Does Goodreads have half stars now?

The release note on the US App Store opens with "Half Star Ratings are here" and calls them "your most requested feature", followed by bug fixes and improvements. Until now, Goodreads ratings were whole stars only, which pushed many readers to round a 3.5 up or down, or to note the half star in the review text.

The same app now has a Did Not Finish shelf (version 4.34.0, 26 March 2026), so you can mark books you abandoned on purpose instead of leaving them on Currently Reading.

For your own records, they make your ratings more honest: a book you liked but would not reread is not the same as a favorite. For recommendations, finer ratings give an app more signal about what you enjoy. And for readers who moved to other trackers because of whole stars, it removes one reason to leave.

• Goodreads: free, more than 150 million members by its own count, the yearly Reading Challenge, book club groups, a Book Scanner, and now half stars and a DNF shelf.
• The StoryGraph: free core app with detailed charts, Goodreads import including your did-not-finish shelf, and Kobo sync. Plus is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year.
• Hardcover: free core app with lists, goals and stats, and a public, private or friends-only profile. Supporter is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year.
• Bookly: a session timer with stats and goals; Pro from $4.99 a month.

Our best reading tracker app page names a pick and the catch for each, and our sister site Best Book Tracker Apps compares trackers in depth.

If half stars were your only complaint, it is worth another look, especially if your friends are there. If you left for stats, mood-based discovery or Kobo sync, The StoryGraph still does more of that. Neither one recaps the story for you when you come back to a book after a break; for that, see how to get back into a book you stopped reading.

Write down what each step means to you, once, and stick to it. A simple scale: 5 for a book you would press on friends, 4 for one you enjoyed and would recommend with a caveat, 3 for fine but forgettable, 2 for one you finished out of stubbornness, 1 for one you regret. The half stars then mark the books that sit between two of those.

Rate soon after you finish. A rating given months later mostly records how well you remember the ending. And keep the half star for books that genuinely sit between two steps, or every book drifts to 3.5.

Only the ones you remember clearly, and only if it helps you. If you use ratings to get recommendations, re-rating a handful of favorites and disappointments is enough to give the app better signal. Re-rating a whole shelf is a weekend you will not get back.

If you also use a second tracker, keep the scales the same, so a 3.5 means the same thing in both. Our best reading tracker app page explains how the trackers differ beyond ratings.