Long stretches of uninterrupted reading time are a luxury not everyone can afford. Even for the most disciplined and voracious reader, life gets in the way of these other imaginary realities. A common piece of reading advice is to “take a book with you wherever you go.” Having a device that allows you to read uninterrupted, like a Kindle, helps. But when that fails, like many self-proclaimed readers, I fall back on reading apps to get my reading done, and as a result, I often read more on my phone than on my Kindle or the book itself.

After experimenting with a variety of reading apps over the years, I still consider the three heavyweights – Google’s Play Books, Amazon’s Kindle, and Apple’s Apple Books – to be the best of the bunch, offering just about the ideal reading experience. But they’re not all created equal. Even among them, there are a few features and conveniences that stand out and, depending on which one best suits your needs, could hand you the crown.

If you’re like me and you read a lot on your smartphone, have you ever wondered which app does it best and which one best suits your reading habits? Here’s a comprehensive comparison of the three.

In order to come to a fair assessment, I went through each app feature by feature. Of course, I gave more weight to some features based on my personal preferences, such as the availability of books, both free and paid, format support, and ease of reading. While I also find other reading features important, such as font customization, page turn animation, and annotations, they are less important to me.