For antiquarian book collectors
Catalogue every book. Record every binding. Keep it off the cloud.
ClearBench is a native desktop app for collectors of rare, pre-1900, and finely-bound books. The fields are the ones a bibliographer would expect to see, and none of it lives on someone else's server.
[ Detail view of a folio + bookplate label ]
Three things, done well.
Editions, bindings, formats, provenance. The things that distinguish your copy from another. ClearBench treats each as a first-class field.
A real catalogue
Title, author, publisher, place of publication, year, edition, language, ISBN (when present), binding, format, pagination, illustrations, dust-jacket flag, condition, and provenance. Every field a bibliographer would look for.
Bookplates and shelf labels
Six bundled templates at 50×40mm, which works for bookplates, shelf-end labels, and exhibition cards. Title, author, year, your collection number. Print exact-size PDFs on your own printer. Design a house style, save it for everything.
Off the cloud
Your library, valuations, provenance chains, and acquisition stories stay on your computer. A serious antiquarian collection is exactly what doesn't belong on a third party's server.
Built for bibliography, not generic cataloguing.
The fields are the ones you'd see on a serious bookseller's description card, drawn from how the trade actually describes a copy.
Your library isn't for searching.
A serious antiquarian library, particularly with high-spot first editions, is the kind of asset you'd rather not advertise. Catalogue numbers, condition, and valuations stay local.
Stored on your device only
Every book, photo, condition note, and price sits on your computer. No upload, no copy on any server, no third-party access, including ours.
No analytics on your records
We don't track which authors you search, which dealers you buy from, or which titles you track.
Insurance schedules stay yours
The PDF valuation schedule lives on your hard drive until you choose to email it to your insurer or executor.
Backups stay yours
Full-catalogue backups are plain .clearbench JSON files you save where you want: your hard drive, an encrypted external, your own cloud. For day-to-day work, export any collection straight out to CSV, Excel, plain text, or a vCard for contacts, then round-trip back in after a bulk edit. The format is documented and stable.
No lock-in
If we vanish tomorrow, your collection is still yours, in a format you can re-import into other tools. The .clearbench backup file is plain JSON that opens in any text editor; the CSV, Excel, and plain-text exports open in tools you already have.
One price when it launches. Everything in.
No tiers, no upsells, no monthly billing. Every paying user gets every feature.
all in, no upsells
Pay in your local currency at checkout — we'll convert automatically.
- Six professional label templates, fully editable on a free-positioning canvas
- Build a catalogue around any collection: pick a starter or design your own field set
- Drag-and-drop photo gallery, plus add photos from your phone over local WiFi
- Type-aware fields with smart defaults per collection type
- Sharp, exact-size PDFs for printing
- Real macOS and Windows app with fast launch, native menus and keyboard shortcuts, dark mode that follows your OS, and no browser tab eating your RAM
- Local backups you control: export and restore the whole catalogue as one file
- All updates free for the licence year
30-day money-back guarantee · macOS and Windows · Your data stays on your device
First launch walks you through setting up your first collection in three short steps.
Common questions from book collectors.
Does it record edition, format, and binding properly?
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Yes. Edition is its own free-text field (so you can write 'first edition, second issue' or 'Folger 1623, third folio' without truncating). Format is a dropdown: folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo, sextodecimo. Binding is a separate dropdown for cloth, leather, half-leather, boards, wraps, vellum, or unbound. Each maps onto how booksellers and bibliographers actually describe a copy.
How does it handle pagination and illustrations?
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Pagination is a free-text field that takes the bibliographer's notation, like '[viii], 320, [4] pp.', without forcing it into a numeric field. Illustrations is similar: 'frontispiece + 12 plates' rather than a number-only field that would lose the structure. Both are searchable.
Provenance and ex libris?
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Provenance is a dedicated long-text field for chain of ownership. Ex collection is a separate structured field for the previous-owner attribution that goes on the catalogue card. Both render on labels if you want them to.
AbeBooks or rare-book-database integration?
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Not today. ClearBench imports CSV files (per-collection round-trip), but a live API integration with any rare-book service isn't built. The plan is to keep all data on your computer rather than maintain a constantly-connected sync, which would compromise the privacy model.
Selling, not just collecting?
ClearBench has a full dealer side: a stock list kept separate from your collection, show mode that tracks every sale from setup to pack-up, sales and ROI reports, and price-tag sheets from the same label engine. Same app, same privacy, no extra purchase.
See the dealer toolsAlso built for
ClearBench works the same way for every collection type.
For mineral collectors
IMA species names, Mindat locality + minID, crystal data
For coin collectors
Mints, grades, slab numbers
For stamp collectors
Scott / Michel / SG, condition
For fossil collectors
Ages, formations, prep history
For dealers
Show mode, stock, sales reports, label sheets
For watch collectors
References, calibres, service history
For vinyl collectors
Pressings, matrix, Goldmine grading
For trading card collectors
Sets, parallels, PSA/BGS grades
For meteorite collectors
Classification, fall vs find, weight
For vintage camera collectors
Make, format, lens, working condition
For antique map collectors
Cartographer, region, medium, colour
For whisky collectors
Distillery, age, cask, fill level
For LEGO collectors
Set number lookup, build state, box + manual condition
For households
Belongings for insurance, room by room