foss_book_libraries
📖 Free and OpenSource Book Libraries
There are many great free and open-source alternatives to closed source and/or paid book libraries. This project aims to track and compare the feature set between the many different options with a focus on ‘Gratis’ (free as in free beer) open source photo libraries. ‘Libre’ (free as in free speech) projects are also welcome, but will likely need to be submitted via a pull request since the time in testing each different project is significant.
[!WARNING] This repository displays both objective and subjective measures of feature quality.
Comparison
⭐ = Full support (10/10 score)
✅ = Feature exists in at least a limited fashion
🚧 = Feature may exist but may not be practical or officially released
💰 = paid feature (even if partial or optional)
❔ = Unknown information (help needed!)
❌ = Feature does not yet exist
💀 = Not planned (no PRs accepted / unlikely to be implemented)
#️⃣ = Subjective measure of feature quality (on scale of 0-10)
[!TIP] Hover over emoji for additional information (🔗 link to related issue, 🔑 demo credentials, etc)
| Feature | Calibre | Calibre Web | Komga | Kavita | Stump | Calibre Web Automated | Booklore |
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| Logo |  |
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| Docker Pulls |  |
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| Contributors |  |
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| Last Commit |  |
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| Source Language |  |
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| License |  |
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| Demo | ❌ | ❌ | ⭐ | ⭐ | ❌ | ❌ | ⭐ |
| Freeness | ⭐ | ⭐ | ⭐ | 💰 | ⭐ | ⭐ | ⭐ |
| Mobile Upload | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | 💀 | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Web App | ✅ | ⭐ | ⭐ | ⭐ | ✅ | ⭐ | ⭐ |
| Android App | ❌ | 🚧 | ✅ | ❌ | 🚧 | 🚧 | 🚧 |
| iOS App | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | 🚧 | ❌ | 🚧 |
| Desktop App | ⭐ | ❌ | ⭐ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Annotations | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | 🚧 | ❌ | ✅ |
| OPDS Support | ✅ | ✅ | ⭐ | ✅ | ⭐ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Reading Progress Sync | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Existing Folders | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Shelfs | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Sharing | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Search | ⭐ | ⭐ | ⭐ | ✅ | ✅ | ⭐ | ⭐ |
| Full Text Search | ✅8️⃣ | 🚧 | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | 🚧 | 💀 |
| Duplicate Handling | ⭐ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| User Defined Tags | ⭐ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Docker Installation | ✅5️⃣ | ✅5️⃣ | ⭐ | ✅8️⃣ | ✅6️⃣ | ⭐ | ⭐ |
| Basic Editing | ⭐ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Multiple User Support | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Authentication Providers | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | 🚧 | ✅ | ✅ |
[!NOTE] This list is not exhaustive and is provided on a best-effort basis. No guarantees are made about its accuracy or completeness. If you find an error or omission, please report it and submit a fix when possible.
Notes on specific projects
- Calibre unlikely to be implemented fuzzy search: Bug #2139316
- Booklore Full Text Search is not planned: Issue 1793
- Komga iOS App is a third party app called Komic with paid features.
Score Methodology; or how to got ⭐
- Freeness: Only if all features are free without payment or subscription.
- Demo: Only if provide a public demo with no registration required.
- OPDS: Only if support OPDS stable v1.2 and draft v2.
- Search: Only if support search by title, author, description and tags.
- Full Text Search: Only if support full text search and fuzzy search.
- Docker installation: Only if have an official docker image and is provided in docker hub and ghcr.io for the stable release.
- Duplicate Handling: Only if support duplicate detection and merging.
- Android/iOS/Desktop/Web App: Only if have an official app with support to reading without leaving the app.
[!IMPORTANT] To help reduce bias, subjective scores are only assigned after the scoring methodology for that row has been defined.
Books certification level 1 test 💎
A simple way to reward apps that focus on the most fundamental user experience: reading smoothly, resuming where you left off, and finding content quickly, all within the same app.
All need to happen in same app and be free of charge:
- Be able to open an ebook navegate to any page, close, open again and return to the same page.
- Be able to open a comic cbz in streaming fashion.
- Be able to highlight text inside an ebook and keep synced at user level.
- Be able to search inside an open ebook and pdf.
- Be able to search for a word in all ebooks and pdfs in the library.
Books certification level 2 test 💎💎
TBA when one application passes level 1.
References and links
Star History
[!CAUTION] Please review the data carefully. GitHub stars and other popularity signals can be manipulated, so treat rankings and perceived traction as potentially unreliable and prioritize verifiable features and documentation.
Sources:
- Start history: January of 2026
- Wired: The GitHub Black Market That Helps Coders Cheat the Popularity Contest
- arxiv.org: Six Million (Suspected) Fake Stars in GitHub
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. Please see CONTRIBUTE.md for details.
Support
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