Calibre
Serious readers organize, convert, edit, and serve their e-book libraries with Calibre - the definitive open-source e-book manager. This deployment runs the full Calibre desktop application on your server, accessible from any browser, so your library lives in one authoritative place instead of scattered across devices. Its conversion engine is the best in the business, translating between every major format - EPUB, MOBI, AZW3, PDF, DOCX, and dozens more - with fine control over fonts, margins, metadata, and structure detection. Metadata management downloads covers, descriptions, series info, and identifiers from online sources, and every field is editable in bulk. Beyond cataloging, Calibre includes a full e-book editor for EPUB and AZW3 internals, a news engine that fetches newspapers and magazines from the web on schedule and converts them into e-books, book comparison tools, and device syncing that sends the right format to each connected reader. The built-in content server exposes your library over HTTP so phones, tablets, and e-readers can browse and download remotely. A deep plugin ecosystem extends everything - metadata sources, format support, store integrations. For power users, the complete CLI (calibredb, ebook-convert) enables scripted library automation. Your books, your metadata, your server - permanent and DRM-free storage under your control.
Kavita
Manga, comics, ebooks, and light novels get a streaming-service-style home in Kavita - a fast, cross-platform reading server for the DRM-free collection you share with family and friends. It natively serves CBZ, CBR, CB7, ZIP/RAR/7z archives, raw images, EPUB, and PDF, with hand-crafted web readers per format: webtoon scrolling, single and dual-page spreads with advanced caching for the comic reader, and a book reader with adjustable fonts, spacing, margins, color themes, and column modes. Reading progress tracks per user, so everyone resumes exactly where they stopped on any device. Metadata parses from filenames, ComicInfo.xml, and EPUB fields, feeding index-backed search, smart filters, collections, reading lists with CBL import, and Want to Read queues. Role-based user management covers age restrictions, per-library access, and OIDC authentication. An OPDS feed connects third-party clients - Panels on iOS, Librera on Android, KOReader on e-ink devices - and a comprehensive REST API supports custom integrations. EPUB annotation and highlight support, custom theming, and full localization round it out. Built with .NET and Angular, it handles 50,000+ file libraries without strain; optional Kavita+ adds AniList scrobbling, recommendations, and external metadata.
Clu Comics
Comic Library Utilities (CLU) is a self-hosted comic library manager that converts, repairs, tags, downloads, and reads your entire comic collection from one web interface. Convert whole folders or libraries from CBR to CBZ in bulk, turn PDFs into CBZ with JPEG or WebP output, and rename thousands of files to one consistent pattern without touching a terminal. Open any CBZ in the browser editor to reorder pages, add or delete images, crop covers, split merged multi issue archives, and adjust contrast and brightness issue by issue. Write ComicInfo.xml from Metron, ComicVine, Grand Comics Database, AniList, MangaDex, MangaUpdates, or Bedetheque, then bulk apply tags across a directory with review before saving and a history log that can revert any change. Browse your library by publisher, series, or folder, read page by page in the built in reader that remembers your place, and follow weekly release calendars with a pull list and Wanted tracker for issues you do not own yet. Download new issues from Direct Download sources, Usenet through Newznab indexers with SABnzbd or NZBGet, and DC++, while folder monitoring unpacks, converts, renames, and files new arrivals automatically. Add Reader, Clerk, and Store Owner accounts with per folder permissions, publish OPDS feeds for reader apps, and sync reading history with Komga. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPL-3.0 licensed.
BookOrbit
Consolidate your entire digital library into a self-hosted reading sanctuary with BookOrbit, an open-source media platform that organizes ebooks, audiobooks, comic archives, and research PDFs within a personal private cloud. Readers can enjoy multi-format media directly through responsive browser readers that support EPUB, CBZ, and M4B formats without external browser extensions. The platform synchronizes reading bookmarks, highlights, and completion statuses across web interfaces, Kobo ereaders, and KOReader devices. An automated metadata enrichment engine queries fourteen upstream bibliographic indexes, downloading cover artwork, chapter breakdowns, author biographies, and series taxonomies. The staging workspace allows librarians to inspect incoming files, review suggested metadata revisions, and embed updated tags directly into physical storage archives before shelving. Custom reading dashboards track annual book goals, calculate daily streaks, and plot reading habit radar charts. Multi-user configurations support distinct per-user collections, granular content permissions, and single sign-on authentication through OpenID Connect providers. Power users can export private OPDS feeds to external mobile reading applications or push books directly to connected Kindle hardware. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GNU AGPL v3.0 licensed.
