head to head · open source
koreader vs anymd
koreader has 31,040 GitHub stars, 2,028 forks, 1,345 open issues and last shipped yesterday. anymd has 1,069 stars, 93 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. koreader leads on adoption by 2,804% (31,040 vs 1,069 stars). koreader is written in Lua under AGPL-3.0; anymd is written in Rust under MIT. koreader has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, anymd 9%. koreader 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
| koreader | anymd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-11 | 2026-11-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 93 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick koreader if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- 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 koreader
KOReader is a document viewer primarily aimed at e ink readers. [![AGPL Licence][badge license]](COPYING) [![Latest release][badge release]][link gh releases] [![Gitter][badge gitter]][link gitter] [![Mobileread][badge mobileread]][link forum] [![Build Status][badge circleci]][link circleci] [![Coverage Status][badge coverage]][link coverage] [![Weblate Status][badge weblate]][link weblate] Download • User guide • Wiki • Developer docs Main features portable : runs on embedded devices (Cervantes, Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook, reMarkable), Android and Linux computers. Developers can run a KOReader emulator in Linux…
read the full koreader 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 koreader or anymd more popular?
koreader has 31,040 GitHub stars and anymd has 1,069. koreader has the larger community by that measure.
Are koreader and anymd free?
Both are open source. koreader is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and anymd under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between koreader and anymd?
koreader is written in Lua 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, koreader or anymd?
Choose koreader if you want the larger community (31,040 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose anymd if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.