Hamsterra vs Prolific Works

100 readers per campaign, 100 invitation emails in any 30 days, 500 MiB of files, 1 pen name. No time limit.

Basic is “Free Forever”: unlimited giveaways and claims, reader support, 1 pen name and author page. No mailing-list collection on Basic.

No trial: the Free plan has no end date.

A 30-day Plus and Pro trial is documented in help articles from 2018 and 2021; whether it is offered today is not stated. “2 Months Free” is the yearly discount.

Subscription: Stash €8 a month before VAT (UK consumers: €9.60 including 20% VAT), Hoard €15 a month before VAT (UK consumers: €18 including 20% VAT). No per-book or per-reader fees.

Flat subscription: Plus USD$20 a month or $200 a year, Pro USD$50 a month or $500 a year. No per-book or per-reader fee is stated.

Open sign-up after email verification. No book approval before publishing.

Open sign-up; the author uploads an EPUB and chooses a primary genre. Community Guidelines apply.

Invitations to readers who opted in on Hamsterra, counted against the invitation limit. No import of an existing contact list.

“Share Privately” giveaways for ARC readers and street teams: link-only, 500 copies by default, editable. Described in help articles from 2018–2019.

Published campaigns appear in the public ARC catalogue while eligible for listing. No paid promotion.

Public unlimited giveaways on every plan are eligible for extra promotion; Plus and Pro add “acceleration to the right readers”. Promotion is not guaranteed.

No private, link-only or invite-only campaign setting.

Private giveaways are link-only on all plans. A password option on paid plans is described in a 2019 help article and was not re-checked.

The author approves or declines each application, manually or automatically, with an optional form.

Readers claim a book with a name and email; a reader application or author approval step is not publicly confirmed. Group organisers approve books, not readers.

Contacts with consent history and tags; CSV export of eligible contacts who opted into the author’s reader list; blocked readers. No contact import or notes.

Plus and Pro: subscriber list account-wide or per giveaway, CSV export, MailerLite or Mailchimp sync. Tags, notes and import are not publicly confirmed.

EPUB and PDF download. No browser reading, no Send to Kindle, no audiobooks.

The author uploads an EPUB. Readers download the file, email it to themselves, or move it to an ereader app with the Prolific Works app.

Readers add up to 10 review links; reminder rules. Self-reported, not checked on review sites.

Review links, reminders and review tracking for authors are not publicly confirmed; a reader help page only says where to post reviews.

Up to 5,000 characters with any result.

Not described on the official pages read.

1 open magnet on Free; 5 or 20 on paid plans.

Adding claimants to a mailing list, with optional or mandatory opt-in, is Plus and Pro only. Giveaways with mandatory opt-in are not promoted.

5 giveaways at a time on Free; on paid plans the limit follows the giveaway rating.

Authors can create or join group giveaways; organisers accept or decline submissions. Which plan is needed to create or join is not stated.

Each campaign copy shows the reader’s name and a Copy ID; a free-book copy shows the reader’s email. Not DRM.

Optional “DRM” (the service’s term) on all plans: 2018 and 2020 help articles describe a page naming the claimant and a code in the file. Not re-checked.

Last 30 days on Free; 12 months, sources and CSV export on paid plans.

Giveaway stats (“Track giveaway success”) are Plus and Pro. Group giveaway organisers see views, clicks and claims; the plan for that is not stated.