# Goodreads vs Libby: Which Book App Is Actually Better? **Published:** June 20, 2026 **Author:** Achriom **URL:** https://www.achriom.com/blog/goodreads-vs-libby > Goodreads tracks your reading. Libby borrows free books from your library. They solve different problems. Here's what each does well and when you need both. **Tags:** books, book tracking, goodreads, libby, reading apps, comparison --- Goodreads and Libby are not really competitors. One tracks your reading life. The other loans you free books from your local library. You could use both at once and they would not overlap at all. That said, if you're deciding how to organize your reading, they represent two different philosophies: building a personal record versus getting access to titles without buying them. Which matters more to you shapes the whole answer. ## What to look for in a reading app Before comparing the two directly, it helps to know what you actually want. **A reading log** means you can record what you've finished, when you read it, and how you felt about it. Goodreads does this. Libby does not, beyond books you've borrowed through Libby itself. **Discovery and recommendations** help you find your next book. Goodreads has a community-powered recommendation engine and millions of reviews. Libby shows you what your library has available, organized by genre, popularity, or past loans. **Access to books** is a different category entirely. Libby wins it outright because it gives you free ebooks and audiobooks. Goodreads gives you no access to books at all. **Cross-media awareness** is whether the app understands that readers also watch films and listen to music, and can find threads between them. Neither Goodreads nor Libby does this. The tracker that came closest to your whole taste is at the end of this comparison. ## Goodreads Goodreads is the largest book tracking app in the world, with hundreds of millions of users. Amazon acquired it in 2013 and the product has been largely static since. That history is both its strength (enormous community) and its weakness (aging interface, slow updates). The core experience is three shelves: Want to Read, Currently Reading, and Read. You log books, rate and review them, and follow other readers. The annual Reading Challenge, where you set a goal for how many books you'll finish in the year, draws a large number of casual readers back every January. Recommendations come from community ratings and "Readers also enjoyed" lists. These work reasonably well for popular titles and benefit from the size of the network, but the algorithm is blunt. You'll see the same well-known titles suggested repeatedly, and niche tastes tend to get generic results. The mobile app is functional but dated. The web version is more usable, though not by much. **What Goodreads does well:** The community is genuinely large. Reviews on popular books tend to be substantive and varied. The Want to Read shelf is the fastest way to keep a running list of books you've heard about. Import tools let you bring your shelf in from other platforms or a CSV export. **Where it falls short:** The product has barely changed in a decade. The recommendation engine is blunt and repetitive. There's no awareness of other media formats, so a reader who also watches films or listens to music gets no support here. Amazon's ownership makes some readers uncomfortable about what they're logging and where it goes. ## Libby Libby is made by OverDrive, a company that manages digital lending for public libraries. Connect your library card and you can borrow ebooks and audiobooks directly through the app. The catalog varies by library system, but most have tens of thousands of titles available across fiction, nonfiction, and audiobooks. The borrowing experience is genuinely good. You search for a book, tap Borrow or join a waitlist, and start reading. The built-in reader is clean, supports adjustable fonts and backgrounds, and syncs your place across devices. Audiobook support is solid. For a free app, the reading experience is better than many paid alternatives. What Libby cannot do is serve as a reading tracker. There's a Loans history that shows what you've borrowed through the app, but there's no way to log books you read elsewhere, add ratings, write notes, or build a reading journal. A reader who finishes a borrowed book and wants to log it has to do that manually somewhere else. **What Libby does well:** Free access to a substantial catalog, no subscription required. The in-app reading and listening experience is polished. Waitlists for popular titles move faster than you'd expect in many library systems, and you can suspend a hold if you're not ready when a copy comes available. **Where it falls short:** Libby is a lending interface, not a reading life organizer. The catalog depends entirely on what your library has licensed and budgeted for. Popular new releases often have long waits. And the app has no opinion about what you should read next once you return something. ## Achriom Achriom tracks books alongside your films, music, TV, and anime in a single library. The difference from a dedicated book tracker is that your librarian sees everything, not just what you've read. Finish *Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow* and ask what films share its emotional register, and the librarian looks across your whole library and answers. The reading log works the way you'd expect: log what you've finished, mark what's in progress, keep a want-to-read queue. You can rate books, add notes, mark half-stars, and note DNF (did not finish) when something didn't land. The catalog covers books, films, TV, albums, and anime, so a reader who moves across formats finds one place for all of it. The AI librarian is the part that doesn't exist elsewhere. Ask for a book like *Project Hail Mary* but with more emotional weight, or find the album that sounds like *The Thursday Murder Club* feels, and you get an answer grounded in what you've already told it you love. The connections it draws are cross-media by design.

