A mobile book tracker, honestly reviewed. No marketing fluff, just what you get when you install a GPL app instead of handing your reading data to Goodreads.

TL;DR

What it is: A free, open-source mobile book tracker for Android and iOS, built in Flutter. Your books stay on your phone — no accounts, no cloud sync, no data harvesting [README][3].
Who it’s for: Readers who use Goodreads and have noticed it’s owned by Amazon, or anyone who wants a clean reading log without ads, recommendations, or surveillance.
Cost savings: Goodreads is technically free, but your reading data feeds Amazon’s recommendation engine. The StoryGraph costs $4.99/month for premium. Openreads costs $0, runs fully offline, and has no premium tier [README].
Key strength: Genuinely simple. Four lists, three ways to add books, tag filtering, and statistics. The It’s FOSS reviewer found it “intuitive” with a clean onboarding flow [3].
Key weakness: Local-only storage with no built-in cloud sync or cross-device access. If you lose your phone without a backup, your reading history goes with it. Also no social features whatsoever.

What is Openreads

Openreads is a mobile app that does one thing: lets you track which books you’ve read, are reading, want to read, and gave up on. That’s the entire pitch. It’s written in Flutter, licensed under GPL-2.0, and available on Android (via F-Droid and Google Play) and iOS (via the App Store) [README].

The project was started by Mateusz Bąk and has accumulated 87 contributors and 60 releases as of the latest version (v2.11.0, released September 2025). It sits at 1,497 GitHub stars — not viral, but a steady and active project [README][GitHub].

What makes it worth discussing on a site about escaping SaaS: it’s the anti-Goodreads. Goodreads is free, has 150 million users, and is owned by Amazon. Every book you mark as read, every review you write, every “want to read” signal feeds Amazon’s product recommendation machine. There’s no self-hosted Goodreads you can run on your own server. Openreads isn’t self-hosted either — it’s phone-hosted. Your reading data lives in local app storage and nowhere else unless you explicitly export it [README][3].

That’s a meaningful difference if you care about who sees your reading patterns.

Why people choose it

The It’s FOSS review [3] — the most detailed hands-on account available — frames Openreads as something discovered through searching for a “dedicated application” for tracking books. The reviewer, Sourav Rudra, had been using a note-taking app to manage a reading list and found Openreads while looking for something purpose-built.

His experience covers the onboarding flow, three methods of adding books, the list vs. grid view, and the settings menu. The overall tone is positive: “intuitive user interface and no ads” is how he introduces it. A few friction points come up: the search function was “a bit slow at times” when looking up books in Open Library, and accessing the “Unfinished” list required digging into a three-dot menu rather than having it prominently on the home screen [3].

No negative reviews from third-party sources were available for this article — the project doesn’t have significant coverage beyond the It’s FOSS writeup and the GitHub issues tracker. That absence of reviews cuts both ways: the app isn’t controversial enough to generate criticism, but it’s also not well-known enough to have accumulated a body of real-world user complaints. The GitHub issues list is the best proxy for problems people actually hit.

The choice to use only Open Library as a data source — and to explicitly reject proprietary sources — is documented in the FAQ as an intentional policy decision, not a gap [README]. If a book isn’t in Open Library, you add it manually. That’s a philosophical choice that will occasionally be friction and is worth knowing before you install.

Features

Based on the README and the It’s FOSS walkthrough [3][README]:

Book lists:

Four reading states: Finished, In Progress, For Later, Unfinished
All lists accessible from the home screen (Unfinished is currently buried in a three-dot menu [3])
Grid and list view modes

Adding books:

Search Open Library by title or author
Scan a physical book’s barcode (camera permission required)
Manual entry: title, subtitle, author, cover image, ISBN, description, notes, personal review
Each book can be tagged, categorized by format (ebook, physical, audiobook), and given a reading status

Data and privacy:

