calibre might be my favorite piece of software ever made. I wish every media format had a calibre equivalent. I have sorted thousands of books and merged so many series into single files because who needs seperate books on an eReader.
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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Nice but 1) doesn't Kobo use DRM? 2) I had thought selfhosted was about server apps. Calibre is great but it's a client app. Should this post be in a different group?
Kobo doesn't use DRM; publishers use DRM. If the publisher publishes the eBook without DRM, Kobo sells it to you that way.
EBook stores don't determine whether DRM of employed; only publishers do.
Calibre has a GUI desktop interface, but it can also be run headless and provide a web interface. You can even run Calibre as a desktop app, and connect it to another Calibre running in server mode, and access those books as well.
As a rule, I do not like Python applications. I find them generally pootly maintained over the long term, and prone to breakage because of dependency hell. Calibre is the exception to the rule; it's an absolutely fantastic piece of software. So much so, that I donate to the project.
If the kobo hardware device can read drm'd epubs, it is "using drm" to do so. I'm asking if Calibre can read those same drm epubs. Do you know if it can, maybe by adding a plugin? I know there was something like that for Kindle files. Thanks.
I've heard Kobo is better than the other big players when it comes to interoperability with open formats / self hosted setups.
As for the servers
The main one
https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
A popular newer one
https://github.com/crocodilestick/Calibre-Web-Automated
Also (to everyone else reading your comment) let's not downvote good faith comments, especially when they're phrased as a question and wanting to learn more
Kobo has a great balance of good hardware, good price, and good openness. It's not perfect on any of those categories, it just strikes a nice middle ground balance to make it an extremely popular ereader for people who require the kind of openness people like us do. There's really nothing locked down about them, they don't do anything in particular to make it easy, but they don't do anything to make it hard either. "koreader" installs very nicely on Kobo devices, and then you just load your books from Calibre (or right through USB if you're hardcore for some reason) and you're basically off to the races.
you just load your books from Calibre (or right through USB if you’re hardcore for some reason) and you’re basically off to the races.
There's also an OPDS server option with calibre-web that you can use to load books from if you're using koreader.
You can also use the Kobo server replacement option with calibre-web although I personally couldn't get it to work at the time I tried it. But this will give you a sync option that works like the official Kobo server which is quite nice.
I didn't downvote anything fwiw.
I should have specified, people we're downvoting you
But looks like the score is positive again 🙂
Calibre can also be a server. https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/server. I use it all the time with my library.
Thanks, I didn't know about that. I might try it.
GL! One of my favorite open source projects!
All the choices for "ebook stores" and ereader ecosystems are proprietary vendor-locked services with no self-hosting options. While Calibre is primarily a "local" tool it is a true alternative to all these proprietary services and I think it's at least in the spirit of self hosting, if not strictly the letter.
For what it's worth, I self-host a Calibre Portable library on Nextcloud, which enables me to access all my ebooks anywhere, and to upload new ones to my ereader from anywhere, as long as I have access to my Nextcloud. And I also share the same library through Calibre Web for when I don't. I retain control of all my books, I remove all the DRM and convert them to epub. Calibre isn't a hosted service on its own, but it fits nicely into the self-hosting ecosystem, and for that I am grateful.
I would greatly appreciate a bit more detail on your setup, is your calibre library simply a folder synced through next cloud?
Yeah, that's all it is. Calibre Portable. In a folder on Nextcloud.
Kobo does not block non-drm. Calibre is used as a server all the time, see calibre-web.
Calibre is used as a server all the time, see calibre-web.
calibre-web is technically not Calibre and is written and maintained by different people, although it does use the Calibre database (and I believe it must be created with desktop Calibre initially). But it's a good option and I highly recommend it.
Thanks. What I meant is, if I buy a kobo book off bn.com, can I read it with calibre? Those books usually have drm but maybe calibre can bypass it.
Oh yeah, sorry. There is some vendor lock-in with all bookstores, but kobo looks the other way.
I have calibre-web setup with kobo sync, so calibre-web pretends to be part of the kobo store to my reader and I'm able to add non-drm books to my reader while still using the kobo store if I like.
Thanks yeah I don't have a kobo reader so was asking if there was a way to read paid-for kobo downloaded books that have drm, similar to how decss lets you watch DVDs that you bought. I don't mind paying for books but don't want a locked down reading device with it's own crappy software and possible invasive phoning home.
Calibre can also be a server. And you can still put DRM free books on your Kobo device.
calibre is an app? i just have a docker container with calibre web for all my epub, mobi etc.since bookstack or nextcloud cant handle those. is the client app any good?
Yes I've been using the calibre client app under Debian MATE and it's decent. I'm a Luddite though, so sometimes I convert epubs to plain text with pandoc and read them in emacs or a terminal.
I've been using calibre with my kobo for years. There's a remote server you can set up, but I just haven't been bothered to set it up since my kobo has about 100 books I haven't read yet.