Quick answer
- Radish closed on 31 December 2025, per its own help centre notice. Its domain no longer resolves.
- Kindle Vella closed on 26 February 2025, per Amazon's notice.
- Dreamily, an AI story service, ceased service on 21 April 2026, per its own site.
- Wattpad After Dark is no longer an app; the URL leads to a profile page.
- Coins and unspent balances do not survive a shutdown unless the notice says otherwise, and these did not.
This category loses services quietly. An app stops being updated, then the website redirects, then one day the listing is gone, and the only record is a help-centre page nobody links to. Meanwhile the roundups that recommended it stay online for years. Everything below was checked against the closure notice or the dead domain itself.
Radish, closed 31 December 2025
Radish ran serialised fiction with the by-now familiar coin model, and it was heavily recommended in listicles that are still being published. Its own help centre carries the sunset notice. The reading domain does not resolve any more, and an app called Radish Mobile on Google Play is an unrelated medical product, which is a good way to end up disappointed.
Kindle Vella, closed 26 February 2025
Amazon's serialised-fiction experiment lasted under four years. It mattered more to writers than to readers: Vella was one of the few routes to being paid per episode inside Amazon's ecosystem, and its closure pushed those writers back to full-length books or to a subscription platform.
Dreamily, ceased 21 April 2026
An AI story service that shut down as abruptly as this category tends to. Its own site carries the notice. The AI story cluster is the fastest-moving part of this niche and the least stable: of the services we checked, one had closed, one now redirects to a competitor, and one domain no longer resolves at all.
Others worth knowing about
Wattpad After Dark, the mature-romance app, is no longer an app, and the URL now leads to a volunteer profile. Vibease, which paired audio stories with a device, has no host and no store listing. Ava Stories left its website up, last updated in 2022, while both store listings return a 404, which is the most common shape of a quiet death in this category.
What happens to what you paid
Unspent currency is the thing people ask about, and the honest answer is that none of these notices promised to return it. A coin balance is a licence to unlock content on a service, not money on deposit, and when the service stops the balance stops with it. On iOS there is one protection worth knowing: Apple's rules say credits bought through an in-app purchase may not expire, which is about expiry rather than shutdown, but it is the only rule in this area that works in a reader's favour. It is explained in the guide to the store rules.
The practical habit: before buying a large coin pack, check when the app was last updated. A listing that has not been touched in a year is the clearest warning sign this category gives you.
More changes are in the news section.
FAQ
What happened to Radish?
It closed on 31 December 2025 according to its own help centre. The reading site no longer resolves.
Is there a replacement for Kindle Vella?
Not inside Amazon. Writers who were paid per episode there have moved to subscription platforms or to full-length books, which is covered in the pages for writers.
Can I get my coins back from a closed app?
Nothing in these notices promised a refund. Treat an unspent balance as something you lose when a service closes, and buy the smallest pack that covers what you are actually reading.
How do I tell if an app is dying?
Check the last-updated date on its store listing, whether its website still loads, and whether anything has been added to its library this year. Two of those three failing is a good reason to spend nothing.
Sources
Official pages, documentation and store listings we read for this page (last check October 27, 2026).