20 Free and eBook Collection Managers and Readers Apps for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and the Web
What is an ebook manager app?
An e-book manager app helps users organize their digital book collection, often by metadata, and may include features for format conversion, syncing with e-readers, and fetching metadata.
In this post, you will find the best open-source and free eBook collection manager.
1. Librum
Librum is an eBook manager that allows users to create a personalized online library, accessible from any device. It offers a simple interface, organization features for sorting and tagging books, and AI integration for additional text information.
Librum is fully customizable and open source, inviting users to propose new features or improvements.
It can self-hosted using Librum Server, on Linux and Windows.
2. eKitaab
eKitaab is an eBook Catalog Manager designed to manage large eBook collections. It displays a list of all books, allows categorization through Reading Lists and Tags, and downloads all information based on the ISBN.
The software ensures the safety of eBooks by not altering them and storing basic information in the filename. It offers benefits like no proprietary format or database constraints, easy data export, and a user-friendly file renaming option for mobile devices or other computers.
3. Calibre
Calibre is a versatile e-book manager capable of viewing, converting, editing, and cataloging e-books in all major formats. It can interact with e-book reader devices, fetch metadata for books from the internet, and convert downloaded newspapers into e-books. It is compatible with Linux, Windows, and macOS.
4. Calibre-Web
Calibre-Web is a web app that provides a user-friendly interface for browsing, reading, and downloading eBooks from a valid Calibre database. It features a modern and responsive Bootstrap 3 HTML5 interface.
Features
- Modern and responsive Bootstrap 3 HTML5 interface
- Full graphical setup
- Comprehensive user management with fine-grained per-user permissions
- Admin interface
- Multilingual user interface supporting 20+ languages (supported languages)
- OPDS feed for eBook reader apps
- Advanced search and filtering options
- Custom book collection (shelves) creation
- eBook metadata editing and deletion support
- Metadata download from various sources (extensible via plugins)
- eBook conversion through Calibre binaries
- eBook download restriction to logged-in users
- Public user registration support
- Send eBooks to E-Readers with a single click
- Sync Kobo devices with your Calibre library
- In-browser eBook reading support for multiple formats
- Upload new books in various formats, including audio formats
- Calibre Custom Columns support
- Content hiding based on categories and Custom Column content per user
- Self-update capability
- "Magic Link" login for easy access on eReaders
- LDAP, Google/GitHub OAuth, and proxy authentication support
5. Prossa
Prossa is a free, open-source, web-based ebook reader developed with VueJS. It works offline and supports .epub files.
6. Citadel
Citadel is a free, open-source ebook management app, compatible with Calibre. It's in its early stages and may have bugs and missing features. The project aims to be user-friendly, performant, and ensure that any library edited by Citadel can be read by Calibre.
7. Bookx
Bookx is a modern, open-source ebook manager powered by Rust, currently in the MVP stage. It features a library, reader, and editor mockups, supports .epub files, and includes a context menu for each book. It also allows for switching the carousel to the book and editing .epub files.
8. Koodo Reader
Koodo Reader is a free, open-source eBook manager with extensive format support and cross-platform compatibility. It offers features such as data sync and backup, powerful functionality, and a minimalist, distraction-free design for an immersive reading experience.
Platforms
- Windows
- Linux: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, AppImage, Flathub, and Snap
- macOS (x64, ARM arch)
- Web
9. Sumatra PDF (Windows)
Sumatra PDF is a free viewer for various file formats, including PDF, eBook, XPS, DjVu, CHM, and Comic Book.
It is portable, fast, and prioritizes a simple user interface. It can be run from a USB drive without writing to the registry. It requires Visual Studio 2019 16.6 or later for compilation. It supports Windows 10, 8, 7, and Vista.
10. KOReader
KOReader is a free document viewer designed for e-ink readers and other devices. It supports multiple formats, including PDF, DjVu, EPUB, FB2, Mobi, DOC, RTF, HTML, CHM, TXT, and scanned documents.
It provides a customizable reading experience with options for page margins, line spacing, fonts, and styles, and includes multi-lingual hyphenation dictionaries.
