Recap:
I’m ditching Goodreads for reasons, so I tried a dozen other reading trackers, and ultimately, I found five fantastic alternatives to Goodreads.
Last but certainly not least, we’re talking about Margins!
Margins
You might be soulmates if:
🤎 You love a neutral aesthetic.
🤎 You enjoy the simple things in life.
🤎 Social media exhausts you.
🤎 You want to block other apps while reading.
Green Flags
Margins appeals to my exhausted, overstimulated, aging millennial soul. Margins will seem like a humble reading tracker app to others, as far as its current range of features, but that’s part of the appeal for me. Too many bells and whistles are overwhelming. That said, it has plenty of features: a reading timer (and social media app blocker!), custom lists you can toggle between public and private, a reading streak tracker, and the fastest and most accurate Goodreads import of any of the apps I tried. (They also support StoryGraph imports.)
I also adore the aesthetics of the Margins app. (Color me sad beige, I don’t care.) The color scheme and doodles are reminiscent of pen and paper, so opening the app feels like opening a beloved journal. It feels cozy.
And speaking of aesthetics, You can pick the displayed book cover for each of your books. Maybe you want to pick the cover of the one you actually read, or maybe you want to pick the cover you like the best…you do you, boo!
Some of the doodles throughout the app are interactive little Easter eggs, which is sweet and silly. On the home tab, there’s a lamp at the bottom that you can tap to turn on and off. It doesn’t do anything else, but we all need more whimsy in our lives in 2026, right?
Also whimsical: They have a book discovery option called Books by Vibes. It’s exactly what it sounds like. (I can’t tell if AI is involved or not, so see ya in beige flags for more of that conversation.)
Margins also offers Instagram-worthy graphics featuring your reads. They’re perfectly sized for Instagram stories, and you get several cute options. You can do this for books you’re currently reading, want to read, and just finished reading. At the end of each month, you also get a Monthly Wrap-Up with about 10 options for displaying your reading log and stats from the past month. I’ve shared a few examples below. I discovered that they also do some absolutely STUNNING yearly wraps, so now I’m determined to use this app through the end of 2026 at minimum.
There are minimal social options on Margins currently, but you can share your profile with friends so they can follow you and vice versa. Others might consider this lack of virtual community to be a beige flag, but honestly, that’s all I want or need for a social experience in a reading tracker app. And for those of you who want more, the app promises that they’re expanding opportunities to connect with other readers soon, so don’t rule them out just yet.
Even though there aren’t social options, you can still see book ratings and reviews. Oddly, when you tap the reviews icon on a book’s page, it pulls up the ratings and reviews from Goodreads, which means that even though this is such a new app with a smaller user base, you still have access to a massive volume of reviews from readers.
Beige Flags
I am dying to disable or at least hide the reading streak tracker so I can feel truly zen when I open this app. That’s the biggest thorn in my side with this app. I’ve ranted about reading streaks ad nauseum in my previous reading tracker reviews, so I won’t bore you again, but suffice to say, I loathe them.
For those of you odd ducks who like reading streaks, you really need to stay on top of updating yours with Margins. You can only go back one day to edit your reading streak if you forget to update your activity. If it’s more than one day in the past, too bad, sucker! The paid version of Margins allows you to update up to four days in the past. (In comparison, all Fable users can retroactively update their reading streaks much further than that.)
I’m concerned about how the Books by Vibes recs are generated. Do they use generative AI for those? Do I need to go on that rant again too? Short version: Don’t use gen AI if you value human creativity at all. Any reading app that uses gen AI needs to check their shelves before they wreck their shelves. (Or any publishing company for that matter…side eyeing you, Harlequin. BIG YIKES.)
This complaint is so small in the scheme of things, but why did my TBR load into the Unread list/shelf, but not this Want to Read page that’s prominently featured on my homescreen? Why are those two separate things and why, for the LOVE, can’t I bulk add my TBR to this page from my Unread list? Very weird and annoying quirk.
Circling back to how the app pulls ratings and reviews from Goodreads, I obviously also see this as a beige flag because um, we’re trying to ditch Goodreads and their Amazon overlords here. I think on the whole I support it for now while the app builds out its features and user base, but I don’t think it’s a good long-term strategy.
Other significant beige flags to note: This is currently just an app (no web browser access) and as of this writing, it’s only available on iOS (although it appears that a Google app is in development and you can join the waitlist).
Is Margins the One?
Margins is pretty cute and I think I can handle the flaws. It’s still a relatively new reading tracker, and my curiosity is piqued. I want to see if they’ll age like a fine wine. (That would suit their vibe, I think.) At the very least, I need to stick it out for the rest of this calendar year to get my hands on one of their annual wrap-ups. Will it be worth the wait? Stay tuned, I might or might not report back.
I think Margins is the perfect reading tracker for whimsical introverts, millennials who would keep a cute reading journal IRL if they had the time and energy, and anyone looking to increase reading time and decrease screen time.
I’ll write a wrap-up post about this whole experience…soonish…maybe. In the meantime, thank you for joining me for the latest episode of things I use to distract myself as the world falls to pieces around us! Several thousand words of this nonsense…and to think, I could have put that time and creative energy towards writing that many words in my novel. Classic me!
To confirm: I did, in fact, delete my Goodreads account of 15 years during this process. (I will accept Venmo and book deals in lieu of flowers.) Posting all this publicly to the three people that skim my blog posts really kept me accountable.
Disclaimer: I was not compensated by anyone for my opinions, nor am I affiliated with any of these reading trackers except as another reader/user. Information in this post is true to the best of my knowledge at the time of posting. If I have incorrect information, whether due to human error or an app update, please feel free to correct me in the comments!
paige in the library 