head to head · open source
koreader vs papermill
koreader has 29,761 GitHub stars, 1,908 forks, 1,345 open issues and last shipped yesterday. papermill has 6,486 stars, 463 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. koreader leads on adoption by 359% (29,761 vs 6,486 stars). koreader is written in Lua under AGPL-3.0; papermill is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. koreader has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, papermill 7%. koreader 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
| koreader | papermill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 463 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick koreader if
- You weight community size — 30K 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 papermill if
- You want the papermill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and papermill fits your workflow better
About koreader
KOReader is a free, AGPL 3.0 licensed document viewer written in Lua that runs on e ink readers from Cervantes, Kindle, Kobo and PocketBook, on reMarkable, and on Android and desktop Linux, aimed at readers who want broader format support, finer typesetting control and better performance than the reading software shipped with their device.
read the full koreader overview →
About papermill
Papermill is a Python tool published under the BSD 3 Clause licence by the nteract project that parameterizes, executes, and analyzes Jupyter notebooks, and it is aimed at teams who need to run the same notebook repeatedly with different inputs inside data pipelines.
read the full papermill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is koreader or papermill more popular?
koreader has 29,761 GitHub stars and papermill has 6,486. koreader has the larger community by that measure.
Are koreader and papermill free?
Both are open source. koreader is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and papermill under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between koreader and papermill?
koreader is written in Lua and papermill 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, koreader or papermill?
Choose koreader if you want the larger community (29,761 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose papermill if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.