Features
- Versatile document viewer designed for e-ink readers and other devices
- Supports multiple formats (PDF, DjVu, EPUB, FB2, Mobi, DOC, RTF, HTML, CHM, TXT, and scanned documents)
- Customizable reading experience (page margins, line spacing, fonts, styles)
- Includes multi-lingual hyphenation dictionaries
- Portable: runs on embedded devices (Cervantes, Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook, reMarkable), Android and Linux computers
- Supports fixed page formats and reflowable e-book formats
- Integrated with calibre (search metadata, receive ebooks wirelessly, browse library via OPDS), Wallabag, Wikipedia, Google Translate and other content providers
- Optimized for e-ink devices: custom UI without animation, with paginated menus, adjustable text contrast, and easy zoom to fit content or page in paged media
- Extensible via plugins
- Fast: less than half the page-turn delay as the built-in reading software on some older devices
- More features: look up words with StarDict dictionaries / Wikipedia, add your own online OPDS catalogs and RSS feeds, over-the-air software updates, an FTP client, an SSH server
11. Cool Reader
CoolReader is a compact, fast, cross-platform eBook reader for desktops and handheld devices. It supports a wide range of formats including FB2, TXT, RTF, DOC, TCR, HTML, EPUB, CHM, PDB, MOBI. It offers stylesheet support and numerous customizations for enhanced reading performance.
12. Kiosk
Kiosk is an eBook manager built on SvelteKit that allows for simple library management and automatic metadata retrieval. It can run in serverless environments and uses password-less authentication via Passkeys.
Features
- Simple library management: Import your ebooks, update their metadata, and get a neat library accessible from any web browser.
- Automatic metadata retrieval: Kiosk will automatically fetch information about books, authors, and publishers from public knowledge graph data.
- Easy search integration: Kiosk integrates search services to index and search content in your library.
- Seamless passkey authentication: By using passkeys, you can sign in to Kiosk using Windows Hello, Touch ID or Face ID and similar authenticators.
- Book collections: Kiosk allows you to create collections for your books.
- Easy to self-host: Kiosk is built for maximum flexibility. Run it on Docker, Cloudflare, Vercel, AWS or directly on Node.js. Thanks to SvelteKit, Kiosk can run pretty much anywhere.
13. Myne (Android)
Myne is a free Android application that allows users to download over 70,000 ebooks from Project Gutenberg. It features a clean UI, an inbuilt ebook reader, compatibility with Android 7.0 and above, and supports Material You theming for Android 12+ devices. It also offers both light and dark mode options.
Features
- Clean & beautiful UI based on Google's material design three guidelines.
- Browse and download over 70k free ebooks available in multiple languages and updated daily.
- Comes with inbuilt ebook reader while also having an option to use third-party ebook readers.
- Compatible with Android 8.0 and above (API 26+)
- Supports Material You theming in devices running on Android 12+
- Comes in both light and dark mode.
- MAD: UI and logic written with pure Kotlin. Single activity, no fragments, only composable destinations.
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14. Bookery (Offline-first Web App)
Bookery V2 is an eBook manager based on Vue + Laravel that allows you to manage all your eBooks locally and send them to your reader.
It extracts metadata from uploaded eBooks and organizes them in a searchable structure. It is compatible with Amazon Kindle and can be installed on a NAS like Synology.
15. Bookstack (Web-based)
Bookstack is a small web application designed to manage ebook collections, particularly in epub format. It's ideal for use on a home server, with books accessible through the web app, and can also be paired with Dropbox for easy access while traveling.
16. Buka EBook Management
Buka is a free and open-source eBook manager for Linux systems. You can download the installation package for Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Redhat.
17. Arianna (Linux)
Arianna is an ebook reader and library management app that supports ".epub" files. It automatically discovers and sorts your books by categories, genres, and authors.
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18. Bookworm (Linux)
Bookworm by Siddhartha Das is a focused eBook reader that simplifies reading across various formats including EPUB, PDF, MOBI, CBR, and more. It allows users to manage their library by tagging and updating metadata on books for easy searching and filtering.
19. Lyceum
Lyceum is an open-source eBook management system, created out of the need for a privately deployable, cloud-based eBook library service without file size restrictions, offering full content control to the owner.
20. COPS (Server)
COPS is a web-based light alternative to Calibre content server/Calibre2OPDS for serving ebooks.
It was created for simplicity, requiring few dependencies, minimal CPU or RAM, and offering search functionality. It also includes a simple HTML catalog for use on devices like Kobo.