Readest vs. Bookshelves
TL;DR: Apple Books is a storefront that happens to read ebooks. If you own your library, the real choice is between two apps. Readest is open-source, runs on everything (Mac, iOS, Windows, Linux, Android, web), and has the deepest feature set I've seen (side-by-side reading, sentence-level translation, KOReader/WebDAV sync), but it's still v0.x and some marquee features are unfinished. Bookshelves is Apple-only and commercial, but it's polished, ships fast, and pairs a strong reader with a 1.5-million-book built-in catalog. Cross-platform reader? Readest. Living entirely on the Mac and want the nicer native app? Bookshelves. Full breakdown below. I spend a significant portion of every day managing and curating an embarrassingly large ebook collection. For a long time, I was a dead tree books guy and honestly, I can be talked in to visiting a book store with very little effort, but for sheer usability and utility, nothing matches a digital collection. I still rely on calibre for the heavy lifting. While aesthetically, it may look like a Windows app from 1996, nothing can match it feature for feature for format conversion, metadata retrieval from multiple sources at once, file management and search ability. Using it as a reader is a non-starter though. Calibre Keeps Getting Better | AppAddict Apple Books macOS has included an ereader, Apple Books, formerly iBooks, since 2013 when it was introduced as a stand alone app in Mavericks, Mac OS X 10.9. But even before that, iTunes offered ebook management. For casual readers who buy most of their books directly from Apple, it's enough. You get a clean, distraction free reading experience, annotation support, world class typography and excellent synchronization across Apple platforms. Apple Books is a storefront, first and foremost, just like Apple Music. Both are designed to get you to spend money. Apple Books also has very limited support for library management and for many file formats. The real ereader competition While there are a lot of options available to Mac users for a native ebook experience, the top tier as I see it comes down to two apps: Readest and Bookshelves. Readest Developer: Open-source community (AGPL-3.0) Price: Free and open-source; App Store version available Formats: EPUB, MOBI, KF8/AZW3, FB2, CBZ, TXT, PDF Platform: macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, Linux, Android, Web GitHub: readest/readest Readest is a modern rewrite of Foliate (the well-regarded Linux ebook reader), rebuilt in Next.js and Tauri v2. It has 21.5k GitHub stars, 89 contributors, and ships on every major platform including a web app at web.readest.com. It's technically a v0.x release (currently at 0.11.17), but the feature list reads like a mature product. Readest's feature depth is uncommon: parallel reading (two books side-by-side in split screen), DeepL/Yandex translation at the sentence or whole-book level, text-to-speech with multilingual support within a single book, KOReader sync, WebDAV sync, code syntax highlighting for technical books, a reading ruler, paragraph-by-paragraph focus mode, and full accessibility support including VoiceOver, NVDA, and Orca. The translation feature alone separates it from every competitor in this category. If you read in multiple languages or work through texts in a non-native language, there is no real competition. OPDS and Calibre integration are first-class, not bolted on. If you run a Calibre library, Readest slots in without ceremony. There is a catch: AGPL-3.0 licensing keeps the code open, but the business model is donation-based. That's fine for now (the project is clearly active), but it's a different kind of bet than a commercial app with a defined revenue stream. The v0.x version number also signals that the API and sync behaviors may shift. AI summarization and advanced reading stats are still "building," and audiobook support is currently vaporware. Bookshelves Developer: CPE Verm. GmbH Price: Free (10-book limit); one-time Pro upgrade ($6.99) Formats: EPUB, PDF, CBZ/CBR/CB7, FB2, MOBI/AZW3/KF8/KEPUB Platform: Apple ecosystem only (Mac, iPhone, iPad) App Store: Bookshelves eBook Reader I've been using Bookshelves since the day of the first public release. It has always impressed me as the solution for most design issues faced by Mac App Store ereaders. It's 67.4 MB, currently sitting at #24 in the Books category, and the developer ships new features at a blistering pace. The most recent update dropped localization in 33 languages and a batch of reader and comics fixes. The reading experience is the priority here. Paginated and scroll modes, 10 themes, 10 fonts, full-text search, highlighting, and annotations: all the basics, executed cleanly. Comic and manga readers get CBZ/CBR support with two-page spreads and right-to-left mode, which most ereaders skip entirely. The built-in catalog is useful in practice: 1.5 million free books from Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, the Internet Archive, and a Spanish-language collection. Standard Ebooks alone makes this worthwhile; that project produces beautifully formatted public domain texts that most readers ignore entirely. The Pro tier ($6.99) unlocks iCloud sync (progress, highlights, preferences across devices), Calibre wireless transfer, OPDS server access, and highlight export. If you're in the Apple ecosystem and already use iCloud for everything else, this is the path of least friction. The main drawback is lack of support for any other platform. It's Apple-only by design. If any part of your reading life happens on Android, Windows, or Linux, Bookshelves has no answer for you. It's also not open source and it's not free. Which one should you use? Choose Apple Books if: You primarily buy books from Apple. You only use Apple devices. Syncing notes across your Apple ecosystem matters more than library flexibility. Choose Readest if: You own your ebooks. You use multiple operating systems. You run Calibre-Web or another OPDS server. You prefer open-source software. Choose Bookshelves if: You live primarily on the Mac. You want a polished native application. You care as much about browsing your collection as reading it. Most of your library consists of DRM-free EPUB files.
