Never buy the same book twice

Verso is an offline catalogue for people who collect books. Scan one in the shop and it answers the only question that matters while you are standing there.

You own this

A different edition, added March 2025. On the shelf in the office.

The verdict arrives with no connection, because your catalogue is on your phone and not on someone's server.

Free. iPhone and iPad. Android is not out yet.

The Verso collection screen, showing owned books as a grid of covers. — Your shelf, with the covers doing the work.

The Verso Pro screen, showing the one-time unlock and what it includes. — One optional purchase, bought once.

Verso settings, showing backup, export and import options. — Export whenever you like. It is your catalogue.

What it does

Answers the question you actually have. Not "search your library" but "do I already own this, in any edition?" Scan the barcode and it tells you, along with what you paid and where you shelved it.
Keeps a wishlist that is useful in a shop. Mark what you are hunting, and a scan tells you when the book in your hand is on it.
Remembers what you passed on. So you do not pick up, consider, and put down the same book three visits running.
Stays yours. No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no ads. The catalogue lives on your device and exports to a file whenever you want one.

The books that do not scan

Older, secondhand and small-press books often have no usable barcode, and that is exactly where a catalogue earns its keep. Verso adds them by title with no ISBN at all, reads a cover or a printed ISBN from a photograph, and lets you set your own cover image when no catalogue has one.

Nothing about that is behind the purchase except the photo capture. Adding a book without an ISBN is free, permanently.

What it costs

The app is free, and the parts that matter stay free: unlimited books, the scan verdict, and backup and export. There is one optional purchase, Verso Pro, bought once and never again, which adds photo add-by-cover and the full theme library.

Nothing you have already catalogued is ever taken away or moved behind a purchase.

Support and privacy

Questions and bug reports go to [email protected], and every message gets a reply. The support page answers the common ones. Verso collects nothing; the privacy policy is short because there is little to say.