Can you move your Goodreads library to ReadersGuild?

Yes. Export your Goodreads library as a CSV from the Goodreads website, then import it. Your currently-reading, read and want-to-read shelves come across, along with your ratings and the dates you finished books. Custom shelves and long reviews do not.

Does ReadersGuild have half-star or quarter-star ratings?

Quarter stars. Ratings run 1 to 5 in steps of 0.25, so you can give a book 3.75. Goodreads only allows whole stars, which is one of the most common reasons readers look elsewhere.

Does Goodreads track reading time or reading speed?

No. Goodreads records progress by page or percent when you update it manually. There is no session timer and no reading-speed measurement. ReadersGuild is built around a timer that runs while you read.

Is ReadersGuild free?

It is free to start. There is a Premium tier for extras like a fresh recommendation deck every day and the year-over-year comparison in your wrap. Tracking your reading, your library and your sessions does not cost anything.

Comparison

ReadersGuild vs Goodreads.

Goodreads is a catalog and a review site. ReadersGuild is a reading tracker built around sessions: a one-tap timer, quarter-star ratings, a monthly and yearly wrap, and fires, which are rooms where friends read their own books at the same time. Goodreads still has the larger catalog and twenty years of reviews.

What is the difference between ReadersGuild and Goodreads?

	Goodreads	ReadersGuild
Reading sessions	No session timer. You mark progress by page or percent when you remember.	A one-tap timer that runs while you read. Every session is logged and becomes a share card.
Ratings	Whole stars only, 1 to 5.	Quarter stars, 1 to 5 in 0.25 steps, so 3.75 is a rating you can actually give.
Reading goals	One challenge a year, counted in books, so a novella and a 900-page epic score the same.	A path through each book with named stops sized to its length. No due dates, nothing to fall behind on.
Your year in reading	Books read and covers. No genre or author breakdown in the year-end summary.	A monthly and a yearly wrap, revealed one number at a time and ending on a card built to share.
Reading with people	Groups and comment threads, organised around discussion.	Fires: a room up to twenty friends drop into with a code, everyone reading their own book at once.
Recommendations	Suggestions drawn from your ratings and shelves.	A deck of ten a day. Each card names the book of yours it came from and why it is there.
Platforms	Web, iOS and Android.	iOS. Android is on the way, and there is no web app.
Price	Free.	Free to start, with a Premium tier.

What does Goodreads do better?

The catalog. Goodreads has been cataloguing books since 2007 and nothing else comes close, including us.
Twenty years of reviews. If you choose books by reading what other people wrote about them, that corpus is the product, and it cannot be rebuilt.
It works on the web and on Android today. ReadersGuild is an iPhone app.
Your friends are already on it. That is a real reason to stay, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
It is owned by Amazon, so it plugs into Kindle. Nothing we do will match that.

Why do readers look for a Goodreads alternative?

Not our characterisation. These are the complaints readers and designers have published, with sources, so you can check them rather than take our word.

The interface has barely changed since 2007, and its first meaningful redesign in about twenty years still left the feed slow and desktop and mobile out of parity.
Goodreads' first redesign in 20 years, Bootcamp
Type runs small, spacing is tight, and accessibility improvements have been minimal.
Goodreads: A Case Study in Outdated UX, Sarah Price

Can you move your Goodreads library across?

Yes, and you should take a copy either way. Export your library as a CSV, and your shelves, ratings and dates read come with you. Custom shelves and long reviews do not.

How to export your Goodreads library, step by step

Bring your shelves. Keep your ratings.

ReadersGuild opens soon, and it reads your Goodreads export on day one.

Join the waitlist

Questions

ReadersGuild and Goodreads.

If you want to track how much you actually read, session by session, and see it add up, yes. If you mainly use Goodreads to browse reviews and search a huge catalog, Goodreads is still better at that and probably always will be.