Since the start of this year, I see many complaints about Goodreads and many booklovers slowly transitioning to The Storygraph, I also see many people asking what makes The Storygraph better compared to Goodreads. Since I use both platforms, I decided to compare them for you and hopefully this makes it easier to decide which platforms suits you best. There are many other book tracking platforms, but these currently are the two biggest ones.

Book database

Goodreads has a much larg er book database compared to The Storygraph. However, I sometimes find it hard to find the right book, as bundles are also added et cetera. Furthermore, you can’t add a book yourself if you’re missing one and therefore you can’t track it. You need a librarian for this and it’s hard to find one. On the Storygraph, it’s easy to add a book yourself, also if it’s just another edition of it. For instance, I sometimes read a Dutch translation of a book that has already been added to the database. I can simply add this edition by either importing it or adding it manually. I prefer to add it manually though, because sometimes it doesn’t take over certain important info and I have to file a book ticket. I’m actually not happy with that, because it can take a long time before the ticket is taken care of. When you already use Goodreads, you can easily import your library to The Storygraph upon signing up. It’s close to accurate, however I found some mistakes. I fully started using The Storygraph in 2023, so I only corrected my 2023 books in order to get the right statistics.

The statistics

It’s already in the Name, but The Storygraph shows you very nice statistics. You can filter them on nearly every detail, this makes it easier to get a good glimpse of your reading behaviour. In the end, it also helps you creating your montly or annual wrap ups for your blog. Personally, I don’t use them for these purposes as I can’t see whether I screencapped the right graph due to my visual impairment. Goodreads doesn’t have statistics, only at the end of the year and they are not as detailed as those on The Storygraph.

Interface and accessibility

In order to use both platforms properly, it’s important to campare the user friendliness of the interfaces and the accessibility for e.g. screenreader users like me. Good to know: Goodreads is very, very outdated and hasn’t been updated properly since Amazon bought it in about 2013. However, the interface is even more outdated than that, it feels like it’s stuck in the 00s. So, if the visuals of a platform are important to you, you won’t be pleased by it. However, they did a major update to the book page in 2022 and honestly I hate it. Some stuff is easier to find when navigating with a screenreader than before, but I used to retrieve the book covers from Goodreads for my book reviews on both blogs and screenreaders skip over that. Moreover, if you’re an NVDA user, you have to switch focuses to get all the necessary information such as the book author and other contributors. The app is fine, allbeit outdated as well. However, I find it tough to find the right edition of a book because you first have a carousssel and than you have to go to a seperate page to view more. On that seperate page, you still have to click on the “see more” button on each edition to find the right one.

When I started using The Storygraph after it launched in 2020, I was far from happy with it. It was so empty and the app was very, very inaccessible. It was hard to navigate. Since it’s independently owned, I understand that this wasn’t the biggest priority at first. Now, years later, they worked really hard to make it accessible to screenreader users and therefore it’s very user friendly which made me return. The interface is more modern and more importantly, I can retrieve the book covers for my reviews from there! Also, it’s very easy to click on the little dropdowns to change reading statuses and find book links and actions. You also have all editions in one place and this makes it easier to oversee everything at once so you can choose your right edition within a matter of seconds. The only thing that needs improvement on the accessibility front are the search boxes when adding a book. I can’t drop down when entering an author, contributor or publisher and won’t know whether I selected the correct one until it’s too late. I know it’s asthetically pleasing, but not that screenreader friendly.

Tracking your reading

On both Goodreads and The Storygraph, it’s easy to track your reading progress. However, on Goodreads all your status updates are public, also the little notes you might enter when ttracking your progress. On The Storygraph it’s not, it’s for your eyes only. I love the standard DNF shelf The Storygraph provides, on Goodreads you have to create a custom shelf for those books. And that’s not easy to do without a manual.

Rating and reviewing

In terms of rating a book, this is easy. I prefer The Storygraph over Goodreads here. You are able to give both quarter and half stars on this platform whereas on Goodreads you’re stuck with whole stars and whole stars only. So you have to write a review in order to specify your actual star rating if you want to give quarter or half stars.

On the other hand, I find the reviewing process on Goodreads less time consuming. The Storygraph provides you with elements you can use for your reviews, such as moods, pace and diverse characters. Personally, I find this way too time consuming and I immediately scroll to the rating box. On Goodreads, you can just write your review without scrolling that much. However, I don’t like the long reviews or the early reviews on Goodreads. Especially the early ones, I don’t trust them and I think they should be removed. I’m not talking about the genuine reviewers who have been provided an ARC of said book, but the people who just review a book months or even years ahead because they are excited, or the people who write a negative review just to bash the book and author. Also, I don’t like the long reviews, they are way too long. The longer your review, the less likely I will read it. I think they are more suitable for a blog. However, I still go to Goodreads to see whether a book might be for me, because I can actually read reviews. On The Storygraph, you see the statistics, but not the actual reviews people write when looking for them on the book page. Or am I missing something?

Community

There are several aspects of The Storygraph i really enjoy, but the community is not one of them. On Goodreads, the community is more visible and it’s easier to build one. On The Storygraph, you barely see any updates and it’s therefore harder to find books that might interest you. I hope this will be improved in the future, but it could also be the case I’m nissing something here.

Reading challenges, readalongs and buddyreads

If you’re a sucker for reading challenges, The Storygraph is your go-to platform. Besides the annual reading challenge, you can also set a pages goal and minutes goal when you listen to audiobooks a lot. Furthermore, there are tons of user-added reading challenges you can participate in. Unfortunately, there’s no way other than going to the book page to add it to a challenge. It would be ideal to be able to add it to a reading challenge you participate in once you’ve marked said book as finished. Maybe I would like to participate more then, because now I keep forgetting about these challenges. On Goodreads, there’s only the annual reading challenge. However, I’m not one who enjoys these extra challenges, but i’ve set a pages and minutes goal nevertheless.

On The Storygraph, it’s easy to start a buddyread with friends there. You just start one and all the notes will be visible in the buddyread. Only when you’re at the same place in the book as your buddyreaders. Otherwise they’re hidden because of potential spoilers. Whenever you’re caught up with your reading buddies, they automatically get unlocked.

A new feature The Storygraph introduced this year are readalongs. I haven’t checked them out myself because I won’t be participating in any, they are just not for me. Goodreads doesn’t have this option either, as well as the buddyread option.

Conclusion

Well, there’s not a better platform here and now. I like both platforms, but one works better than the other in some cases. The Storygraph experienced massive growth and therefore had troubles with server capacity and stability in the past week, but overall it’s much more stable than Goodreads. I like the tracking possibilities and the statistics, but reviewing books and finding your community I still find a bit of a hastle. So, there are pros and cons to both platforms and I don’t have a preference right now. I think I will still keep using both.

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What book tracking platform do you prefer to use? And in case of The Storygraph, are there things I’m missing? Please share your tips so me and others can learn from them and improve their experience!