How to read an editorial score: criteria, weights and ties

What does the score measure?

The score measures fit for getting back into a print book or audiobook without spoilers, not overall app quality. Trackers are not scored against each other; their tracker features are listed as facts. It comes from desk research: public store listings, vendor websites and help pages, checked September 27, 2026. We did not test the apps hands-on or interview the companies. A high score means an app publishes strong features for that job; a low score can also mean a feature exists but is not published on the pages we checked.

What are the five criteria?

• Spoiler safety (weight 30): whether anything the app shows you reveals what happens after your place.
• Getting back into the story (weight 30): page updates, session timers and picking up where you left off in a print book or audiobook.
• Price (weight 15): what is free, what the paid tier costs and whether it is a subscription.
• Logging (weight 15): how fast you can add a book and update progress.
• Privacy (weight 10): what the App Store privacy label says about tracking and linked data.

How do five scores become one total?

Each criterion score is multiplied by its weight, the results are added up, and the sum is divided by 100. The weights add up to 100, and spoiler safety and getting back into the story count most because they are the question itself. The StoryGraph, for example, scores 4 on keeping your place and 8 on logging, and its total comes to 6.30. The full worked example is on How we rank.

Totals are shown to two decimals. Apps with the same total to two decimals share a rank, and on criterion tables a tie is shown as a tie, not broken by a coin toss.

What does each band of scores mean?

• 9-10: the best we found for this job, clearly published.
• 7-8: strong, with a gap or two.
• 5-6: works, with real limits.
• 3-4: basic or partly missing.
• 1-2: not published or not really offered.

A 1 on a criterion usually means the app does not try to do that job. Magic Bookmark scores 1 on stats and goals because it has none, and 10 on keeping your place because that is the one job it is built for. It is not a tracker, and it is ranked in Best apps for getting back into a book without spoilers, where it places 1 of nine.

How should you read a ranking?

1. Pick the two or three criteria you care about most.
2. Read those criterion scores and their one-line reasons on each review page, not just the total.
3. Look at the price lines: two apps with similar scores can cost very different amounts.
4. Check the platforms, since a high score does not help if the app does not run on your phone.
5. If your priorities differ from our weights, open the calculator, move the sliders and watch the ranking change.

What can a score not tell you?

A score cannot tell you whether you will enjoy using an app, whether your friends are on it, or how it feels day to day. It also ages: prices, features and privacy labels change, and we re-check each listing every quarter.

Sources

• How we rank, Best Book Tracker Apps
• Apple App Store, App Privacy explainer