ReadingRate · Answers · 2026
What's the best alternative to Goodreads?
It depends on which complaint is sending you away. If Goodreads feels dated and you want the same social cataloguing done better, StoryGraph is the standard answer — cleaner, mood and pace stats, easy CSV import. If you want reading to be more social, Fable is built around clubs. If your complaint is that fifteen years of reading history taught you nothing about yourself, ReadingRate is the alternative built for exactly that: it imports your Goodreads CSV, scores every book's difficulty across nine dimensions, measures your real reading speed, and maps your history into subject domains showing where you're genuinely well read. All three import the same export file, so trying one costs minutes.
People rarely leave Goodreads over one thing. It's usually some mix of an interface that hasn't meaningfully changed in a decade, discomfort with Amazon's ownership, and the realisation that the app has years of your reading and nothing interesting to say about it.
Which of those bothers you most is the real question, because the alternatives split cleanly along those lines.
Disclosure: we make ReadingRate. This page says what the feature can't do as well as what it can.
How switching actually works
Export your Goodreads library
In Goodreads: My Books, then Import and export, then Export library. You get one CSV containing your books, shelves, ratings, and read dates.
Import the CSV
Every serious alternative accepts this file. On ReadingRate, upload it at readingrate.com/import/goodreads — books, read dates, and ratings come across, and each book is enriched with difficulty scores, word counts, and subject classification the export doesn't carry.
Decide what happens to your Goodreads account
Nothing has to. An export is a copy, not a move — many people keep Goodreads for friends and reviews and run the new app alongside it.
If you want Goodreads, but better: StoryGraph
StoryGraph is the most recommended alternative and earns it. It does what Goodreads does — shelves, ratings, reviews, a reading challenge — with a cleaner interface, half-star ratings, and charts of your reading year by mood, pace, and genre. It's independent, and its core tier is free.
If your complaints are about how Goodreads feels rather than what it fundamentally is, switch to StoryGraph and you'll likely be satisfied.
If you're leaving for depth: ReadingRate
There's a specific disappointment StoryGraph doesn't fix: charts about your books still aren't knowledge about you as a reader. ReadingRate's premise is that a reading history is evidence — of how fast you read and how that changes with difficulty, of which subjects you've read deeply enough to hold an informed view, of what kind of passages you find worth keeping.
An imported Goodreads library becomes an enriched one: every book gains nine difficulty dimensions, literary-regard scores, and word counts, then the whole history is mapped into domains with a mastery stage each. From there the live tracking adds what a catalogue never can — your measured pace, finish-date projections, and quotes you capture by typing, photographing, or speaking them.
What no alternative can give you
Goodreads' irreplaceable asset is its people: the friends you follow and the sheer volume of reviews on every book. That network took two decades to accumulate and does not move in a CSV. Any honest comparison says plainly that if the community is what you value, no alternative replaces it — StoryGraph's is far smaller, and ReadingRate isn't a social network at all.
That's why the copy-not-move point matters more than it seems. The realistic best setup for many readers is Goodreads kept for the social layer, plus an app that actually does something with the history.
What switching can't do
- Your Goodreads friends and their shelves don't transfer, and neither does the review pool. That stays behind, whichever alternative you pick.
- Written reviews travel poorly in general; the CSV carries your ratings and dates reliably, your prose less so.
- Books the destination app can't match against its catalogue import imperfectly — obscure editions may need a manual fix.
- ReadingRate's analytics are the paid part: a €10/month membership after the trial. If you want a free social catalogue, StoryGraph is the better answer.
- An import gives ReadingRate your past; the speed and pace numbers still need you to log some actual reading before they exist.
Try it with your real history
Export your Goodreads CSV, import it in minutes, and see what fifteen years of reading actually adds up to.
Related questions
- What is the best alternative to Goodreads?
- StoryGraph if you want the same social cataloguing done better; Fable if you want club-based social reading; ReadingRate if you want analytics — measured reading speed, nine-dimension book difficulty, and a map of which subjects you've read deeply. All three import a Goodreads CSV.
- Can I move my Goodreads library to another app?
- Yes. Goodreads exports your full library as one CSV (My Books → Import and export → Export library), and StoryGraph and ReadingRate both import it, including ratings and read dates. On ReadingRate the upload lives at readingrate.com/import/goodreads.
- Is StoryGraph better than Goodreads?
- As a product, in most ways: cleaner, independent, half-star ratings, better charts. What it can't match is Goodreads' community and review volume, which is the main reason to stay.
- Do I have to delete my Goodreads account to switch?
- No. An export is a copy — your Goodreads account is untouched. Many readers keep it for friends and reviews and run an analytical app like ReadingRate alongside it.