Data stored locally on device — no account required, no cloud sync
Only data source: Open Library (FOSS, crowdsourced). No Goodreads API, no Google Books, no Amazon
Export and import as CSV
Supports importing from Goodreads CSV and BookWyrm [README][3]
Backup and restore function in the Settings menu

Interface:

Onboarding flow on first launch with option to restore a backup immediately
Appearance settings with theming controls [3]
Custom tags for books with tag-based filtering
Statistics view (reading totals, progress over time)

What’s missing:

No cloud sync
No social layer (friend activity, shared shelves, reviews)
No reading goal tracking with reminders
No integration with e-readers (Kindle, Kobo) for automatic sync
No web interface — phone only

Pricing: SaaS vs self-hosted math

Openreads isn’t a server app, so there’s no VPS math here. The comparison is between competing mobile apps and services:

Openreads: $0. GPL-2.0. No premium tier, no ads, no subscription [README].

Goodreads: $0, but it’s owned by Amazon. Your reading data is Amazon’s property for recommendation and advertising targeting. No export-friendly path. No self-hosted alternative exists.

The StoryGraph: A privacy-positioned Goodreads alternative. Free tier exists, but the premium tier (mood-based recommendations, advanced stats, audiobook support) costs approximately $4.99/month or $35.99/year. Closed source, US-hosted servers.

LibraryThing: Partial free tier, then $10/year or $25 lifetime for full access. Closed source.

BookWyrm: Federated, self-hosted reading tracker with social features. Free if you self-host on your own server; requires a VPS, Docker, and time to set up. More complex than Openreads by an order of magnitude.

Concrete math for a reader migrating from The StoryGraph Premium:

StoryGraph: $35.99/year
Openreads: $0/year

You lose: mood-based recommendations, audiobook integration, reading pace tracking, social features. You gain: no subscription, no cloud account, no data sent anywhere.

Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on whether you actually use The StoryGraph’s social and recommendation features. If you just want to log books and see stats, the Openreads value proposition is obvious.

Deployment reality check

There’s no deployment here in the server sense. Installation is:

Android: F-Droid (recommended — no tracking, no Google) or Google Play [README]
iOS: App Store [README]
Build from source: Clone the repo, run flutter pub get, run flutter run — documented in the README with a notable warning that building locally will uninstall the existing app and delete all data first [README]

The iOS note worth flagging: the developer pays $99/year for an Apple Developer account to keep the App Store listing active. The README asks users to consider donating to cover this cost. It’s an honest disclosure [README].

What can go wrong:

No cloud sync means you must manually back up before switching phones. The backup function exists in Settings, but it’s a manual step — no automatic cloud backup [3][README].
Open Library has gaps. Books that aren’t in Open Library require manual entry. Manga, self-published work, and non-English books have inconsistent coverage.
The “Unfinished” list is less accessible than the other three — you have to dig for it [3]. This is a minor UX issue but worth knowing if you DNF books frequently.
iOS builds require the developer to maintain a paid Apple account annually. If the developer stops paying or the project goes dormant, the App Store listing goes away. F-Droid and direct APK installs on Android don’t have this risk.

Pros and cons

Pros

Zero cost, zero ads, zero data collection. No account, no sign-up, nothing transmitted off your device [README].
GPL-2.0 licensed. You can fork it, modify it, redistribute it. The project can’t be sold and turned proprietary [README].
Clean onboarding. The It’s FOSS reviewer found first-launch setup intuitive, including the option to immediately restore a backup [3].
Import from Goodreads and BookWyrm. Switching from Goodreads doesn’t mean losing your reading history — you export a CSV from Goodreads and import it [README][3].
Barcode scanning. Useful for quickly adding physical books from your shelf without typing [3].
Only FOSS data source. Open Library is public-domain crowdsourced data. No proprietary book databases, no agreements with Amazon or Google that could change [README].
F-Droid distribution. Available through the app store for people who don’t want Google Services on their Android device [README].
Active development. 60 releases, 87 contributors, last release September 2025 — this isn’t an abandoned project [GitHub].

