Calibre Web Automated is a completely different project. I am liking it so far.
Some people have also suggested Kavita.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
23 points (84.8% liked)
Selfhosted
58318 readers
415 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
-
No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Personally, I found Kavita and Grimmory far too complex for my use and also very resources hungry. At the end CWA is just perfect for me. Still have to configure my kobo e-reader to use it directly and this will for sure be a game changer from my current solution which consist in converting epub to kepub with kepubify and then put it on a local webserver that I open through kobo web browser.
Update: Kobo sync configured and it's just awesome, just adding book to a shelf and sync the reader as usual and hop, everything downloads and progress updated in cwa.
Look into Grimmory, the replacement for booklore. Apparently it’s the same maintainers just a fork since the creator of booklore closed it down (no major changes yet, just housekeeping). I’m happy with it.
I have found Kavita to be excellent.
Plus one for Kavita. Only slight bump is that it wants books to be in series because it's quite manga focused.
I've tried the a number of the ones being mentioned, but the best for me has been Audio bookshelf . It has a good mobile app, allows collections, tries to pull Metadata, offline reading for the apps, etc.
Does it support epub?
+1 for audiobookshelf. my buddies and I have been using it without issue for a year or so now
Did you try Calibre Web or Calibre Web Automated
Maybe CWA is what you're looking for?
It was the UI he didn't like so it's not going to be much different.
Is there something specific you don't like about Calibre Web? Might help pinpoint the recommendations.
Janky and doesn’t look nice
Well, I'm not sure what 'janky' encompasses for you but when you add themepark, it looks much better.
The real MVP!
.....aww shucks
I'm running Kavita. It's been good and tracks your reading progress. The catch is that there's no upload, you have to put your files on the disk and then rescan
BookLore https://github.com/mvanhorn/booklore/
Killer feature for me was ability to upload books via web.
Edit: just noticed I linked wrong git, thanks @GeekyOnion@lemmy.world
https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1rvmpnv/booklore_is_gone/ wtf...
I guess I'm looking for a new service now as well
I just moved off of Booklore because of the recent drama. Went back to Calibre + Calibre Web Automated.
Did you look at grimmory
Kavita?