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Dev of BookShelves here. Really appreciate the thorough, fair writeup, that's a rare thing to see for a comparison post. A couple of things I can answer directly: @xmacv, on how BookShelves fits alongside Calibre: it's not trying to replace Calibre for metadata wrangling or format conversion, Calibre is still unmatched there. BookShelves can import straight from a Calibre library folder (it picks the best available format per book so you don't get duplicate entries), and on Mac there's a built-in Calibre wireless server so devices like KOReader can pull books from your BookShelves library the same way they would from Calibre. @lisata99, custom Calibre metadata columns (your series/read-status fields) don't carry over right now, only the standard metadata fields (title, author, series, etc.) get imported. That's a fair callout and something worth improving. I'd rather not weigh in on DRM stripping workflows since that gets into legally gray territory, but happy to answer anything about the metadata/import side. Also worth noting BookShelves is still under a year old and shipping fast, so a lot of the rough edges people hit today are probably already fixed or on the list. Thanks again for including it in the comparison.
I’m glad you feel fairly treated by my review. I really appreciate the steady flow of updates and bug fixes.
Using your product form the very beginning of the App. Bought straight away and loving it. Thank you for your good work.
I use Yomu. Works perfectly across iPhone, iPad, and multiple Macs. Not even mentioned, for some reason.
No disrespect to Yomu, I have it installed too. This wasn't framed as an ereader roundup though. I just wanted to compare Readest and Bookshelves in particular, since they seem to be the most popular in the free & paid spaces. If you like evaluating apps like this, I really like MapleREad for iOS and iPadOS.
I used yomu pro for a long time. gave up years ago. epub support is horrible and alwasy screws up the rendering
But you can read non apple books in Books. I do it all the time.
You can go even further. There's a setting in Books (in Settings app) that can turn off the bookstore crap completely. That said, I still use Panels.
I use Readest on my Macs and Android tablest and phone. Very feature rich app. But I also regularly bump into little bugs. Less feature rich but stable is Google Books (for Mac I made a PWA). But why not mention other cross-platform readers here? Like BookFusion and FBReader?
I just wanted to compare the two apps in particular since they seem to be the most popular right now. I like both that you mentioned and on iOS an iPadOS, MapeRead is also great (although paid).
I love ai summaries of app store pages so I can get vital info like the MB size down to .1MB accuracy rewritten like marketing copy, and "the feature list reads like a mature product". It really makes my Reddit browsing so enjoyable.
Where do these apps fit alongside Calibre?
calibre is what I use to process books, meaning downloading and customizing metadata (tags, genre, subgenre, location, era etc). I use it to manage multiple ebook libraries. I just don't like to read with it. Also, although it does have a web interface, it's browser based and doesn't do highlights and annotations well.
I will say though I like the calibre preview app to quickly open the files like azw3 to see their content c
u/amerpie I use Readest on PC and Mac for epub files. I tried Bookshelves, but it just doesn't scratch the itch for me. I've got to say I have fallen in love with Panels.... so much so that painstakingly convert ALL my epubs to PDFs which as you can imagine can be a royal PITA. After conversion though, Panels works beautifully. I drop them in my iCloud drive folder and panels syncs the progress within an invisible settings file within that folder. Plus Panels (once purchased) is SO beautiful with the page turn animations/graphics and the main page. Simply stunning. If only Panels supported text-based ePub (dev says not gonna happen), it would be so perfect.
Choose Apple Books if you enjoy having books you’ve synced to your device randomly get offloaded even if you have loads of space left on your device hhhnnnggg
IMO Readest is amazing for an open source app and I love the crossplatform KOReader sync. It connects to Calibre Web on my unRAID. I can now read on Android, MacOS, iOS, Kindle.
BookShelves eBook Reader — by CPE Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH Ratings: 28 (across 9 storefronts) Average: 4.14 ★ Age: released ~5 months ago · rated 4+ Overall score: 80.2 / 100
Thanks!
Booklore user here. I have my own grimmory server.
Well thanks for that review. Personally y use Calibre for MAC and readify in mi iphone
I love Text-to-speech (TTS) feature of Readest - turns any ebook to audiobook
To add to the comparison: Bookshelves, is a one-time purchase and uses iCloud to sync. Readest requires you either pay a monthly subscription to sync to their cloud storage ($4/month or $10/month, depending on how much storage you need, or "roll your own" solution using something off their GitHub, a WebDAV server or Google Drive. So, if you have a large library and use Bookshelves, you may need to up your iCloud storage. If you have a large library and have your own WebDAV server, or are paying for Google Drive storage, it may be a better choice for you. Bookshelves has a much nicer UI. But it's Mac and iOS exclusive. Readest is cross platform, so if you have a kink in the "Apple Armor" like I do, it's a better option. Readest's translation feature requires a subscription.
That is not the Readest icon though?
Thank you for the thorough review, will check them both