Kindle “Ask this Book” vs. BookBuddy
· BookBuddy
In December 2025 Amazon added a feature to the Kindle app called Ask this Book. You highlight a passage or type a question, and it answers about the plot, the characters and the themes of the book you are reading. By default it only uses the part of the book you have already read.
That is also what BookBuddy does. So if you are looking at both, the useful question is not which one talks about books. It is which books, on which devices, and in which language.
What Ask this Book is
Amazon describes it as a reading assistant that answers "questions about plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements without disrupting your reading flow." According to the coverage at launch, answers stop at your reading position by default, and you can switch it to use the whole book if you want.
What it covers, going by Amazon's announcement and the reporting at launch:
- Books: "thousands of best-selling English-language eBooks" from the Kindle store, purchased or borrowed. Amazon has not said it works with documents you send to your Kindle yourself, and nothing we found suggests it does.
- Where: it launched in the Kindle app for iOS in the US. Kindle e-readers and the Android app were reported to follow in 2026; Amazon's own pages have the current list.
- Language: English-language titles.
- Price: Amazon has not named a separate price for it.
If every book you read is an English Kindle bestseller and you read on an iPhone in the US, Ask this Book is right there, and there is no reason to add another app.
What BookBuddy is
BookBuddy is a reader and a chat in one, running in your browser on a phone, tablet or laptop. You bring the book:
- EPUB files you upload. Any EPUB without DRM, whatever store or archive it came from.
- Your tolino account. Connect an account from a tolino bookshop (Thalia, Hugendubel, Osiander, bücher.de, eBook.de, Orell Füssli and the independent tolino shops), and BookBuddy brings across your library, your highlights and your reading position. Books with DRM show up in the list, but cannot be imported.
The book text behind every answer is bounded by your bookmark. Every passage of the book the chat reads ends before your current page, and if you ask about the ending, it tells you it cannot go there yet and offers what it can talk about instead. There is no setting that turns this off.
Answers come in the language of the book by default, so a German novel gets German answers.
Side by side
| Kindle Ask this Book | BookBuddy | |
|---|---|---|
| Books | Selected English-language Kindle store titles, bought or borrowed | Your own DRM-free EPUBs, plus DRM-free books from a tolino account |
| Where | Launched in the Kindle app for iOS (US); e-readers and Android reported for 2026 | Any modern browser: phone, tablet, laptop |
| Language | English | The language of the book, by default |
| Spoilers | Stops at your reading position by default; can be switched to the whole book | Always stops at your reading position |
| Kindle books | Yes | No |
| Price | No separate price announced | Free plan; paid plans for more daily messages |
Which one to use
Use Ask this Book if your books come from the Kindle store and you read them in the Kindle app. BookBuddy cannot open Kindle books today; they are locked to Amazon's apps.
Use BookBuddy if your books are EPUBs, if you buy them from a tolino shop, or if you read in a language other than English. That is exactly the gap Ask this Book leaves open, and it is the one BookBuddy was built for.
Either way, the idea is the same, and a good one: an AI that talks about your book should know where you are in it.