The Understory App
Build a better reading habit. Build a better world.
A social reading tracking app that rewards your reading habit by planting real-world and in-app trees
Grow real-life trees
Watch your garden bloom in Understory and meet monthly objectives to grow real-world trees! Visit friends’ gardens daily to help their trees grow!
Interact with friends
Join book groups where you and your friends can read different books! Like and comment on reviews in the social feed!
Track your reading
Review your books with half stars, audiobook tags and private reads! Manage your library with custom reading lists including a Did Not Finish (DNF) list!
Level up your reading
Improve your reading habit with leaderboards for books read, reading streaks, and XP level! Earn XP by logging reading and interacting with other users!
Share book recs
See your friends’ favorite and highly rated books and share book recommendations directly with your friends!
See your stats
Get insights on your reading history and social interactions through shareable stats and graphs and our signature Library Card graphic!
Join Premium
Support the Understory team by joining premium! Premium membership enables access to additional features, most notably growing trees in the real-world!
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Premium Features:
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Growing real-world trees for meeting reading objectives in your garden
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More detailed reading stats and graphs, and multiple social media shareable cards
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Additional tree selections for your garden
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Membership to librarian program to help improve genre accuracy and collect librarian badges
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Unlimited inventory for streak freezes and restores
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Priority customer service and feedback review
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Supporting a small, indie team as we grow Understory!
Monthly membership is $4.99. You can receive 2 months free with an annual plan!
As an indie team, your contribution is critical for us to continue operating. We appreciate your support!
If you are unable to contribute financially at this time, you can support us for free by writing a review on the App Store or Play Store, inviting your friends, and spreading the word about Understory on social media and in your bookish circles!
Partner with Us
We are excited for the opportunity to work with people in the bookish world! For all business inquires, such as book sponsorships, influencer collaborations, charitable organizations and more, please reach out to Jen at jen.obrien@understory-app.com
About Us
Understory was founded by a group of college friends who read a lot growing up but stopped reading as much during our busy college years. After graduating, we wanted to rebuild our reading habit through friendly competition and formed a shared spreadsheet where we could all log our reading!
The group continued to expand and we all saw substantial improvement in our reading frequency! With our backgrounds in computer science, we knew we could build an app to create a better user experience, which formed the basis for Understory.
We knew we wanted to use our platform to make an impact in the world, and environmental conservation is a cause we are passionate about. With the plant-themed foundation, the in-app and real-world trees were the perfect way to tie the charitable contributions to reading progress.
Currently, we work on Understory in addition to our day jobs and graduate school programs. We are excited for you to join our community to build a better reading habit and build a better world!