A confession before the list: I built one of these apps. I will tell you which one, and I will stay straight with you about the rest.
My wife and I have run a two-person book club for years, and we joined bigger ones too. Along the way we tried almost every app that promised to make a club easier to run.
Some help you start a club, some help you join one, and a few barely help at all. Here is what each one is good for.
Bookclubs, for running your own club
Bookclubs does one job, and it does it well: it handles the logistics of a real club.
You can poll members on the next read, schedule meetings, and see who plans to show up. It syncs to your calendar and runs on phone, tablet, or laptop.
Say your club meets in person and one person always herds everyone. This is the tool for that person.
The reading side is thin. You log what the club reads together, and your own yearly stats live somewhere else.
Best for: organizers who run an active in-person or virtual club.
Fable, for joining clubs that already exist
Fable hosts more than 100,000 clubs, with celebrity hosts, creator-led groups, and threads that actually move. My wife never ran short of options.
Fable favors joining over organizing, so you drop into a club tonight and read alongside strangers.
Two things to know. The web version is thin, so logging means reaching for your phone. Getting your data back out is also hard. Everand, a Scribd company, bought Fable in 2025, and it now sits inside a subscription bundle.
Best for: readers who want a buzzing club without building one themselves.
Novellic, for club discovery and book picks
Novellic centers on clubs from the start. You can create one, browse for others, and manage your members inside the app.
It also leans on recommendations. The app suggests books to match your taste, then points you toward clubs reading them.
It is phone-first, so the desktop side stays thin. The community runs smaller than Fable's too.
Best for: readers who want to find a club and their next read in one place.
Bookship, for clubs that meet on video
Bookship does one thing the others here skip. It runs club meetings over video chat.
You start a group with friends, read together, and share notes as you go. When it is time to talk, the club meets on a call inside the app.
It is free to start, with a premium tier at a few dollars a month. The reading and stats tools stay basic.
Best for: small clubs that want to meet on camera instead of in a thread.
Goodreads, for sheer size
Goodreads still wins on scale. It has more than 150 million members and a page for nearly every book. The groups feature has existed for years.
That size is the draw. Some Goodreads clubs run tens of thousands of members, with monthly picks and busy threads. Want something niche instead? Someone already started that group too.
The clubs live inside the old Groups feature, which feels dated. Ratings are whole stars only. There are ads, Amazon owns the whole thing, and the 2025 redesign changed less than people hoped.
Best for: joining a huge established club, or a niche group nobody else covers.
The StoryGraph, for buddy reads and stats
StoryGraph keeps its social side quiet on purpose, so the feed stays calm. Instead of big clubs, it leans on buddy reads, where two or three people read the same book together.
The stats are the best in the category. Mood tracking, reading pace, quarter-star ratings, a clean view of your year.
The trade-off is chatter. It added likes on reviews in early 2026, and you still cannot comment on them. A loud club this is not.
Best for: small reading pairs who care more about data than discussion.
Hardcover, for the indie crowd
Hardcover is the small, open, developer-friendly option. Half-star ratings, a public API, a roadmap you can vote on, monthly transparency reports.
If you like to poke at your own data, nothing else is this open.
The apps are younger, with no home-screen widgets yet and reviews that come down to one rating. The clubs also run smaller than Fable's.
Best for: tinkerers who want an indie app and an open API.
Seekquel, for clubs and tracking in one place
Here is the one I built. The name is a pun about sequels, because losing my place in a series is what set me off.
Seekquel puts the club and the tracker in the same app, with clubs, buddy reads, and a feed. It also adds five-axis ratings and stats that run live all year. Series tracking points you to the next book. There is a one-time lifetime option, and no ads anywhere. It imports a Goodreads or StoryGraph CSV in a few minutes.
Honesty cuts both ways. Bookclubs has deeper meeting tools, Fable's clubs are larger, and Goodreads has the bigger catalog. We were close to what my wife and I wanted, then built the rest.
If you want the feature-by-feature view, I keep fair write-ups comparing Seekquel with Goodreads, StoryGraph, Fable, and Hardcover.
Best for: readers who want club talk and real tracking without juggling two apps.
How to pick the right one
Match the app to how your club actually runs.
· Run an in-person club with votes and schedules: Bookclubs.
· Join a celebrity or creator-led club: Fable.
· Find a club and book picks together: Novellic.
· Meet your club on video: Bookship.
· Join a huge free group or a niche one: Goodreads.
· Read in quiet pairs and love stats: The StoryGraph.
· Want an open, indie app: Hardcover.
· Keep the club and your tracking together: Seekquel.
Pick two and try them with your real club. Every app here exports a CSV, so moving in takes minutes, and moving on later does too.
A good book club app does two things. It helps you remember what the group read, and it gives you someone to talk to about it. Find the one that does both for your club, then go pick the next book.