Kavita

Kavita is a fast, feature rich, cross platform reading server. Built with the goal of being a full solution for all your reading needs. Setup your own server and share your reading collection with your friends and family.

⭐ 10,470 stars on GitHub · 🍴 594 forks · 📜 License: gpl-3.0 · 💻 Language: C#

What is Kavita?

If your ebook and comic library has outgrown folders, cloud drives, and ad-hoc reader apps, Kavita gives you a proper self-hosted reading server. Its differentiator is that it treats manga, comics, webtoons, EPUBs, and PDFs as one managed library, with web readers good enough to use daily across phones, tablets, and desktops.

Main components

• Library server for manga, webtoons, comics, books, and PDFs, with support for CBZ, CBR, ZIP/RAR/RAR5, 7z, raw images, EPUB, and PDF.
• Responsive browser-based readers, including webtoon mode, continuous reading, virtual pages for EPUBs, and device-friendly layouts.
• Metadata management with rich filtering, search, smart filters, collections, reading lists, and “Want to Read” organization.
• Multi-user sharing with role-based permissions, age restrictions, user abilities, and OIDC support for more serious home-lab setups.
• Dashboard and side navigation customization, so each user can surface the libraries, filters, and lists they actually care about.
• EPUB annotations and highlights, plus optional Kavita+ integrations for external metadata, scrobbling, ratings, reviews, and metadata downloads.
• Localization and theming support, including custom themes and community translations.

Clear use cases

• Host a private manga and comic server for your household without relying on Comixology, Kindle, or cloud storage apps.
• Build a single web-accessible library for CBZ/CBR comics, EPUB novels, PDFs, and webtoons, readable from any modern browser.
• Share curated reading collections with friends or family while keeping age-restricted content and admin features locked down.
• Run a media-style reading platform in your homelab alongside Plex, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, or Calibre-Web.
• Organize a large scanlation, comic, or ebook archive with metadata, smart filters, reading progress, and custom lists instead of filesystem browsing.

The biggest strength is Kavita’s all-in-one reading experience — it is not just a file browser with a viewer bolted on. The web readers are polished, the library tools are built around real reading workflows, and multi-user management makes it practical for families or small groups. Compared with commercial reading platforms, the value is control: you keep your files, choose where the server runs, avoid vendor lock-in, and can support mixed-format libraries that paid ecosystems often split across separate apps.

The trade-off is that Kavita is still pre-1.0 beta software, so admins should treat backups seriously and expect occasional behavior changes. Some advanced metadata and scrobbling features sit behind Kavita+, which may matter if you want a fully automated metadata pipeline. Even so, the core open-source server already covers the hard parts: serving, reading, organizing, and sharing a personal digital library cleanly.

Best for homelab users, comic and manga collectors, and families who want a self-hosted, browser-first alternative to commercial ebook and comic platforms.

Topics: the project is tagged with popular topics:

• 🏷️ annotations
• 🏷️ cbz
• 🏷️ comicinfo
• 🏷️ comics
• 🏷️ comics-reader
• 🏷️ cross-platform
• 🏷️ csharp
• 🏷️ epub
• 🏷️ epub-reader
• 🏷️ free

📸 Screenshots

Quick install

See the README for detailed install instructions. Most projects support Docker — if the repo has a Dockerfile, use:

git clone https://github.com/Kareadita/Kavita.git
cd Kavita
docker build -t Kavita .
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 Kavita

Minimum system requirements

⚡ Deploy fast on VSIS

Use the VSIS VPS Lite 2GB RAM / 2 vCPU / 25GB SSD (~104k/tháng) plan from VSIS.NET — high-speed VN-based VPS, 24/7 support, ideal for running Kavita smoothly.

🎯 Benefits:

• One-command docker compose up -d deploy in 2 minutes
• Dedicated IPv4, root access, unmetered domestic bandwidth
• Daily snapshot backup
• Free install assistance from the VSIS team

👉 See matching VPS plans at vsis.net

Resources

• 🔗 GitHub: Kareadita/Kavita
• 🌐 Homepage: http://www.kavitareader.com
• 📚 Official docs: see README in the repo
• 💬 Community: GitHub Issues + Discussions

Article compiled from GitHub data on 05/05/2026. Star/fork counts may have changed — see live numbers via the GitHub link.