Miniflux
One statically-compiled Go binary over PostgreSQL, no ORM, no framework, static assets embedded in the executable: Miniflux is the minimalist, opinionated feed reader. The opinions are the feature: page layout, fonts, and colors are tuned for reading, and everything else is treated as noise. It consumes Atom, RSS, and JSON Feed formats with OPML import/export, organizes articles with categories and bookmarks, fetches original full-text content for summary-only feeds, and provides Postgres-powered full-text search. Privacy work happens automatically: pixel trackers are stripped, tracking parameters removed from URLs, a media proxy blocks third-party tracking, referrers are never forwarded, and there is zero telemetry. Navigation is keyboard-first - j/k through items, o to open, f to star - with touch gestures on mobile. Podcast, video, and music enclosures are supported, and YouTube videos play inline. Over 25 integrations save articles onward to Wallabag, Readwise Reader, Pinboard, Linkding, Instapaper, Notion, Telegram, Matrix, Ntfy, and more, plus webhooks and a REST API with Go and Python clients; the Google Reader API endpoint supports existing mobile reader apps. Authentication spans local passwords, passkeys (WebAuthn), Google OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and reverse-proxy headers. It is Apache 2.0 licensed, translated into 20 languages, and updates feeds on an internal scheduler.
BookWyrm
Instead of handing your reading history to a retail platform and letting an algorithm decide what you read next, BookWyrm lets a self-hosted community of readers make the recommendations. Shelve every book as to-read, currently reading, stopped, or finished, record start and finish dates with progress updates along the way, and set an annual reading goal to keep the habit honest. Rate and review finished books, drop a comment while you are mid-chapter, or save a quotation worth keeping, and all of it can appear on the book page alongside reviews aggregated from other connected instances. Follow friends to see their shelves fill up, join a group to build a shared reading list, or create your own list and choose whether it stays closed, accepts suggestions for approval, opens to everyone, or belongs to the group. Posts, shelves, and lists each carry their own privacy level, public, unlisted, followers-only, or private, and you can approve followers by hand before they see anything. Because instances federate over ActivityPub, your readers can follow you from another BookWyrm community or straight from Mastodon, and book metadata is shared between servers so small instances do not catalog alone. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Anti-Capitalist Software License licensed.
Komga
What Jellyfin is for video, Komga is for comics, manga, BDs, magazines, and eBooks: point it at folders of CBZ, CBR, CBT, PDF, and EPUB files and it becomes a proper library with cover art, embedded metadata import, and per-user reading progress. The responsive web reader handles multiple reading modes - left-to-right for western comics, right-to-left for manga, webtoon scrolling - while collections and read lists organize crossovers and story arcs, with ComicRack .cbl read list import for existing curation. Its openness is the real differentiator: OPDS v1.2 and v2.0 feeds serve virtually every reader app (Panels, Moon+ Reader, Mihon/Tachiyomi, KyBook), with OpenSearch and page-streaming extensions so mobile apps fetch pages on demand instead of whole archives. E-ink support is built in, not bolted on - Kobo devices sync directly against Komga instead of Kobo's servers, with two-way read progress, on-the-fly KEPUB conversion via Kepubify, and optional proxying so official Kobo purchases still work; KOReader sync covers everything else. Multi-user management brings per-library access control, age restrictions, and label restrictions for family setups. Housekeeping tools detect duplicate files and duplicate pages, and a REST API feeds a healthy ecosystem of community scripts. Runs from a single Docker container with embedded SQLite.
PdfDing
PdfDing turns a scattered folder of PDFs into a proper library you can read, annotate, sign, and share from any browser. The viewer remembers exactly where you stopped in every document, so a manual opened on your desktop resumes mid-page on your phone, and progress bars in the library show how far you have read at a glance. Workspaces and collections group related documents, multi-level tags classify them, and starring, archiving, and bulk actions keep even a large archive tidy. Inside the viewer you can add text, highlights, and freehand drawings, then review and export your highlights and comments from dedicated sections and attach Markdown notes to a document. A signature you create once is stored on your server and waits for you on every device, ready to drop onto contracts and forms. Sharing a collection or a single PDF takes a link or a QR code, with optional access control over who can open it and for how long. Accounts are protected by OIDC single sign-on and two-factor authentication with TOTP or WebAuthn, and dark mode, an inverted color mode, and multiple layouts keep long reading sessions comfortable. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.
