GG vs SavePoint: The Nicer App Isn’t the Smarter One

GG wins the first five minutes. Open it up and it looks like something a design team actually cared about: clean layout, seven status states instead of the usual three, long-press quick actions that feel considered. SavePoint wins everything after that. It doesn’t paywall basic tracking the way GG does, it’s the only one of the two that puts your video games and tabletop games in the same library, and it’s the only one that tries to answer “what do I actually play tonight” instead of just logging what you already played.

If you’re picking a tracker based on which app photographs better in a screenshot, pick GG. If you’re picking one to actually manage a backlog you’ll never finish in this lifetime, pick SavePoint. That’s the whole verdict. Here’s why.

For the wider field (this isn’t the only matchup that matters), I’ve also run the three-way comparison with Backloggd added into the mix, and the full hub if you want every tracker I tested laid out at once.

What GG Does Well

Credit where it’s due. GG’s interface is genuinely one of the nicer ones in this category, sometimes compared favorably to Letterboxd itself, which is the gold standard everyone in this space is chasing. The seven-state system (Playing, Beaten, Completed, Shelved, Abandoned, Want to Play, Wishlist) gives you more honest granularity than the usual playing/finished/backlog split. “Shelved” and “Abandoned” are different things, and most trackers pretend they aren’t.

I want to correct something I got wrong on this site before: GG is not web-only. It has real native apps on iOS (App Store id1320588074, currently v1.11.0) and Android, plus a web version. That was a mistake in an earlier version of the tracker hub post, and it’s fixed now. If a native mobile app is a hard requirement for you, GG clears that bar and SavePoint currently doesn’t.

The free tier also isn’t stingy on paper. Logging, ratings, reviews, basic lists, wishlist tracking, backlog tracking, and a following/activity feed are all free. For someone who just wants to rate and log what they play, GG’s free plan covers the basics.

GG’s Paywall Problem

Here’s where it gets less flattering. GG’s paid tier, called Elite, runs $4.99 a month or $48.99 a year, and it gates things that feel more like basic utility than premium extras: cloning a list, merging two lists, customizing your profile, removing ads, and early access to new features. Multiple App Store reviewers single out the clone/merge gate specifically as aggressive, especially next to Backloggd, which offers similar functionality for free.

The bigger gap, though, is import. GG has no automated import feature on any tier, free or paid. I checked this against GG’s own public feature-request board, where Steam/Xbox/PSN import sits as an open, unshipped request, with users citing libraries of 900 to 1,500 games as the reason they want it. I’ve seen one stray claim online that GG already supports Steam, PSN, Xbox, and Switch import. That claim is false, contradicted by GG’s own feature board and by my own hands-on testing. If you’re starting from an existing library instead of a blank slate, you’re typing in every game by hand.

GG’s social layer is also thinner than Backloggd’s. There’s a following/activity feed and profile history, but no public user count has ever been disclosed, and combined App Store and Google Play ratings sit around 1,400 total, a rough signal that this is a smaller community than Backloggd’s 650,000-plus. Ratings themselves split oddly too: 4.2 out of 5 on the App Store versus 3.8 on Google Play, with Android users specifically flagging polish issues. GG did add a year-in-review “Recap” feature in 2025, which puts it in the same category as SavePoint’s own recap, though I can’t verify the exact depth of stats it includes.

Discovery on GG is browse, trending, and community-signal based. There’s no mood, time, or platform filter, and no HowLongToBeat-style time estimate baked in. If you know what you want to play, that’s fine. If you don’t, GG doesn’t help you figure it out.

What SavePoint Does Instead

SavePoint’s free tier is where the comparison tilts hard. The full catalog, over 35,000 titles (roughly 33,000 video games and 2,000-plus tabletop games), is searchable and trackable for free. So is the Backlog Score, a 0-100 number that scores your backlog’s health with a “dollar tax” sub-metric showing what your unplayed pile is actually costing you, recalculated every night. A one-time Backloggd CSV import is also free, which matters if you’re migrating rather than starting cold.

Pro, at $9 a month or $99 a year, unlocks two things: automated Steam, Xbox, and PSN imports, and the Decision Engine, which takes your mood, available time, and platform and hands back three picks instead of one endless scrollable list. There’s a $149 once lifetime option and a $79-a-year Founding Member rate running right now, both time-limited promos, so check current pricing before you commit to either.

The catalog itself is the other real differentiator: one library for video games and tabletop side by side, not two separate apps or a spreadsheet bridging the gap. If your backlog includes a stack of unplayed board games next to your Steam library, GG and Backloggd both make you track that separately. SavePoint doesn’t.

