head to head · open source
koreader vs kepubify
koreader has 30,818 GitHub stars, 2,019 forks, 1,345 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kepubify has 899 stars, 59 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. koreader leads on adoption by 3,328% (30,818 vs 899 stars). koreader is written in Lua under AGPL-3.0; kepubify is written in Go under MIT. koreader has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, kepubify 7%. koreader was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ebook, epub, kobo), 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
| koreader | kepubify | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 899 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-12-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 59 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick koreader if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kepubify if
- You want the kepubify feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kepubify fits your workflow better
About koreader
KOReader is a document viewer primarily aimed at e ink readers. [![AGPL Licence][badge license]](COPYING) [![Latest release][badge release]][link gh releases] [![Gitter][badge gitter]][link gitter] [![Mobileread][badge mobileread]][link forum] [![Build Status][badge circleci]][link circleci] [![Coverage Status][badge coverage]][link coverage] [![Weblate Status][badge weblate]][link weblate] Download • User guide • Wiki • Developer docs Main features portable : runs on embedded devices (Cervantes, Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook, reMarkable), Android and Linux computers. Developers can run a KOReader emulator in Linux…
read the full koreader overview →
About kepubify
kepubify Kepubify converts EPUBs to Kobo EPUBs. Website Download Documentation Web Version pkg.go.dev About Kepubify is standalone (it also works as a library or a webapp), converts most books in a fraction of a second (40 80x faster than Calibre), handles malformed HTML/XHTML without causing further issues, has multiple optional conversion options (punctuation smartening, custom CSS, text replacement, and more), has a full test suite, is interoperable with other applications, and is safe to use with untrusted books. Two additional standalone utilities are included with kepubify. covergen pre generates cover…
read the full kepubify overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is koreader or kepubify more popular?
koreader has 30,818 GitHub stars and kepubify has 899. koreader has the larger community by that measure.
Are koreader and kepubify free?
Both are open source. koreader is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kepubify under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between koreader and kepubify?
koreader is written in Lua and kepubify in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, koreader or kepubify?
Choose koreader if you want the larger community (30,818 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kepubify if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.