head to head · open source
calibre vs feather
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars, 2,743 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. feather has 609 stars, 54 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped yesterday. calibre leads on adoption by 4,223% (26,327 vs 609 stars). calibre is written in Python under GPL-3.0; feather is written in Swift under MIT. calibre has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, feather 9%. feather was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | feather | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 609 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 54 |
| 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 feather if
- You want the feather feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and feather 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 feather
Feather CMS 🪶 ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ !WORK IN PROGRESS! ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ 🪶 Feather is a modern Swift based Content Management System. 💬 Click to join the chat on Discord. Make Commands Run these from the repository root: make clean Clears only the Postgres database volume and media storage volume. make reset Drops the full Compose stack, including all Compose managed volumes. make stop Stops all running services without removing them. make deps Builds and runs the current dependency services: certificates , postgres , and migrator . make application Builds the shared application artifact image once, builds the runtime images from…
read the full feather overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre or feather more popular?
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars and feather has 609. calibre has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre and feather free?
Both are open source. calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and feather under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre and feather?
calibre is written in Python and feather in Swift. 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 feather?
Choose calibre if you want the larger community (26,327 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose feather if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.