Top 10, November 2026The 10 best reading apps for iPhone and Android in 2026

1Close Reader

Best for AI help without spoilers, in any language

Select a word, and a card translates it in this very sentence, not with a dictionary entry three screens long. Select a name, and it reminds you who that is. “Explain” untangles a hard passage, and the chat answers anything about the book. The rule behind all of it: the AI sees the text only up to your page, so it can’t spoil the ending unless you switch to “Whole book” yourself.

Kindle and Google Play Books now give spoiler-free answers too, but only on English books bought in their stores. Close Reader does it with your own DRM-free EPUB, FB2, MOBI, AZW3, PDF and TXT files, in any language, on iPhone and Android, and connects to your own OPDS library: Calibre, Kavita, Komga. Words go to flashcards, notes and highlights export to Markdown.

2Amazon Kindle

Best for buying books

The biggest e-book store and Kindle Unlimited ($11.99 a month), with X-Ray, a dictionary and Wikipedia built in, synced between the app and Kindle e-readers. In 2026 Kindle got AI: “Ask this Book” answers questions and stops at your reading position by default, and “Story So Far” recaps what you’ve read without spoilers.

The fine print: the AI works in the US, for English books, on thousands of bestsellers bought from Amazon, in the iPhone app and on Kindle e-readers; Android is promised later. Your own files come in only through Send to Kindle (EPUB, PDF, TXT and a few more), and on iPhone you buy books in the browser, not in the app.

3Apple Books

Best built-in app for iPhone and iPad

Already on every iPhone, iPad and Mac. It opens your own DRM-free EPUB and PDF files and keeps them in sync through iCloud, with your place, highlights and notes. Select a phrase, and the system translates it.

It stays in Apple’s world: no Android app, no FB2 or MOBI, no OPDS catalogs, and no AI help for reading that we could find. Reviewers say getting your notes out is harder than it should be.

4Google Play Books

Best free cloud for your own EPUB and PDF

The free choice for your own files: upload EPUB and PDF, and they’re in your library on Android, iPhone and the web, with your notes saved to Google Drive. No subscription needed. In 2026 it got Gemini’s Book insights: “Catch me up” recaps the story so far, and you can ask about a highlighted passage, from the text up to your current position only.

Book insights works on English e-books bought or rented in the store, more than a million of them; we found nothing about uploaded files. And it’s EPUB and PDF only, with no OPDS.

5Libby

Best for free library books

Free e-books from your public library: sign in with a library card, borrow, read and give them back, synced across your phone, tablet and the web. It’s the best-rated app here, 4.9 from 4.6 million ratings. Tap a word, and it links out to a dictionary, Wikipedia or Google Translate.

You can’t open your own files, and popular books come with waitlists. Its only AI is “Inspire Me” recommendations, which don’t read the books.

6Kobo Books

Best alternative to Kindle

A store, a subscription and e-readers in one family: Kobo Plus costs $7.99 a month to read or $9.99 to read and listen, and the app syncs with Kobo e-readers. Highlights from Kobo books export on kobo.com as PDF, HTML, TXT or Markdown.

Your own files are second-class: the app imports EPUB, plus PDF on iPhone only, and an imported book stays on that one device unless you pay for Kobo Stack, which works in only a few countries. AI recaps were announced, but we found no launch.

7Moon+ Reader

Best for customization on Android

If you like to tune everything, from fonts and margins to gestures and themes, this is your reader. It opens about twenty formats, EPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW3, FB2, DOCX and comics among them, plugs into dictionary apps and translators, syncs through Dropbox or WebDAV, browses OPDS catalogs and Calibre, and exports highlights to Readwise.

The catch: the free version shows full-screen ads, reading aloud is in Pro ($11.99 once), and it’s Android only. The App Store app with the same name is someone else’s.

8ReadEra

Best free reader with no ads

ReadEra opens nearly anything you’ll find in Downloads: EPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW3, FB2, DOCX, TXT and comics. It’s free with no ads, needs no account, and its App Store privacy label says “Data Not Collected”. Notes and highlights are there, and on iPhone it reads aloud for free.

The paid Premium ($14.99 once) adds a word list and, on Android, sync through Google Drive. OPDS catalogs aren’t listed.

9Readest

Best open-source reader for every device

A young open-source reader that runs everywhere: iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux and the web. It opens EPUB, PDF, MOBI, AZW3, FB2, comics, TXT and Markdown, syncs through its own cloud or with KOReader, browses OPDS catalogs, reads aloud, and translates through DeepL, Google and others.

There’s AI, but a narrow kind: a dictionary in context and word hints, on a paid plan with your own API key. Words go to a list you can export to Anki. Plus costs $4.99 a month, Pro $9.99.

10Readwise Reader

Best for highlights across books and articles

Made for people who highlight everything: books, PDFs and web articles in one place, with export to Markdown, Notion and Obsidian, and reading aloud. Its AI, Ghostreader, defines, explains, translates, summarizes and chats with a document.

It’s subscription only, from $7.99 a month billed yearly, with a 30-day trial. And it isn’t built for novels: its only spoiler guard is in the mobile quick lookup, which Readwise itself says to use “at your own risk”.