head to head · open source
calibre vs so-novel
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars, 2,743 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. so-novel has 8,898 stars, 752 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. calibre leads on adoption by 196% (26,327 vs 8,898 stars). calibre is written in Python under GPL-3.0; so-novel is written in Java under AGPL-3.0. calibre has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, so-novel 8%. calibre was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ebook), 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 | so-novel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 8.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 752 |
| 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 so-novel if
- You want the so-novel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and so-novel 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 so-novel
So Novel 概述 So Novel 是一款通用的网页内容处理与导出工具，它致力于帮助用户高效地从网页中提取结构化信息，并将其灵活导出为 EPUB、TXT、PDF 等多种标准电子文档格式。适用于学习采集、格式转换、电子书制作等场景。 预览 点击查看图片 TUI 预览 (Text based User Interface) WebUI 预览 (网页版) CLI 预览 (Command Line Interface) 安装 📦 手动下载压缩包 🪟 Windows 1. PowerShell 2. CMD (命令提示符) 🐧 Linux cmd REM REM 高级用户使用自定义 JRE 启动程序 REM 将 "your path\java.exe" 替换为你的 JRE 路径，例如： REM "C:\Java\jdk 21\bin\java.exe" REM @echo off your path\java.exe ^ XX:+UseZGC ^ XX:+ZGenerational ^ Dconfig.file=config.ini ^ Dmode=tui ^ Dfile.encoding=GBK Big5 ^ jar app.jar Linux / macOS：run linux.sh / run macos.sh 修改 java 路径 常见问题 讨论 支持 & 赞助
read the full so-novel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is calibre or so-novel more popular?
calibre has 26,327 GitHub stars and so-novel has 8,898. calibre has the larger community by that measure.
Are calibre and so-novel free?
Both are open source. calibre is licensed under GPL-3.0 and so-novel under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between calibre and so-novel?
calibre is written in Python and so-novel in Java. 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 so-novel?
Choose calibre if you want the larger community (26,327 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose so-novel if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.