Shelf Help Join the waitlist

On any phone or computer

Catalog, find and lend the books you own

Know which books you own, where each one is, and who borrowed it. For families, churches and small groups.

Join the waitlist See how it works See pricing

Free to join · One email when your place is ready

Gold line drawing of a family reading by the fire in their living room: a mother in a wing chair, a father and child on the sofa, a grandfather with a book, a child on the rug and a sleeping dog.

How it works

Three things it does

  1. 01 / 03

    Stop buying books you already own

    Scan the barcodes on a stack, or bring in a Goodreads or LibraryThing export.

  2. 02 / 03

    Find any book in seconds

    Type a few letters, typos and all. It shows the shelf, like “Kids’ room, by the window.”

  3. 03 / 03

    Lend a book and get it back

    Note who has it. They get an email before it’s due and if it runs late.

Features

What Shelf Help does

Choose one, or use the arrow keys

01 / 09

Scan a barcode

Point your phone at the barcode, and the title, author and cover fill in.

Who it’s for

For homes, churches and small groups

Three generations of a family reading together on a sofa, in front of a home bookshelf.

01 / 02 · At home

Families

Every shelf in the house on one list, and a link the family can browse.

A small group of adults sitting together in a bright living room, talking.

02 / 02 · A shared shelf

Churches and small groups

One person keeps the lending shelf. Loans get due dates, and email reminders if you add an address.

Pricing

Free to start, Plus if you need more

Pay for Plus

Free

$0

For one home library

  • 1 library of up to 200 books
  • Barcode scanning, search and spreadsheets
  • Lending, with up to 10 reminder emails a day
  • Family share link
  • Your last 50 versions kept
Join the waitlist

No card needed

Recommended

Plus

$5 a month

For big collections and shelf photos

  • Up to 20 libraries of 10,000 books each
  • Shelf photo import, up to 300 photos a day
  • Photograph a shelf again to see what’s new, gone or moved
  • Up to 25 reminder emails a day
  • Your last 300 versions kept
  • Everything in Free
Join the waitlist

14 days free, with up to 150 shelf photos. A card is needed for the trial.

Founding

$99 once

Plus for good, one payment

  • Everything in Plus
  • About two years of yearly Plus, paid once
  • 500 places
  • Export any time, on any plan
Join the waitlist

Cancel any time and keep every book. Export whenever you like.

Questions

Common questions

  • Who can see my library?

    Only you, unless you send a share link, and borrowers’ names stay private even then. Cloudflare runs the site, its robot check and its email. Stripe takes payments, and your browser gets book details and covers from Open Library. Shelf photos go to Google’s Gemini to be read. We don’t keep them, but on our current plan Google may use them to improve its products, so photograph only your books.

  • What if I stop paying?

    You move to Free, and no book is deleted. Extra libraries become read-only, and only your last 50 versions are kept.

  • Do borrowers need an account?

    No. You note their name, and their email if you want reminders sent.

  • What if a photo misses books?

    Tell it roughly how many books are there, and it says how many it missed. Spines it can’t confirm are listed with a picture.

  • Can two of us manage it?

    Not yet. One account runs each library. Everyone else browses on the share link, with no sign-up.

Join

Catalog, find and lend your books

Shelf Help opens soon. We’re letting people in a few at a time, and we’ll send one email when your place is ready.

Free to join · One email when your place is ready

Gold line drawing of a woman at her front door handing a book to a friend, her child beside her holding another book and the dog looking up.