head to head · open source
koreader vs so-novel
koreader has 30,818 GitHub stars, 2,019 forks, 1,345 open issues and last shipped yesterday. so-novel has 8,898 stars, 752 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. koreader leads on adoption by 246% (30,818 vs 8,898 stars). koreader is written in Lua under AGPL-3.0; so-novel is written in Java under AGPL-3.0. koreader has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, so-novel 8%. koreader 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
| koreader | so-novel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 8.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 752 |
| 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 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 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 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 koreader or so-novel more popular?
koreader has 30,818 GitHub stars and so-novel has 8,898. koreader has the larger community by that measure.
Are koreader and so-novel free?
Both are open source. koreader is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and so-novel under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between koreader and so-novel?
koreader is written in Lua 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, koreader or so-novel?
Choose koreader if you want the larger community (30,818 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose so-novel if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.