideas are good: scheduled reading sessions, a voice notepad, mood logging. But the App Store listing shows version 2.8.57 from May 2023, its purchase tiers are a confusing spread from $4.99 monthly up to $39.99 yearly, and we found no evidence of a Goodreads CSV import. Three years without an update in a category this active is a bet we would not take with a decade of reading history.

The iPhone-specific things worth caring about

Feature lists flatten the differences that actually decide whether you keep using an app. Four that matter on iOS.

Friction to log. The gap between “open app, tap once” and “open app, search, scroll, tap, confirm” is the gap between a habit and an abandoned icon. Timer apps win here because the log is a side effect of reading. Widgets win harder, which is Book Tracker’s real advantage.

Offline. The local-first apps, Bookmory and Book Tracker, store your library on the device and treat sync as a backup, so they behave on a plane. The social apps need a connection to do anything interesting, because the content lives on a server.

Sync model. iCloud sync (Bookmory, Book Tracker, Bookly) needs no account and keeps your data in your own Apple storage. Account sync (booksense, StoryGraph, Fable, Hardcover, Goodreads) is the price of a social layer, since other people have to be able to see something.

Subscription hygiene. Everything paid here bills through the App Store, so cancelling is two taps in Settings and no email to support. That is a genuine reason to prefer an iOS subscription to a web one.

How to choose in one line

• “I keep not reading.” booksense. Timer, streaks, leagues, live tables, and other people who notice. Pair it with a realistic goal.
• “I want data and better recommendations.” The StoryGraph. Nothing is close on moods, pace, and content warnings.
• “I want to talk about books.” Fable for structured clubs, booksense for reading together in real time.
• “I want out of Amazon and I want it free.” Hardcover.
• “I want to time my reading alone.” Bookly, budgeting for Pro because the free cap arrives fast.
• “I want nobody watching.” Bookmory, or Book Tracker if you also want widgets and a one-time price.
• “I just want the biggest catalogue and my existing friends.” Stay on Goodreads. It is fine.

Running two apps is a legitimate answer and a common one: an archive app for the record, and a habit app that gets opened every day. If you are not sure what to read next while you decide, our book recommendation quiz takes about a minute, and the booksense feature tour covers the habit side in more detail.

Moving your library across

Whichever way you go, do this first: export from Goodreads before you install anything. It takes two minutes, the file is yours forever, and it means you can try three apps in a week instead of committing blind. Our step-by-step export guide covers the exact menu, and the migration guide covers what survives the trip and what does not.

For booksense specifically, the import runs entirely on your phone. Nothing is uploaded, your ratings, reviews, and read dates come across, and every imported read is backdated to when you actually read it, so your history looks like history. It is a free download, and if it turns out not to be your app, your CSV is still sitting where you saved it.

FAQ

What is the best book tracking app for iPhone in 2026?

It depends on what breaks your reading. booksense is the pick if the problem is consistency: a reading timer, streaks, goals, leagues, and live reading tables sit on top of a full library, and it is built for iOS only. The StoryGraph is the best all-round tracker for stats and mood-based recommendations. Fable is the best book club app. Hardcover is the best free Goodreads replacement. Bookly is the best solo timer, Bookmory the best private log, Book Tracker the most Apple-native, and Goodreads still has the biggest catalogue.

Which iPhone reading apps are free?

Goodreads and Hardcover are genuinely free with no book caps, and Hardcover has no ads either. booksense is a free download with an optional Elite membership. The StoryGraph, Fable, Bookmory, and Bookly are free to download with paid tiers, though Bookly caps the free version at about ten books and StoryGraph reportedly gates the Goodreads import behind Plus. Book Tracker charges a one-time $15.99 rather than a subscription.

Which iOS book tracker has the best Apple integration?

Book Tracker, by a distance. It ships Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, a Live Activity for reading sessions, iOS Controls, Siri Shortcuts, a real Apple Watch app, and a native Mac app, with iCloud sync that needs no account. Bookly also has an Apple Watch app and visionOS support. Most of the big social trackers, including StoryGraph, Fable, and Hardcover, are cross-platform apps first and treat Apple-specific features as extras.

Can I move my Goodreads library to an iPhone app?

Yes. Export the CSV from Goodreads, then import it. booksense parses the file on your phone rather than uploading it, keeps your ratings, reviews, and read dates, and backdates imported reads so they land as history. Fable, Hardcover, Bookmory, Book Tracker, and Bookly all accept the file too, with varying polish. The StoryGraph accepts it but recent guides report the import now requires a Plus subscription.