BookOrbit

What is BookOrbit?

BookOrbit is an open source, self-hosted reading platform that puts your ebooks, comics, PDFs, and audiobooks in one library you run yourself. You read in the browser, and progress, highlights, and reading status sync three ways between the web reader, KOReader, and Kobo e-readers — so you can start a chapter in one place and finish it in another.

What is BookOrbit best for?

Readers with a mixed digital collection — EPUBs, CBZ comics, and M4B audiobooks — who want a single self-hosted home for all of it, and who care most about keeping reading progress and highlights in sync across a Kobo, the KOReader app, and the browser. It fits people leaving Amazon’s ecosystem who still want cross-device sync without handing their library to a store.

What can BookOrbit do?

• Read ebooks (EPUB, KEPUB, MOBI, AZW3, FB2), comics (CBZ, CBR, CB7), PDFs, and audiobooks (M4B, MP3, FLAC, OPUS) in built-in web readers
• Sync progress and annotations three ways across BookOrbit, KOReader, and Kobo, via a native KOReader plugin for browsing, downloading, and syncing on-device
• Pull metadata and covers from 14 providers (Google Books, Open Library, Goodreads, Hardcover, Audible, and more) with bulk editing and field-level rules
• Serve a private OPDS catalog to clients like KOReader, Thorium, and Moon+ Reader, plus Send-to-Kindle delivery
• Push reading activity out to Hardcover, StoryGraph, and Readwise
• Track reading stats, goals, and 50+ achievements, and merge highlights into one searchable hub you can export as Markdown, CSV, or JSON
• Run multi-user with OIDC/SSO (Authentik, Keycloak, Authelia), per-user libraries, and permission controls

Is BookOrbit free?

Yes — BookOrbit is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, with no subscription and no paid tiers. You self-host it and pay only for the server it runs on; there is no managed cloud version to buy, so the software itself never costs anything.

Where does BookOrbit fall short?

• No first-party mobile app: you read in the browser, on a Kobo, or through OPDS clients like KOReader and Thorium — there is no dedicated BookOrbit phone app the way Kindle ships polished native apps.
• It replaces Goodreads’ tracking, not its social side. You get private shelves, stats, and goals, but not community reviews, friend feeds, or crowd recommendations.
• It is a newer, smaller project than long-established self-hosted library servers, so expect a faster-moving codebase and a smaller community than something like Audiobookshelf.

What does BookOrbit replace?

BookOrbit is a self-hosted alternative to Amazon’s Kindle and Goodreads. It gives you the Kindle-style library and cross-device reading sync, plus the Goodreads-style shelves, stats, and reading goals — but the files and data live on your server, not Amazon’s. For audiobooks specifically, it overlaps with dedicated servers like Audiobookshelf, while adding ebooks and comics alongside them.

FAQ

Is BookOrbit open source? Yes. BookOrbit is licensed under AGPL-3.0, a strict copyleft OSI-approved license, and the full source is public on GitHub.

Can I self-host BookOrbit for free? Yes. It is built to run on your own hardware with Docker Compose and a PostgreSQL database; there are no license fees, only your server costs.

Is BookOrbit a good Kindle alternative? For owning and syncing your own library, yes — it reads the common ebook formats and syncs progress to Kobo and KOReader. If what you want is Amazon’s first-party apps and integrated store, that experience is different.

What do I need to run BookOrbit? A server that can run Docker Compose, a PostgreSQL database, and storage for your book files. You point it at a books folder, set a few environment variables, and bring it up with docker compose up -d.