Neither app has XP, streaks, or badges, for what it’s worth. SavePoint ripped that system out on purpose, on the theory that turning your backlog into a grind defeats the point of having a backlog tool at all. That’s not a point in either app’s favor over the other; it’s just worth knowing neither one is going to gamify your guilt.

Pricing Side by Side

Laid out plainly, since this is usually the part people actually want to skim to:

GG
, Free: logging, ratings, reviews, basic lists, wishlist, backlog tracking, following/activity feed, browsing
, Elite, $4.99/month or $48.99/year: list cloning, list merging, profile customization, ad removal, early access to new features

SavePoint
, Free: full 35,000+ title catalog (video and tabletop in one library), Backlog Score with dollar-tax breakdown, one-time Backloggd CSV import
, Pro, $9/month or $99/year (or a current time-limited Founding Member promo at $149 once for lifetime access, or $79/year): automated Steam, Xbox, and PSN imports, Decision Engine

The shape of the split matters more than the exact numbers. GG paywalls organizational conveniences on top of a free tier that already does the core job of logging and rating. SavePoint paywalls the two features that require ongoing infrastructure on its end (pulling live data from three separate platforms, and running a recommendation engine), while keeping the entire catalog, the health-score system, and the tabletop library free. One company decided cosmetic control was worth charging for. The other decided the actual tracking should never be behind a wall.

Design Comparison, Honestly

I’m not going to pretend SavePoint looks as sharp as GG does today. It doesn’t. GG’s interface has had more design attention, and it shows in the small things: the long-press interactions, the visual hierarchy, the seven-state system that just feels more thought-through than the usual three-bucket approach. If you’re judging on first impression alone, GG wins that round clean.

What SavePoint has instead is a value proposition that GG hasn’t tried to build: the Decision Engine turning “I have 45 minutes and I’m on the couch” into three concrete picks, the Backlog Score turning a vague guilty feeling into an actual number you can watch move, and one unified library instead of a video-game tracker you also have to supplement with something else for tabletop. GG is a better-looking place to log what you played. SavePoint is a more useful place to figure out what to play and how bad your backlog problem actually is.

Who Should Skip SavePoint

Skip SavePoint if a native mobile app is non-negotiable for you today. It doesn’t have one yet, and GG does. Skip it too if you only play video games, never touch tabletop, and don’t care about a unified library, since that’s SavePoint’s headline advantage and it won’t matter to you. And skip it if you’re purely picking a tracker on visual polish; GG simply looks more finished right now.

Who Should Skip GG

Skip GG if you’re bringing an existing library of hundreds of games and don’t want to hand-enter every title, since there’s no automated import on any tier. Skip it if clone/merge, profile customization, and ad removal all sitting behind a monthly fee bothers you on principle, especially when a competitor offers similar functionality free. And skip it if you want an app that tells you what to play instead of just logging what you already played. GG doesn’t have anything like the Decision Engine, and it likely won’t build one soon given a slow update cadence (its last real feature release was mid-2024, with one bug-fix-only update since).

The Honest Math on Which One You’ll Actually Use

Picture the actual moment this decision gets tested: it’s a Tuesday, you’ve got maybe 45 minutes before you need to shower and deal with the rest of your night, and you’re standing in front of a backlog with 80 games in it. GG will show you that list, sorted whichever way you left it, and leave the decision entirely to you. SavePoint’s Decision Engine takes the 45 minutes, your platform, and a mood tag (something like “low-stakes” or “I want to make progress”) and hands back three specific picks instead of one more scroll through everything you own. That’s the difference in practice, not just on a feature chart.

If you’re the kind of player who logs a handful of games a year and cares mostly about the app feeling good to open, GG’s polish will outweigh what it’s missing. Most of the people reading this site aren’t that player, though. You’ve got a backlog that outpaces your free time, probably a mix of platforms and maybe a shelf of unplayed board games too, and what you need isn’t a nicer-looking list. You need something that tells you, honestly, what’s sitting in that backlog, what it’s costing you to keep ignoring it, and what to actually load up tonight. That’s the gap GG hasn’t tried to close, and it’s the whole reason SavePoint exists.

For more on how SavePoint stacks up against the biggest name in this space, my Backloggd vs GG vs SavePoint breakdown runs all three side by side. And if you want my full hands-on notes on GG specifically, that’s in my GG App Review.

If you’re curious what SavePoint actually does with your library, SavePoint is free to try, no card required for the free tier.

Before You Go

TAG Pro launches December 1: ad-free gaming media for people who game like adults, with real time constraints and a backlog they’re not ashamed of. Founding seats are open now at twoaveragegamers.com/founding.

If you’d rather argue about backlog trackers with actual humans instead of reading one more comparison post, come do it in our Discord.