Freshrss
Where Miniflux strips reading down, FreshRSS gives you knobs - the feature-rich pole of self-hosted RSS, comfortable with thousands of feeds. It's a multi-user PHP aggregator (host family and friends on one instance, with an anonymous reading mode) with the reading workflow refined over a decade: favorites, custom tags, powerful filter and search queries, three reading views, and statistics that reveal each site's publishing frequency - useful for pruning subscriptions. Two properties make it the standard choice. First, the Google Reader-compatible API (plus a Fever API) syncs with virtually every serious RSS client - Reeder, NetNewsWire, ReadYou, FeedMe, Fluent Reader - so your phone reads from your server. Second, native WebSub support means compatible sources (WordPress, Blogger, Medium, Friendica) push new articles instantly instead of waiting for polling. A 50+ extension ecosystem adds what truncated feeds omit - full-text content fetching, reading-time estimates, trending views, auto-unsubscribe for dead feeds - alongside community themes and custom CSS. OPML import/export keeps subscriptions portable, a CLI handles administration, and article sharing posts to many services. AGPL-licensed, running on SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL. Feedly Pro's feature set, minus Feedly's subscription and its algorithms.
Upvote RSS
The antidote to doomscrolling: Upvote RSS turns Reddit, Hacker News, Lemmy, Lobsters, PieFed, Mbin, and trending GitHub repositories into calm, filtered RSS feeds. The MIT-licensed PHP app's killer feature is intelligent filtering: beyond simple score thresholds, the "posts per day" filter analyzes a community's recent history and computes the score cutoff that yields your target volume - say, exactly three r/technology posts daily - while a percentage-based threshold mode stays consistent as communities grow. Feeds are rich, not bare links: parsed full-article content via Readability (with optional Readability.js, Mercury, or Browserless for JavaScript-heavy pages), embedded videos and image galleries, top-voted comments with pinned-moderator filtering, scores, reading-time estimates, and optional AI summaries through Ollama, OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint - with automatic provider fallback. A web UI builds the feed URL interactively with live preview; paste the result into any RSS reader. Reddit support includes custom domains like old.reddit.com plus NSFW filtering and blurring. Caching via filesystem, Redis, or APCu keeps repeated fetches cheap and avoids re-running paid summarizations.
Dewarr
Your want-to-read shelf and your audiobook library finally talk to each other, so the next book you finish can trigger the hunt for the one after it. Dewarr syncs Goodreads shelves, CSV exports, custom public lists, and Hardcover lists, then watches them for new additions worth listening to. Connect Audiobookshelf or Grimmory and it knows what you already own, importing finished downloads into verified library folders instead of leaving files stranded in a downloads directory. Follow authors and series to catch future releases, with back-catalog review, filters, and exclusions before anything is grabbed, including release-day acquisition for titles you are waiting on. When you approve auto-download, it searches MyAnonamouse, Prowlarr, and AudiobookBay, ranks sources by your format, size, and seed preferences, and hands transfers to qBittorrent. Multi-file MP3 releases come back as one chapterized M4B, a chapter per file, ready for your player. The discovery page personalizes shelves with followed lists, award collections, trending books, and new releases. Household members get individual accounts, reading lists, and permissions, with sign-in through OpenID Connect providers or Plex. Notifications for grabs, imports, and digests go out over Discord, ntfy, Apprise, or plain webhooks. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.
FeedMe
Most RSS readers hand you a pile of headlines and make you do the reading; FeedMe reads first and hands you the pile already digested. It aggregates every feed you configure into one clean, ranked stream, and for each article an LLM writes a short summary you can scan in seconds, with the full original text one tab away when a story earns a deeper look. Sources organize into categories like Tech News, Finance News, Personal Blogs, Company Blogs, Open Source, Research, and Podcasts, and a global search finds stories across all of them. The reader never sleeps on stale content: a built-in cron refreshes feeds and regenerates summaries on your schedule (every three hours by default in Docker), so the page you open in the morning already covers the night. Summaries answer to you, not a vendor: point FeedMe at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint and tune the prompt, input truncation, temperature, and token budget, with output in the languages you choose. There are no accounts, no forced logins, and no app to install; the responsive page works on phone and desktop in light or dark themes. Because the whole application is a static site, it stays fast and cheap to run, and the same build can live on GitHub Pages or Vercel if you ever want a public edition next to your private one. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.