A Goodreads alternative that also tracks your films, music and concerts (2026)

There are good alternatives to Goodreads, and which one you pick depends mostly on a single question: do you want to track only your books, or your films, music and concerts as well? This guide compares four book apps — StoryGraph, Hardcover, BookWyrm and Libib — with MyCultBox, which tracks four categories, and says for each app what it does better than the rest. Four of the five can read your Goodreads export directly; with Libib that is not documented, and it is written that way below.

Why people leave Goodreads

Amazon bought Goodreads in 2013. The American Author's Guild called that acquisition at the time "a truly devastating act of vertical integration", and former employees say Amazon mainly sees the site as a source of user data, with little incentive to invest in it further — that is how Tech Xplore summarized it in February 2025. That same piece describes an interface that has not been meaningfully renewed for a long time and now feels sluggish, and reports that review bombing, extortion and harassment largely went unresolved despite Goodreads' promises in 2023 to strengthen moderation. In June 2025 Amazon also cut jobs in its books division, including at Goodreads and Kindle — fewer than a hundred roles.

There is something on the other side of the ledger that you should weigh honestly: Goodreads is free and, according to the same Tech Xplore piece, has 150 million users, against 3.8 million for StoryGraph. You see that difference on every book you look up. No app below, and MyCultBox least of all, comes anywhere near that number of reviews and opinions from other readers.

Taking your books with you: the Goodreads export

You are not stuck. On the desktop site, go to My Books, click Import and export on the left under Tools, and then Export Library at the top; after a minute a link appears saying "Your export from …" with which you download the CSV file. You can only export through the website, not in the app, and your own library does not change as a result (Goodreads Help). The file contains, among other things, the title, author, ISBN, your own rating, your shelves, the date you read the book and your review text.

Hardcover, BookWyrm and MyCultBox read that file directly, and so does StoryGraph — although there it is unclear whether the import is in the free plan or in the paid Plus (see below). Libib documents no Goodreads import on its own site; there are separate third-party conversion tools for that.

StoryGraph

StoryGraph is the best-known place to switch to. Tracking, statistics, recommendations and reading challenges are in the free plan; StoryGraph Plus costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year according to the App Store listing, and mainly adds extra charts, filters and an ad-free view. You can import from Goodreads — your own shelves then become tags — but the sources contradict each other on whether that is in the free plan or only with Plus: the app-store listing lists the import among the ordinary features and not among the paid ones, while several comparison articles from 2026 write that it is a Plus feature. Check that before you count on it. There are apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac, plus the website.

What StoryGraph does better than everything below: searching by mood and pace. You can ask for something dark and slow, or funny and fast, and have your recommendations run on that as well. That is a way of choosing books that a broader culture app does not imitate. If you mostly read, this is probably your app and you do not need to read any further. Whether the interface is available in Dutch is not stated in the app-store listing.

Hardcover

Hardcover is the most modern of the bunch: four reading statuses including "did not finish", half stars, shareable lists and a year in review. You can import from Goodreads, StoryGraph or your own CSV. The core is free; a Supporter subscription costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year according to the App Store listing and mainly funds the project. Apps for iOS and Android, plus the website.

The real distinction is under the hood: Hardcover has a public GraphQL API — the same one the site and the apps use. If you want to build your own reading dashboard, pump your data somewhere else or write a script that reads out your books, Hardcover is the only app in this guide that explicitly invites you to do so. MyCultBox offers nothing like it. The app-store listing names English as the only language.

BookWyrm

BookWyrm is open source and federated: it runs on ActivityPub, the same protocol as Mastodon, so you choose a server ("instance") instead of one central company, and you can follow readers on other instances and on Mastodon. It is free to use; the project lives on donations. You can import from Calibre, Goodreads, LibraryThing, OpenLibrary, StoryGraph and OpenReads. Book data comes from the instance itself plus OpenLibrary and Inventaire, so a Dutch title that is in OpenLibrary you will find here too.

Where BookWyrm wins: there is no company that can pull the plug or sell your data, and you can run your own instance if you want to. No other app here gives you that control. The site lists fifteen-plus interface languages; Dutch is not among them. The flip side of federation is that you have to choose an instance yourself and that your audience is smaller than on a central site.

Libib

Libib is not a readers' network but a cataloging app, for books, films, music, video games and board games. The free plan goes up to 5,000 items in a maximum of 100 collections; Pro costs $9 per month or $99 per year and raises that to 100,000 items. Web, iOS and Android.

The reason to choose it is the barcode scanner: you scan the ISBN or UPC on the back and the item is in there, and with Pro you can also keep track of loans and borrowers. If you are inventorying a physical shelf, a classroom library or a record collection, you are better off with Libib than with MyCultBox — which has no scanner and no lending feature. That free ceiling of 5,000 items is also by far the highest in this guide. What you give up: the social side and reviews are missing, and a Goodreads import is not documented.

MyCultBox

MyCultBox tracks four categories: books, films, music and concerts. Create an account and import your Goodreads export; on top of that it can handle a Letterboxd export, your concerts from setlist.fm and a library synchronization with Apple Music and Spotify. Book metadata comes from ISBNdb, Google Books and Open Library, which means Dutch-language titles are generally found without trouble. The interface is Dutch or English. It is a web app (PWA); there is no app in the App Store or Play Store. You can publicly share individual items, lists and a "Year in Culture" retrospective. Free up to 100 items without a credit card; Pro costs €4.99 per month or €49.99 per year, with a fourteen-day trial of the Pro features — the limit of 100 items stays in place during that trial.

Honest about what is missing: the book community is smaller than at every other app in this guide, there is no native app, and there is no reading challenge like the Goodreads Reading Challenge. So the reason to switch is not "better for books" — it is that the album you played in March, the film from May and the concert from July sit in the same overview as the book you finished.

Comparison table

Which should you choose?

Do you read almost nothing but books and mainly want reviews and recommendations? StoryGraph — and stay with Goodreads if you like, because you will not get that review volume anywhere else.

Do you want to get at your data and build something yourself? Hardcover, for that open API.

Do you want no company above your list? BookWyrm, on an instance you choose or run yourself.

Are you cataloging a physical shelf with a scanner in your hand? Libib.

Do you track films, music and concerts alongside books and are you tired of splitting that across four accounts? Then MyCultBox was made for that — with a smaller book community as the price.

See also: The best apps to track books, films, music and concerts and An app to track concerts: 5 apps compared.