ARC platforms compared: cost, completion, and who each one is for

There is no best ARC platform. There's a platform that fits your genre, your budget, and whether you're optimising for review volume or review credibility — and those pull in different directions often enough that the question "which one should I use?" usually has a two-part answer.

Below is the comparison, with a note on how much to trust each number. We've flagged which figures we checked against the vendor's own published page and which come from third-party roundups, because ARC platform pricing changes quietly and often.

The comparison

Pricing current as of July 2026, taken from each vendor's own published ratesBookSirens pricingBooksproutHidden GemsEdelweiss — except NetGalley, which does not publish a public price page; its $575 six-month rate is quoted directlyNetGalley. Edelweiss+ rates have applied since 1 February 2025 and Hidden Gems' since September 2018. Confirm pricing with any vendor before you commit money. Per-platform completion rates other than BookSirens' come from a single documented campaignIllene — one book, one genre, one author's list.

How to read those completion rates

Four of the five completion figures above come from the same source: a six-week romantasy launch that ran across all of them simultaneously.Illene That's unusually useful, because same-book-same-window comparisons remove the variables that make most platform claims incomparable. It's also a sample of one. A thriller or a business book would produce a different ranking.

The one number that isn't from that campaign is BookSirens' site-wide 75%, which is the platform's own published average across its reader community — and they state plainly that individual books range from over 90% down to below 50%.BookSirens Treat it as a well-run platform's ceiling, not a promise.

We go deeper into which denominator each of these percentages uses — and why that's where most arguments about ARC review rates come from — in what the data actually says about ARC review rates.

Consumer platforms vs trade platforms

The single most common expensive mistake is buying a trade platform when you wanted consumer reviews.

NetGalley and Edelweiss+ are trade tools. Their audiences are librarians, booksellers, retail buyers, wholesalers, and reviewers — people making stocking and selection decisions.NetGalleyEdelweiss The feedback they generate is valuable, but it's not primarily a pile of Amazon star ratings, and if that's what you thought you were buying, a several-hundred-dollar listing fee will feel like a poor trade.

BookSirens, Booksprout, and Hidden Gems are consumer tools. Their audiences are readers who will post on Amazon and Goodreads. For a self-published commercial novel that needs star ratings live on launch day, this is almost always the right category.

You are buying readers, not reviews

This distinction is the one that catches people out, and Hidden Gems states it more plainly than anyone: it does not guarantee how many readers will review, will not refund the gap between readers and reviews, and does not guarantee a star rating.Hidden Gems That isn't evasiveness. Guaranteeing reviews or ratings in exchange for payment would breach Amazon's terms and several review platforms' rules, so a service promising it is a service to walk away from.

The practical consequence is that every price in the table above is a price per reader. To get a price per review, multiply by a completion rate — and completion is the one number you don't control at purchase.

Arithmetic on published pricesBookSirens pricingHidden GemsBooksprout combined with completion rates from a single campaignIllene. Illustrative only — your completion rate is the variable, and it is the one nobody will guarantee you.

Two structural details worth knowing before you order. Hidden Gems bills only for readers who actually sign up — in increments of five, and with the $20 deposit covering your first ten — so a campaign that under-fills costs you less rather than leaving you holding an unused minimum.Hidden Gems Booksprout, being a flat monthly subscription, gets cheaper per review the more you run through it, which is why it suits high-volume genres.

Picking one

• Commercial fiction, reviews needed fast and cheap: start with BookSirens or Hidden Gems.
• Series fiction with a Kindle Unlimited strategy: add Booksprout for volume; its deadline enforcement suits genres where readers move quickly.
• Nonfiction, business, or literary: a handful of credible names beats raw volume. NetGalley, or a private list run through a delivery tool, will serve you better than a high-volume consumer platform.
• Aiming at bookstores and libraries: that's what Edelweiss+ and NetGalley's trade audience are for.Above the Treeline

Our fuller breakdown by category is in the ARC playbook by genre.

The thing every platform leaves you holding

Whichever you choose, the platform's job ends at its own boundary. Reader identities don't reconcile across services — the same person is a different handle on NetGalley, BookSirens, Goodreads, and Amazon. A reader who ghosted you on one platform can request on another next launch and you'd never know. And when the campaign closes, the relationship generally stays with the platform rather than with you.

That's the gap ArcRoster is built for: one roster you own that survives the campaign, a reliability score that follows each reader across launches regardless of where you found them, and per-copy fingerprinting so a leaked file can be traced to the reader it was issued to. Most authors pair it with a discovery platform rather than replacing one — find readers there, keep them here. There's a fuller version of that argument in our Booksprout vs StoryOrigin comparison.