head to head · open source
calibre vs rentry
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars, 2,743 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rentry has 592 stars, 33 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. calibre leads on adoption by 4,347% (26,327 vs 592 stars). calibre is written in Python under GPL-3.0; rentry is written in Python under MIT. calibre has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, rentry 6%. calibre 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 | rentry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 592 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 33 |
| 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 rentry if
- You want the rentry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and rentry 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 rentry
rentry Rentry.co is a markdown powered paste/publishing service with preview, custom urls and editing. This repo holds the official Python clients for the rentry API. rentry.py is a command line tool in a single file with no dependencies. rentry client is an installable library. examples/ has one runnable script per API use case. If you'd rather write your own client, skip to the API reference. Installation That gives you both the rentry command line tool and the rentry client library, with no dependencies. Single file CLI (no pip) The CLI also works as a single self contained file: From source The scripts in…
read the full rentry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre or rentry more popular?
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars and rentry has 592. calibre has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre and rentry free?
Both are open source. calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and rentry under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre and rentry?
calibre is written in Python and rentry 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 rentry?
Choose calibre if you want the larger community (26,327 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose rentry if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.