Does Goodreads Have Half-Star Ratings?

The Short Answer: Yes, Since October 2026

Goodreads now supports half and quarter stars. It announced the change on October 5, 2026, in a blog post titled "The (Half) Stars Have Aligned," so a book can be a 3.5, a 3.75 or a classic whole-star 4.

It's a reversal. In an October 2024 reply on its help forum, Goodreads said it had "no plans to implement half star ratings," citing the complexity they would add to its rating system. Half stars had been the site's most requested feature since at least 2013.

The new ratings work on the Goodreads website and in the latest versions of the iPhone and Android apps, so update the app if you don't see them.

How to Give a Half or Quarter Star on Goodreads

Open the book's page and tap or click the stars as usual. Then slide to fine-tune: the rating moves in quarter steps, so you can land on 3.25, 3.5 or 3.75 as well as a whole number.

If you rate books on a Kindle, Goodreads' own advice is to rate there as usual and then refine the rating on Goodreads afterwards.

Can't see half stars? Update the Goodreads app first: the new ratings only work in the latest iPhone and Android versions. If they still don't appear, rate on the Goodreads website, which got them at launch, and the rating will show in the app too.

What Happens to Your Old Ratings

Nothing, unless you change them. Every rating you've already given stays exactly as it was, and you can update any of them to a half or quarter star at any time.

If you used the old workarounds, now is the time to clean up. Readers who wrote their real rating at the top of a review ("3.5 stars") or kept a custom shelf like "3-5-stars" can work through that shelf, set the real rating, and delete the shelf when they're done. If you never tracked your in-between books, start with your 3s and 4s: those are the books most likely to have been rounded.

To see where to start, drop your Goodreads export into our free Goodreads Wrapped tool. It shows how your ratings are spread across the stars and how they compare with the Goodreads average, so you can see how many 3s and 4s you have to revisit.

Book averages may shift a little over the coming months as readers go back and re-rate the books they rounded.

Why Half Stars Matter More Than They Sound Like They Should

The gap between 3 and 4 stars is bigger than it looks. Goodreads' own labels put 3 stars at "liked it" and 4 at "really liked it," and most books you enjoy land somewhere between the two. A scale that can't express the middle flattens your taste into two blunt buckets.

Precise ratings aren't pedantry; they're memory. When you look back at a year of reading, a 3.5 versus a 4 tells you something real about which books to recommend, which authors to return to, and what your taste is actually doing.

How Goodreads Now Compares With Other Book Apps

Goodreads has caught up with most of its rivals. Hardcover, Fable, Bookly, Bookmory, LibraryThing and the open-source Openreads rate in half stars, and The StoryGraph in quarter stars, the same precision Goodreads now offers.

Parch still goes further: it rates to two decimal places, so a book can be a 4.73 or a 4.92 rather than the nearest quarter. If a quarter star is precise enough for you, rating precision is no longer a reason to leave Goodreads; the bigger differences now are privacy, reading statistics and how each app fits your daily reading. Our guide to the best Goodreads alternatives compares them.

How Parch's Ratings Work

In Parch, you drag in quarter stars, just like Goodreads, then fine-tune to the hundredth if you want to, so a 3.75 can become the 3.8 it really was, or a 4.92 for the book that was almost perfect.

Because Parch is private by default, those ratings are yours alone: no public average to nudge you toward the crowd, no followers watching. Ratings sit alongside your notes, quotes, streaks and a calendar view of every day you've read, and Parch imports your Goodreads library in one step if you want to try it, keeping your new half and quarter stars exactly as you gave them; our Goodreads export guide walks through getting the file.