📖 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.

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)

Feature	Calibre	Calibre Web	Komga	Kavita	Stump	Calibre Web Automated	Grimmory (fork of Booklore)
Logo
Github Stars
Docker Pulls
Contributors
Last Commit
Source Language
License
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	❌	✅	✅	✅	🚧	✅	✅

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.

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

• Awesome Self-Hosted
• HTML version of this comparison
• FOSS Photo Libraries Comparison

Star History

Sources:

• Start history
• 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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