Running through the 10 Best Apps: Goodreads Alternatives

For many years, Goodreads has been the default home for many readers. Here are ten Goodreads alternatives worth a look.

For many years, Goodreads has been the default home for many readers.

However, since Amazon took over Goodreads, the interface still feels stuck in 2013. The recommendations lean almost entirely on whatever is already trending rather than what a particular reader might actually enjoy. None of these are new problems, and none seem close to being solved.

And this gap keeps pulling so many readers toward other options. Here are ten Goodreads alternatives worth a look, a few of them famous, and several of them underrated.

Reliable Goodreads Alternatives

Storygraph

StoryGraph is usually the first name mentioned in any conversation about nerdy social media applications, and for good reason.

Founded by Nadia Odunayo in 2020, it swapped the usual star rating for mood and pacing. It asks questions like: Was the book slow and reflective, or fast and chaotic? Hopeful, or quietly devastating?

That detail feeds a recommendation engine that actually learns what suits a reader, rather than just repeating the bestseller list back at them. It also has a proper “did not finish” shelf, which might sound minor, but it isn’t.

Pagebound

Pagebound is like what you’d expect if Goodreads and Reddit had a baby.

Launched in January 2025 by co-founders Lucy Zhao and Jennifer Dobak, Pagebound has already built a genuinely active base.

The app has no AI-driven recommendations. Instead, readers recommend books through Quests and forum chatter.

For anyone who misses the messier, more communal side of early Goodreads, before algorithms took over the conversation, Pagebound is worth a proper look.

Hardcover

What sets Hardcover apart is a recommendation match score built from actual overlapping taste between readers.

The build is the usual: shelving, following, and reviewing, but everything is more polished.

It has four clear statuses that cover a book’s journey: want to read, currently reading, read, did not finish.

Fable

While some readers track books quietly, others want to talk about them the second they finish a chapter. Fable was built for that second group.

It leans hard into discussion: threaded comments, shareable quote posts, book clubs that feel like actual clubs rather than a dusty forum nobody checks.

It even has a spice rating for romance and romantasy readers who care about that sort of detail. And honestly, plenty do.

Anyone running a book club, online or in person, will likely find Fable’s tools very helpful.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing has been around before Goodreads existed, and it has quietly kept its own loyal following ever since.

Features such as Barcode scanning, deep metadata fields, and cataloguing tools make it the obvious choice for serious book collectors.

LibraryThing is more involved with the library itself, and that feels refreshing.

Bookly

Streaks, readathon tracking, and detailed stats give Bookly a distinct motivational feel.

The app has a built-in timer that tracks reading sessions in real time. Bookly also includes a calendar view that lays out book covers day by day, and multiple custom rating categories. These ratings cover humour, romance, mystery, and more.

This feature works particularly well for readers who want a reason to pick the book back up tonight rather than tomorrow.

Lit. salon

Lit. salon started as one person’s side project, and it grew into personal profiles with banner images.

This shelf behaves like a real shelf, not three rigid tabs. Oddly enough, includes the option to attach a song to a review, which is very, very interesting.

The book-review section is for readers who want to actually write rather than tap out a star rating and move on.

It has a feature called the salon that works like a small, contained room for quick questions and side conversations that don’t belong in a formal review.

Lit. salon grew out of tight-knit reading communities on Reddit. This app will suit anyone who misses having a corner of the internet with various perspectives.

Openreads

Among Goodreads alternatives, Openreads is the one for readers who want a private, ad-free record and genuinely nothing else.

It has no feeds, no follower counts, or algorithm nudging anyone toward anything.

Openreads is free, open source, built mainly for Android users, and exists purely to log what has been read and what comes next.

Byzans

Byzans takes the book club idea and uses it uniquely.

When someone adds a book, it automatically drops them into a small group of everyone else reading it at the same time, who has already finished it, or who plans to start it soon.

There’s something almost old-fashioned about strangers being brought together by the fact that they’re on the same page. Every book gets two spaces: the café and the salon.

The café is fast and casual, more like a group chat, while the salon is for chapter-by-chapter dissection that spoiler-phobic readers usually avoid.

Byzans has stayed small since it launched years ago; it is like a book club that happens to run in an app, not an app that happens to have a book club in it.

Basmo

If you are hunting for a proper alternative to Goodreads, Basmo is definitely one to keep on your radar, but it does things a bit differently.  

It completely scraps the social media pressure and public feeds, turning reading into a more private, peaceful experience.

Instead of just ticking off a book and giving it five stars, there are tools like a built-in session timer, reading speed trackers, and daily streaks. These inclusions genuinely motivate readers to well, read.

Basmo also has modern features like a scanner that lets you snap a photo of a physical page and save your favourite quotes digitally.

Choosing the Right App

There’s no single winner among these Goodreads alternatives; the right one depends entirely on what the reader wants.

Whether it is privacy, a large or small community, or good recommendations, every app offers something. Community, design, privacy, and representation matter too, and this list proves there’s still plenty to explore.