The Readly app displayed on a tablet. Picture: Readly
“All you can read” magazine and newspaper app Readly’s merger with a French equivalent is set to enhance its mobile app and support the business to increase investment.
Readly has undergone multiple strategic divestments since Press Gazette last spoke to the app in 2024, when it had just entered profitability for the first time in its adjusted EBITDA in Q3 and Q4 of 2023 .
Readly then reported full-year profitability for the first time a year later , with revenue of SEK 725.3 million (£60.8m) and gross profit of SEK 292.4 million (£24m), for the 12 months ending December 2024 .
A price increase in different markets also “helped us get to profitability”, said head of content Chloe Rushmere (the app costs £12.99 per month in the UK, increasing from £9.99).
Partnered with 1,200 publishers, Readly offers 8,200 magazines and 360 newspapers. UK partners include major newspapers, such as Reach-owned titles and The Guardian, while magazine partners include big names such as Conde Nast and Immediate.
The app currently has 427,200 full-paying subscribers overall per its third quarter to September 2025.
Swedish media company Bonnier acquired 96% of Readly’s shares, which was then followed by “all you can read” French magazine platform Cafeyn buying up “basically all the non-Nordics” businesses of Readly’s from Bonnier in November 2025 as part of a strategic partnership, said Rushmere.
Cafeyn had already acquired its French business in November 2024 . Cafeyn’s involvement does not mean it is a shareholder, having only been involved in a business asset transfers. Cafeyn operates Readly in France and the non-nordics, keeping the Readly brand in some markets. Bonnier is currently the main owner of Readly , now holding 100% of shares in the company.
Readly has “started to invest” in itself again, said Rushmere.
“And that’s really helped us from warming up subscribers to [establishing] what Readly really is… before then try and convert them, which has been really helpful in effective marketing spend and therefore overall profitability.”
Once its France-based partnership has “settled” after the first half of 2026, Rushmere said the company is looking to initiate “a big investment in marketing and growth”.
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Enhancing its mobile app experience
Readly’s merger with Cafeyn will play a part in enhancing its mobile app experience, according to Rushmere.
Tablets still dominated issue-reading on Readly in 2025 (82%), while article reading was higher on mobile (43%), showing that on-the-go content was more suited to smaller screens.
“Once we move to Cafeyn’s tech and interface, they are even more agile from a mobile perspective and offer more in terms of podcast, video content, just functionality within an app, like [with] puzzles,” said Rushmere.
The Readly app has already seen “a lot of changes”.
“We’re making the platform more set up for mobile reading. We have audio articles now… so that really is something you can use on the go.”
Readly’s text-to-speech feature has been “adopted by the current subscriber base… driving more consistent and regular engagement”, particularly from its younger audience base. The app also moved into family subscriptions, allowing up to five subscriptions per household for no extra charge.
Obtaining readers that publishers ‘can’t win back themselves’
Readly obtains subscribers through social media and print advertising. Readers are also targeted through brand partnership, for example as a Mcdonald’s reward partner on its Monopoly game and through Spotify ads.
This year, Readly has trialled radio advertising, “which has performed really nicely”, said Rushmere.
Rushmere said these can be readers that publishers have previously lost as subscribers, and “can’t win back themselves directly, so they’ll target them with a Readly subscription message”.
Where publishers see “subscribers leaving them and high churn rates or lapsed subscribers… they’re now using Readly as the final stage in their comms, because they know they can try to win that readership back”, said Rushmere.
Rushmere added the app works in landing the snippet readers and “more of a casual audience” that are hard to target as a standalone title.
This is demonstrated to publishers with “data matches” to show that Readly’s readership and a publisher’s readership can be “a very different type of audience that the publisher will not reach and monetise in any other way”, said Rushmere.
The app acts as an “additional revenue stream” for publishers, said Rushmere, paying them a share of revenue based on reader engagement metrics, such as the amount of time users spend with their content.
As of 2024, around 60% of company revenue was going to partner publishers, according to Readly CEO Philip Lindqvist, with Readly keeping about 40% to pay for marketing, customer acquisition, product development and more.
“The number of publishers that work with us [grew] very steadily over the last few years,” said Rushmere, describing Readly’s audience as “highly engaged readers”, consuming 20 minutes of content a day at an average age of 45-plus – though this can “dramatically” change title to title.
Its approach to its readership has changed over time, leading it to “really looking at bringing on quality readers” that would remain subscribed.
Chloe Rushmere was appointed as Readly’s head of content in October 2025. Picture: Readly
Using push notifications to retain readers
In order to keep subscribers, Readly uses push notifications that are “targeted based on their readership behaviour”, adding this helps drive discoverability.
For example, a Cosmopolitan reader will see push notifications for content from similar titles like Good Housekeeping.
Rushmere claimed Readly can also benefit publishers by providing a “direct-to-subscription pathway”, eventually boosting a publisher’s owned subscribers.
“We warm up those readers so much so that then we’re happy that they would go back across to our publishers directly,” said Rushmere.
Another perk Readly offers is feedback insights, such as to “test certain headlines”, said Rushmere. This is particularly beneficial to print-only issues, where dwell times can be seen for specific pages.
How can publishers perform well on Readly?
Popular content on Readly has largely included archived material, particularly special editions and coverage of milestone events.
Asked how a publisher can see success on the app, Rushmere said: “Where they can support us with exclusive content or archival content, and we can do a big song and dance from marketing perspective about that content.”
She added: “Every two issues in ten [read] on Readly are back issues… in the same way I’d go onto Netflix and watch old comfort shows, people seem to really go onto Readly and read old archived content… we see a lot of this with Royals content… [and] wedding issues.”
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