Cons

No cloud sync. If you lose your phone and forgot to back up, your reading history is gone. There’s no account that saves it automatically [README].
No social features. You can’t see what friends are reading, share reviews publicly, or follow readers whose taste you trust. If the social layer of Goodreads is valuable to you, Openreads is not a replacement [README].
Open Library has gaps. Books not in Open Library require manual entry. Manga, self-published, niche, or non-English titles may not be available [README][3].
Phone-only. No web interface. If you primarily read at a desk and want to log books from a browser, this doesn’t fit [README].
Search can be slow. The It’s FOSS reviewer noted the Open Library search was “a bit slow at times” [3]. This is network-dependent but worth knowing.
“Unfinished” list is buried. A minor navigation issue — the fourth reading list is accessed via a three-dot menu rather than being on the main screen [3].
No reading reminders or pace tracking. If you want the app to push notifications reminding you to read, or to track pages-per-day, that’s not here.
iOS sustainability risk. The App Store version depends on the developer maintaining a $99/year Apple account. Not an immediate concern, but worth tracking for iOS users.

Who should use this / who shouldn’t

Use Openreads if:

You’re on Goodreads and have started thinking about the fact that Amazon owns it and your reading list.
You want a simple book log — no social pressure, no gamified reading challenges, no “what are your friends reading” feed.
You’re on Android and prefer F-Droid installs over Google Play.
You’re migrating from Goodreads — the CSV import makes this painless.
You own physical books and want barcode scanning to add them quickly.

Skip it (consider BookWyrm instead) if:

You want the social reading experience — reviews, friend activity, public shelves — but don’t want Goodreads. BookWyrm is federated and self-hostable and gives you that [not in source data — BookWyrm is a known alternative].
You want cross-device sync without managing backups manually.
Your reading life includes a lot of manga, self-published titles, or non-English books that Open Library doesn’t cover well.

Skip it (stay on The StoryGraph) if:

You actively use mood-based reading recommendations or audiobook tracking.
You want a web interface alongside the mobile app.
The privacy trade-off of a US-hosted closed-source service doesn’t concern you and you’d rather have the features.

Skip it (use Calibre instead) if:

Your primary use case is managing an ebook library rather than tracking reading history. Calibre is the right tool for that — Openreads doesn’t manage ebook files.

Alternatives worth considering

BookWyrm — Federated, ActivityPub-based, self-hostable social reading tracker. Similar privacy philosophy but adds social features and requires server setup. Much higher technical bar than Openreads.
The StoryGraph — Goodreads alternative built by a Black-owned indie team. Clean UI, mood recommendations, diversity stats. Closed source, US-hosted, freemium. Good middle ground between Goodreads and going fully local.
LibraryThing — Book cataloging with social features. Older UI, partially free, closed source. Better for cataloging large libraries than tracking active reading.
Goodreads — The default. Largest book database, biggest social network. Amazon-owned, closed source, no self-host path. Most people are already here.
Calibre — Desktop ebook library manager, not a reading tracker. Different use case but often mentioned alongside book management tools.

Bottom line

Openreads is the smallest, most honest tool in its category. It doesn’t try to be a social network or a recommendation engine — it tracks your books and keeps the data on your phone. That’s a specific choice that fits a specific person: someone who wants to log what they read, see some stats, and not feed that information to Amazon or any other platform. The trade-off is real: no cloud sync, no social features, no web interface. If those gaps are dealbreakers, The StoryGraph or BookWyrm are better fits. But if the gap between “I want to know what I’ve read” and “I want Amazon to know what I’ve read” feels meaningful, Openreads closes it cleanly and for free.

Sources

Sourav Rudra, It’s FOSS — “Openreads: An Open Source Mobile App To Keep Track of Your Books” (Nov 23, 2024). https://itsfoss.com/news/openreads/

Primary sources: