Discover the Best Places Online to Get Your Hands on Free E-Books

Free books on nearly any subject you can think of are all over the internet, ready to be downloaded, read, and shared. These are our favorite sites with free books covering a wide variety of subjects.

A huge quantity of books previously unavailable to the public was released starting in 2019 thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. Because of an amendment to that act, works published between 1923 and 1977 can enter the public domain 95 years after their creation. Many of the sites listed below give access to the tens of thousands of books (plus movies, songs, and cartoons) available under this act. Downloads should be free and without retribution under U.S. copyright law.

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Project Gutenberg

What We Like

• Over 70,000 titles.
• Wide variety of formats.
• Top 100 list aids discoverability.

What We Don’t Like

• Majority of books are in English only.
• Books may not be free outside the U.S.

Project Gutenberg is one of the largest and oldest sources for free books on the web, with over 70,000 downloadable titles available in a wide variety of formats. The vast majority are released in English, but there are other languages available.

If you already know what you’re looking for, search the database by author name, title, language, or subject. You can also check out thetop 100 list to see what other people are downloading .

Visit Project Gutenberg

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ManyBooks

What We Like

• Selection includes more than just classics and Creative Commons books.
• Great categorization makes finding what you love easier.
• Variety of download formats.

What We Don’t Like

• A few areas of the site hardly ever receive updates.
• Some books do cost money.

ManyBooks is one of the best resources on the web for free books in a variety of download formats. There are hundreds of titles here in all sorts of interesting genres, and they’re completely free. Not all the books are classics, so if you’re into other genres, this site is a good alternative to others in this list.

Unlike some sites, this one lets you browse free books by language. You can also search by author and genre. TheManyBooks Articles page is another handy way to browse their collection, with articles such as “Books Like A Match Made in Venice” and reviews.

Downloading books requires a free user account unless there’s a link to Amazon, in which case you can grab it with your Amazon account. There are often several download options, like EPUB, PDF, AZW3, and FB2. They’re also readable online through the site’s built-in book reader.

Visit ManyBooks

03

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Open Library

What We Like

• Good alternative if Internet Archive is too confusing.
• Multiple formats available.

What We Don’t Like

• Just pulls results from Internet Archive.
• Some books can only be borrowed.

Open Library is a search tool that pulls data from Internet Archive. You might use it if that site (listed above) isn’t helping you find the right book. You can search hundreds of thousands of books here, and most are in multiple formats such as PDF, ePub, and Daisy.

I particularly like theLibrary Explorer section because it feels like I’m looking through real bookshelves!

You can search for ebooks specifically by checking theEbooks option after running a search.

Visit Open Library

04

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Librivox

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What We Like

• Free audiobooks.
• Audiobooks are available in multiple languages.
• Large collection of children’s audiobooks.

What We Don’t Like

• Books are read by volunteers, which means performances can be hit or miss.
• Many listed authors have zero books available.

If you’ve been looking for a great place tofind free audiobooks , visiting Librivox is a good start. The site has many volunteers who work to release quality recordings of classic books. All the titles here are free, which is good news for those of us who’ve had to pony up ridiculously high fees for substandard audiobooks.

I like to use theNew Releases RSS feed with a feed reader service to stay on top of new additions.

Visit Librivox

05

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Google Play Books

What We Like

• Saves books in your online account.
• Read from the website or the mobile app.

What We Don’t Like

• Requires a Google account.

If you like to read ebooks through Google Books, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s a full page of just_free_ titles.

Google lists the top several dozen free books available on Google Play through the link below. There are history and religious books as well as titles in categories like_Fantasy_ and_Health, mind & body_ .

Books you “download” through this site appear in yourGoogle Play Books account , where they’re readable online, through the mobile app, and offline if you decide to export the book to a file.

Visit Google Play

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Internet Archive

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What We Like

• Books across a wide variety of interests.
• You can sort by view count or popularity.
• Several downloading options.

What We Don’t Like

• It can be difficult finding exactly what you want from numerous search results.
• Site can be slow to respond.

Internet Archive has a digital library full of fiction, popular books, children’s books, historical texts, and academic books. The free books on this site span every possible interest.

You can sort these books by view count to see the most popular ones and sort by title or date published. Another way I like to scour the millions of books on this site is through collections such as_California Digital Library_ ,Getty Research Institute , and_Boston Public Library_ .

There are usually several download options if you don’t want to read the book online, such as PDF, EPUB, and Kindle.

Visit Internet Archive

07

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Authorama

What We Like

• Easily readable format.
• You can read right in the browser.
• No account necessary.

What We Don’t Like

• Bare bones website.
• Lacks books in foreign languages (except some German).
• Lacks advanced search features.

Authorama offers a good selection of current and classic books from a variety of authors. They’re organized alphabetically by the author’s last name and are written in HTML and XHTML, which means they’re in an easily readable format. Most books here are featured in English, but there are quite a few German language texts as well.

This site offers a good selection of high-quality, free books you can read in your browser. These are in the public domain, which means they’re freely accessible and allowed to be distributed. In other words, you don’t need to worry if you’re looking at something illegal.

The website is really simple to use, maybe_too_ simple. The search box is basic and the only other way to find books is by scrolling through the author list. But, you don’t need a user account to read these titles online, and they’re all formatted nicely.

Visit Authorama

08

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Wikisource

What We Like

• Hundreds of thousands of pieces of content available to read.
• Audio available for certain texts.

What We Don’t Like

• User-submitted content could vary in quality.
• Technically, there are no books on this site.

Wikisource is an online library of user-submitted and maintained content. While you won’t technically find books on this site, there are still_hundreds of thousands_ of pieces of content available to read, and some are in ebook form.

Wikisource:Index is a good place to start.

Visit Wikisource

09

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Wikibooks

What We Like

• Wikijunior offers books for children 12 and under.
• Offers community features like a forum.

What We Don’t Like

• Mostly just textbooks.
• Small collection.
• Not all of the books are completed.

​Wikibooks is an open collection of mostly textbooks. Subjects range from computer and engineering to science, humanities, languages, and more. Every book has a list of contents and other information to give you a solid idea of what it’s about.

TheFeatured Books andStacks/Departments pages are good places to start if you’re not sure what to browse for.

Visit Wikibooks

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Free-eBooks.net

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What We Like

• Diverse selection.
• Also offers audiobooks.
• Large number of categories.

What We Don’t Like

• You can only download five free books a month.

Free-eBooks.net offers a wonderfully diverse variety of free books, ranging from fiction and non-fiction to textbooks, academic text, classics, and more. Some of the subcategories include advertising, parenting, humor, science, engineering, self-teaching, sci-fi classics, and poems.

You have to register for a free user account to use this site, but only five books are free, so choose wisely.

Visit Free-eBooks.net

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The Online Books Page

What We Like

• Boasts over three million books.
• Dozens of different formats.
• Offers partial searches.
• Updates often.

What We Don’t Like

• Extremely basic site.
• Links to downloads on other websites.

The Online Books Page, maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, lists over three million free books available for download in dozens of different formats. The site itself is pretty boring, but the long list of titles might make you a repeat visitor.

You can browse these free book downloads by new listings, author, title, subject, or serial. There’s also a search tool where you can find books by running a partial author or title search.

Visit The Online Books Page

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eBooks.com

What We Like

• Hundreds of free books.
• Download or view online in your browser.

What We Don’t Like

• Must go through a “checkout” process even though they’re free.
• Some books need special software for offline reading.

eBooks.com has a couple of ways to find free books. Use the link below to access a list of a few hundred completely free eBooks that you can read online or download as anACSM file —those are DRM-protected files that work with Adobe Digital Editions (directions are available on the download page).

The other way is tobrowse their DRM-free eBooks . Some of these aren’t free to download, but the ones that are can be saved and opened like any EPUB file.

You can filter these books by subject, like computers or religion, or by a number of fiction and non-fiction subcategories. There’s also a format (PDF or EPUB), release date, and language filter.

Visit eBooks.com

13

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International Children’s Digital Library

What We Like

• Large collection of international children’s books.
• Interesting ways to browse the titles.

What We Don’t Like

• The books are actually just images of scanned pages.
• Some pages are too large to read comfortably.

Browse over 4,000 high-quality free books for children at International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL). These are scans of physical books, so each page is a separate image you can scroll through and read.

On the home page are helpful links so you can browse the library by language, character, shape, format, genre, and more.

Visit ICDL

14

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Everand

What We Like

• Offers a wide range of reading materials, including sheet music and magazines.
• One of the internet’s largest sources of published content.
• Mobile app available.

What We Don’t Like

• Free only for 30 days.
• Costs $11.99/month.

Everand (previously Scribd) offers a fascinating collection of all kinds of reading materials: books, audiobooks, documents, sheet music, magazines, and more. This is one of the web’s largest sources of published content, with literally millions of documents published every month and organized by category.

However, the site is only free for 30 days. Unlike other sites on this list, you have to pay every month after the trial to continue using it. The membership grants you access to the site’s entire database.

Visit Everand

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Free Computer Books

What We Like

• Extensive collection of computer books.
• Includes lecture notes.

What We Don’t Like

• Dated site design.
• Everything on the site is just hyperlinks to other sites.
• Lacks file format variety.

Every computer subject and programming language you can think of is represented at Free Computer Books. There are free textbooks, extensive lecture notes, and more.

Some of the genres include computer and programming languages, computer science, data science, computer engineering, Java, and networking and communications. There are also many subgenres, giving you an easy way to find the book you’re after.

Visit Free Computer Books

16

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Sacred Texts

What We Like

• Large collection of free religious texts.

What We Don’t Like

• Text is quite small.
• Most pages don’t have a download button; you have to save them manually.

Sacred Texts contains the web’s largest collection of free books about religion, mythology, folklore, and the esoteric in general.

You can view a list of all the books by title or author. You can also browse by category or search for a book title, author, or subject.

Every book is available online from their website. You can save each page if you want an offline version, but it won’t be in a pretty format.

Visit Sacred Texts

17

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SlideShare

What We Like

• Good for presentations, infographics, and documents.

What We Don’t Like

• Lots of non-free content.
• Limited download options.
• Registration required.

SlideShare is another site with both free and paid books. It’s an online forum where anyone can upload a digital presentation on any subject. Millions of people utilize SlideShare for research, sharing ideas, and learning about new technologies.

The site supports documents and PDF files, all available as free downloads. You have to log in to download these books, but registration is free.

Visit SlideShare

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