head to head · open source
calibre vs anymd
calibre has 26,416 GitHub stars, 2,755 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. anymd has 1,069 stars, 93 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. calibre leads on adoption by 2,371% (26,416 vs 1,069 stars). calibre is written in Python under GPL-3.0; anymd is written in Rust under MIT. calibre has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, anymd 9%. calibre was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (epub), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| calibre | anymd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-11 | 2026-11-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.8K | ⑂ 93 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick calibre if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick anymd if
- You want the anymd feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and anymd fits your workflow better
About calibre
calibre calibre is an e book manager. It can view, convert, edit and catalog e books in all of the major e book formats. It can also talk to e book reader devices. It can go out to the internet and fetch metadata for your books. It can download newspapers and convert them into e books for convenient reading. It is cross platform, running on Linux, Windows and macOS. For more information, see the calibre About page. Screenshots Screenshots page Usage See the User Manual. Development Setting up a development environment for calibre. A tarball of the source code for the current calibre release. Bugs Bug reports and…
read the full calibre overview →
About anymd
anymd PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, EPUB, HTML and web pages, images (OCR), audio and video (metadata, subtitles, transcripts). A fast Rust MCP server and CLI that runs on your machine. No API key. Install · Benchmarks · Tools · CLI · Formats · Docs Formerly pdf reader mcp . Migrating from pdf reader mcp A real, unedited terminal recording (asciinema + agg, script ). The last command is Claude Code answering from the PDF through the anymd MCP server. Why anymd Fast. Native Rust converts in parallel, page by page. On the 19 benchmark documents every tool converted, anymd takes 12.1 s in total; docling 1,723.3 s…
read the full anymd overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre or anymd more popular?
calibre has 26,416 GitHub stars and anymd has 1,069. calibre has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre and anymd free?
Both are open source. calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and anymd under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre and anymd?
calibre is written in Python and anymd in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, calibre or anymd?
Choose calibre if you want the larger community (26,416 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose anymd if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.