head to head · open source
calibre vs sile
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars, 2,743 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sile has 1,791 stars, 109 forks, 287 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. calibre leads on adoption by 1,370% (26,327 vs 1,791 stars). calibre is written in Python under GPL-3.0; sile is written in Lua under MIT. calibre has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, sile 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 | sile | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 109 |
| 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 sile if
- You want the sile feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and sile 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 sile
What is SILE? SILE is a [typesetting][typesetting] system; its job is to produce beautiful printed documents. Conceptually, SILE is similar to [TeX][tex]—from which it borrows some concepts and algorithms—but the similarities end there. Rather than being a derivative of the TeX family SILE is a new typesetting and layout engine written from the ground up using modern technologies and borrowing some ideas from graphical systems such as [InDesign][indesign]. Where does it run? SILE can be downloaded & installed to your system or run remotely as a CI job. What can I do with SILE (that I can’t do with TeX)? First…
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre or sile more popular?
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars and sile has 1,791. calibre has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre and sile free?
Both are open source. calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sile under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre and sile?
calibre is written in Python and sile in Lua. 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 sile?
Choose calibre if you want the larger community (26,327 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sile if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.