head to head · open source
calibre vs ebooklib
calibre has 25,923 GitHub stars, 2,690 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ebooklib has 1,809 stars, 259 forks, 110 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. calibre leads on adoption by 1,333% (25,923 vs 1,809 stars). calibre is written in Python under GPL-3.0; ebooklib is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. calibre has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, ebooklib 14%. calibre was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (epub, python), 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 | ebooklib | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 259 |
| 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 ebooklib if
- You want the ebooklib feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ebooklib fits your workflow better
About calibre
calibre is the official source code repository for the calibre e book manager, an open source application written in Python and released under GPL 3.0. It lives in the content and publishing ecosystem as a desktop tool for books, and it is cross platform, running on Linux, Windows and macOS. The project has been hosted on GitHub for roughly thirteen years, carries about 25,900 stars and 2,683 forks, and its home on the web is calibre ebook.com, where an About page and a screenshots page document it further.
read the full calibre overview →
About ebooklib
EbookLib is a Python library for EPUB2/EPUB3 manipulation and processing. It reads and writes EPUB files programmatically. It lives in the Python content publishing ecosystem. It solves the problem of handling EPUB2/EPUB3 files in Python code without manually building and reading each component.
read the full ebooklib overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre or ebooklib more popular?
calibre has 25,923 GitHub stars and ebooklib has 1,809. calibre has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre and ebooklib free?
Both are open source. calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and ebooklib under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre and ebooklib?
calibre is written in Python and ebooklib in Python. 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 ebooklib?
Choose calibre if you want the larger community (25,923 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ebooklib if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.