Want all of it in one place? Achriom tracks your books alongside your films, music, TV, and anime, with an AI librarian that finds the threads between them. That is the part no single-format tracker can do.

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## Goodreads vs Libby vs Achriom: side-by-side | Feature | Goodreads | Libby | Achriom | |---|---|---|---| | Reading log | Yes | Loans only | Yes | | Ratings and reviews | Yes | No | Ratings and notes | | Free book access | No | Yes (library card) | No | | Recommendations | Community-based | Library catalog | AI, cross-media | | Social features | Large community | None | None | | Tracks other media | No | No | Books, films, music, TV, anime | | AI librarian | No | No | Yes | | Price | Free | Free (library card) | Free to start | ## Which should you use **Use Libby** if your primary goal is free access to books without buying them. A library card is all you need, and the in-app reading experience holds up. Keep it running alongside whatever you use for logging. **Use Goodreads** if you want to log your reading history, join a large book community, and track a reading goal. Its community reviews are still useful for deciding whether to pick up a title. The app is dated, but the social layer has genuine depth. **Use both** if you borrow from the library and want a reading log. They don't overlap. Borrow from Libby, log the finished book in Goodreads or wherever else you track reading. **Use Achriom** if you read across formats and want one library that holds everything, with a librarian who understands the connections. If you finish a novel and want to know what film captures the same sensibility, or what album to put on while you read the next one, Achriom is where that conversation happens. ## The honest answer Goodreads and Libby solve different problems. The choice between them is mostly a false comparison, because the real question is: do you want a reading tracker, or free book access, or both. If the tracker you want is a social, book-only journal with a large community, Goodreads is the default choice. If you want something smarter and you read across media, Achriom fits better. Libby belongs on your phone regardless of which you choose. Free books are free books. ## Common questions **Can Goodreads and Libby work together?** There's no official integration. Most readers who use both keep them separate: borrow through Libby, then manually log the book in Goodreads or another tracker after finishing. A few browser extensions attempt to bridge them unofficially, but nothing syncs automatically between the two. **What happens to waitlisted books in Libby?** When a copy becomes available, Libby notifies you and holds it for a few days. If you miss the window, you go back to the end of the waitlist. You can suspend holds if you're not ready, which is useful when you have several books already in progress. **Is StoryGraph better than Goodreads?** For many readers, yes. StoryGraph has mood-based discovery, more detailed reading statistics, and an interface that has been maintained more actively in recent years. It imports from Goodreads directly, so the switch is straightforward. If Goodreads feels stale, StoryGraph is the most commonly recommended alternative in the reading community. **Does Libby work outside the US?** Yes. Libby is available in many countries where OverDrive has partnerships with library systems. The catalog varies significantly depending on where you are and what your local library has licensed, so availability of specific titles differs by region. **Can you export your Goodreads data?** Yes. Goodreads lets you export your shelves as a CSV file from your account settings. Most other trackers, including Achriom, accept this format for import, so switching does not mean losing your reading history. **What if my library doesn't have a book I want on Libby?** You can suggest purchases through Libby's recommendation feature. Libraries do add titles based on patron requests, though there's no guaranteed timeline. Libby will sometimes show you if a nearby library consortium has a copy available, depending on how your local system is set up.