LibraryThing
Ranked 4 of 6 book trackers by recommenders
People recommend it for cataloging books and finding readers whose libraries overlap with theirs, and for its long history.
People recommend it for cataloging books and finding readers whose libraries overlap with theirs, and for its long history.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Better than Amazon and Goodreads
“Librarything is fantastic at it (far better than Amazon).”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Hacker News but for Independent Blogs” “which I find so much better than goodreads”
Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “The Perils of ISBN”
Other book trackers people recommend
The four most recommended other book trackers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goodreads | 17 | 33 | 34% | 8 | — | — |
| Shelvy Books | 9 | 1 | 90% | 2 | — | — |
| Hardcover | 8 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | — |
| LibraryThingThis page | 6 | 1 | 86% | 5 | — | — |
| StoryGraph | 5 | 3 | 63% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I recommend LibraryThing to every book lover I meet.”
“Librarything is fantastic at it (far better than Amazon).”
“LibraryThing has the momentum of time (it's as old as GoodReads and not an Amazon side project)”
“which I find so much better than goodreads”
“Both of which have good coverage on WikiData which also aggregates identifiers”
“LibraryThing has a nice feature where you can find people whose books have the strongest overlap as yours.”
“other services like LibraryThing or Storygraph do expose similar information about book readers”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.