Calibre vs KOReader
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted e-books & media library options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Calibre with
choose an app… Free Programming Books Jellyfin Paperless-ngx qBittorrent SRS Koodo Reader Readest Navidrome Kodi Ebook2audiobook Calibre-Web Koel Jackett Beets DeDRM Tools PeerTube Transmission Sonarr MeTube Kavita Ladder Wikidpad Notes Suwayomi-Server OPDS-PSE Reader Hub Sigil Open Library Komga Calibre-Web Automated Libation PDF Arranger pdf2htmlEX Librum Papra 13ft Calibre-Web Automated Book Downloader Readarr LANraragi Thorium Reader BookWyrm Stump Teedy OpenBooks Docspell Mango Plato Standard Ebooks Tools Whisparr Audiobook Storyteller Mylar3 Kapowarr ttu Ebook Reader mangadex-downloader Librivox Mirror Zimit ComicTagger Audiobookshelf-tools Komf kobodl BookLogr Koha Suwayomi manga-py Upvote RSS Buchhaltung Books BicBucStriim Tranga Tinyfeed EpubPress KOHighlights Booksonic-Air ProsePub Manga-Tagger Atsumeru Evergreen Kthoom COPS dir2opds RERO ILS MangAdventure MyMangaDB Readflow Inkheart Petrolette Ubooquity Vore
Compare KOReader with
choose an app… Free Programming Books Jellyfin Paperless-ngx qBittorrent SRS Koodo Reader Readest Navidrome Kodi Ebook2audiobook Calibre-Web Koel Jackett Beets DeDRM Tools PeerTube Transmission Sonarr MeTube Kavita Ladder Wikidpad Notes Suwayomi-Server OPDS-PSE Reader Hub Sigil Open Library Komga Calibre-Web Automated Libation PDF Arranger pdf2htmlEX Librum Papra 13ft Calibre-Web Automated Book Downloader Readarr LANraragi Thorium Reader BookWyrm Stump Teedy OpenBooks Docspell Mango Plato Standard Ebooks Tools Whisparr Audiobook Storyteller Mylar3 Kapowarr ttu Ebook Reader mangadex-downloader Librivox Mirror Zimit ComicTagger Audiobookshelf-tools Komf kobodl BookLogr Koha Suwayomi manga-py Upvote RSS Buchhaltung Books BicBucStriim Tranga Tinyfeed EpubPress KOHighlights Booksonic-Air ProsePub Manga-Tagger Atsumeru Evergreen Kthoom COPS dir2opds RERO ILS MangAdventure MyMangaDB Readflow Inkheart Petrolette Ubooquity Vore
Feature Calibre KOReader Category E-books & Media Library E-books & Media Library License GPL-3.0 AGPL-3.0 Language Python Lua Setup difficulty Easy Medium Min. RAM 512 MB 256 MB Deployment docker, bare-metal, binary binary, source GitHub stars ★ 25,578 ★ 28,800 First released 2006 2012 Replaces Kindle, Apple Books Kindle, Pocketbook reader
Why pick each one
Choose Calibre if… Industry-standard ebook tool Huge feature set Calibre details Choose KOReader if… Released under the AGPL-3.0 license Mature project with 28.8k GitHub stars Written in Lua Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM KOReader details
Frequently asked questions Is Calibre or KOReader better? Neither is universally better. KOReader has the larger community, while Calibre is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Calibre and KOReader free and open-source? Yes. Calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and KOReader under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Calibre and KOReader with Docker? Calibre: yes. KOReader: check the project docs for container support.