Book Nook vs Goodreads

Updated 3 November 2026

Goodreads launched in 2007, has been owned by Amazon since 2013 and has more than 150 million members. It has reader ratings and reviews, the yearly Reading Challenge, the Goodreads Choice Awards and groups, and it added half star ratings in October 2026. Book Nook is an independent reading tracker. Facts checked on 3 November 2026.

Book Nook and Goodreads side by side

Goodreads checked on 3 November 2026: App Store listing, goodreads.com/about/us, help.goodreads.com/s/article/000001100.

Of the nine apps in our comparison of bookshelf apps, Book Nook is the only one with all 16 features in the table, and no other app has more than 12. It is also the only one of the nine with both a reading timer and book clubs.

Bookshelf view, themes and decorations

Goodreads shows your shelves as lists and grids of covers, with no shelf themes or decorations. Book Nook draws each bookshelf as boards on a back wall, with a frame and side panels in every theme except Simple, and your books stand on it as covers or spines.

• Five themes (Simple, Dark Academia, Cottagecore, Coquette and Matcha Cafe), or a custom theme where you choose the colours, the frame style, the boards, the back wall pattern, an ornament for the top and the font of the shelf title.
• 65 decorations to place between books, such as plants, candles, mushroom lamps, crystals, dragons and a reading ghost.
• Lights under the boards of the bookshelf.
• Drag a book along a shelf or onto another one, turn it spine-out to fit more on a row, or lean it at an angle.
• Real book sizes, a switch in the bookshelf menu that stands mass market paperbacks shorter than hardcovers, using the size of the edition you own.
• As many bookshelves as you like, plus List and Mosaic views of the same books. Books keep their places on the bookcase while you use another view.

The Bookshelf widget draws one of your bookshelves on the iPhone or Android home screen, covers and decorations included, and you can show a bookshelf on your public profile in your theme. Read more about the bookshelf widget and building an aesthetic bookshelf.

Adding books by search, barcode or by hand

Both apps scan barcodes. In Book Nook you tap Add book and search by title, author or ISBN, scan the barcode on the back cover, or add the book by hand with your own photo of the cover. The scanner works in the phone apps and in the web app with a computer or phone camera. Book Nook fills in the cover, author, page count and description from its catalogue. Each book gets a status: to be read, reading, finished or did not finish. See how to catalogue a home library by barcode.

Reading timer on the Lock Screen

Goodreads has no reading timer. In Book Nook you pick the book, tap the play button, and when you stop you enter the page you reached. The session is saved with its minutes and pages, and the book's progress moves on.

• On iPhone the running timer is a Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. On Android it is a notification with Pause and Stop.
• On iPhone with iOS 18 or later, the Start Reading control starts the timer from Control Center, the Lock Screen or the Action button without opening the app. On Android the Start reading tile in Quick Settings and the Read button on the widgets do the same.
• On iPhone and Android a daily reminder at 6:00 PM names the book you are reading. It skips days you have already read, and you can change the time or turn it off.

More detail is in our guide to the reading timer.

Reading statistics and goals

Goodreads has basic statistics and a yearly books goal. Book Nook builds its statistics from your finished books and timed sessions, for the week, the month or the year: reading time, books, pages and streak; minutes per day; a reading calendar; pages a day and pages an hour; your longest session, best weekday and active days; and top authors, top genres and a ratings chart. Every statistic is free.

It has a daily minutes goal as well as a yearly books goal. Widgets on iPhone and Android show both, with your streak and whether you are ahead or behind pace for the year, and Lock Screen widgets on iPhone show the daily goal and the streak. See our guide to choosing a reading tracker app.

Reading Wrapped for every month and year

Goodreads makes a yearly Year in Books. Book Nook makes a Reading Wrapped for every month as well as every year, with the books you finished, the hours you read, your biggest reading day, your top genres and authors, and your highest-rated books.

Each page is a 1080 by 1920 image with real covers. From the phone apps you can share it to Instagram Stories or TikTok, post all pages as a TikTok slideshow or save them to Photos; on the web you can share or save them. Books imported from Goodreads count in the year you finished them. Read how Reading Wrapped works.

Feed, reviews, book clubs and challenges

Goodreads has friends, reviews, groups, the yearly Reading Challenge and seasonal challenges. Book Nook has a feed, reviews, book clubs that fold a comment until you reach the page it was written at, reader-made challenges and nooks on its Feed and Community tabs:

• A feed of what the readers you follow are reading, finishing and reviewing, with likes and comments.
• Reviews and discussion threads on every book page, with spoiler tags that readers tap to show.
• Book clubs that read one book at a time. Each comment records the page its writer had reached, and a comment from a member further ahead stays folded until you reach that page. Notifications do not quote it either.
• Reading challenges with a goal and a deadline that any reader can create, and a yearly reading challenge.
• Nooks: groups for talking about books, with a thread of posts and an invite link.
• Points for reviews, posts and finished books, and stamps for milestones such as a first review or a finished challenge, shown on your public profile.

Read more about book clubs in Book Nook and our reading challenge ideas for 2027.

Platforms, sync and price

Both apps run on iPhone, Android and the web. Book Nook runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 17 or later, on Android 8.0 or later, and on the web, and one account syncs your bookshelves, books and sessions across them. Goodreads is free and shows ads. Book Nook is free with no subscription, no paid tier and no ads, and you can export all your data as a JSON file at any time.

Which readers Book Nook suits

• Readers with a bookshelf at home: make a bookshelf for each real shelf and drag the books into the order they stand at home.
• Readers who want an aesthetic digital shelf: see what a virtual bookshelf app can do.
• Readers who track their reading in numbers: the statistics fill in from each timed session.
• Readers who keep a book journal: each book keeps the dates you started and finished it, every timed session, your rating in quarter stars and your review.

How to switch from Goodreads to Book Nook

1. On goodreads.com, open My Books, choose Import and export under Tools, then Export Library, and download the file.
2. Sign up for Book Nook on iPhone, Android or trybooknook.com.
3. Open Import books: tap Import my books in Getting started, or later tap the settings icon on the Profile tab (on the web, open Settings, then Import books under Library). Choose Goodreads and pick the file.
4. Check every book before it comes in, and choose bookshelves named after each status, after your Goodreads shelves, or one bookshelf.
5. Import. Statuses, ratings, written reviews and the dates you added and finished each book come across, and missing covers and page counts are filled in.

Importing copies your library and changes nothing on Goodreads. Books already on your shelves are skipped unless you choose to update them from the file, so a later import adds only new books, and you can undo an import for 7 days. The full guide to moving from Goodreads also covers StoryGraph and Fable, and there is a comparison of Goodreads and StoryGraph.