head to head · open source
calibre vs openreader
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars, 2,743 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. openreader has 553 stars, 77 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. calibre leads on adoption by 4,661% (26,327 vs 553 stars). calibre is written in Python under GPL-3.0; openreader is written in TypeScript under MIT. calibre has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, openreader 14%. 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 | openreader | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 553 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 77 |
| 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 openreader if
- You want the openreader feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and openreader 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 openreader
📄🔊 OpenReader OpenReader is an open source, self host friendly text to speech document reader built with Next.js for EPUB, PDF, TXT, MD, and DOCX with multilingual, synchronized read along playback. Previously named OpenReader WebUI . Get started in the docs . ✨ Highlights ▶️ Progressive background generation and playback — begin listening as soon as the first segment is ready while the worker continues generating ahead into one durable document timeline; cached audio is reused across seeks, reloads, and exports. 🧱 Layout aware PDF parsing with PP DocLayoutV3 (ONNX) — structured block detection, cross page…
read the full openreader overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre or openreader more popular?
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars and openreader has 553. calibre has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre and openreader free?
Both are open source. calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and openreader under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre and openreader?
calibre is written in Python and openreader in TypeScript. 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 openreader?
Choose calibre if you want the larger community (26,327 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose openreader if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.