head to head · open source
calibre-web vs anymd
calibre-web has 18,250 GitHub stars, 1,866 forks, 409 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. anymd has 939 stars, 83 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. calibre-web leads on adoption by 1,844% (18,250 vs 939 stars). calibre-web is written in Fluent under GPL-3.0; anymd is written in Rust under MIT. calibre-web has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, anymd 9%. anymd 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-web | anymd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 939 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Fluent | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 83 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick calibre-web if
- You weight community size — 18K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Fluent
- 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-web
Calibre Web is a web application that provides a clean and intuitive interface for browsing, reading, and downloading eBooks from a valid Calibre database. It is a fork of the library project (calibreserver) and is licensed under the GPL v3. The project lives in the Calibre ecosystem, and it is distributed through PyPI as the calibreweb package as well as through Docker images. It has been developed for over eleven years and carries roughly 18,183 stars and 1,856 forks on GitHub.
read the full calibre-web overview →
About anymd
anymd is an open source Rust MCP server and command line tool that converts PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint decks, Excel workbooks, EPUB files, HTML and web pages, images, audio and video into clean Markdown for AI agents, running on the user's own machine with no API key.
read the full anymd overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre-web or anymd more popular?
calibre-web has 18,250 GitHub stars and anymd has 939. calibre-web has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre-web and anymd free?
Both are open source. calibre-web is licensed under GPL-3.0 and anymd under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre-web and anymd?
calibre-web is written in Fluent 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-web or anymd?
Choose calibre-web if you want the larger community (18,250 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose anymd if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.