best websites to download books for free

• Great Tech Gifts for Any Occasion
• The Best Gadgets for The Beach or Pool

17 Best Sites to Download Free Books in 2024

Love to read? Open Library, ManyBooks, and Librivox are just a few of the many places to find free books online

• Emporia State University

• Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
• Payment Services

Free books on nearly any subject you can think of are all over the internet, ready to be downloaded, read, and shared. These are the best 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.

Selection includes more than just classics and Creative Commons books.

Great categorization makes finding what you love easier.

Variety of download formats.

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. The ManyBooks 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.

Project Gutenberg

Over 70,000 titles.

Wide variety of formats.

Top 100 list aids discoverability.

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 the top 100 list to see what other people are downloading .

Open Library

Good alternative if Internet Archive is too confusing.

Multiple formats available.

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 the Library Explorer section because it feels like I'm looking through real bookshelves!

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

Google Play Books

Saves books in your online account.

Read from the website or the mobile app.

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 your Google Play Books account , where they're readable online, through the mobile app, and offline if you decide to export the book to a file.

Free audiobooks.

Audiobooks are available in multiple languages.

Large collection of children's audiobooks.

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 to find 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 the New Releases RSS feed with a feed reader service to stay on top of new additions.

Internet Archive

Books across a wide variety of interests.

You can sort by view count or popularity.

Several downloading options.

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.

Easily readable format.

You can read right in the browser.

No account necessary.

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.

Hundreds of thousands of pieces of content available to read.

Audio available for certain texts.

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.

Wikijunior offers books for children 12 and under.

Offers community features like a forum.

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.

The Featured Books and Stacks/Departments pages are good places to start if you're not sure what to browse for.

Free-eBooks.net

Diverse selection.

Also offers audiobooks.

Large number of categories.

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.

The Online Books Page

Boasts over three million books.

Dozens of different formats.

Offers partial searches.

Updates often.

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.

Hundreds of free books.

Download or view online in your browser.

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 an ACSM file —those are DRM-protected files that work with Adobe Digital Editions (directions are available on the download page).

The other way is to browse 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.

International Children's Digital Library

Large collection of international children's books.

Interesting ways to browse the titles.

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.

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.

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.

Free Computer Books

Extensive collection of computer books.

Includes lecture notes.

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.

Sacred Texts

Large collection of free religious texts.

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.

Good for presentations, infographics, and documents.

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.

Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day

• 22 Best Places to Get Free Kindle Books in 2024
• 14 Best Ways to Get Free Books
• 18 Best Places to Download Free Audiobooks in 2024
• 8 Best Places to Get Free Nook Books
• 11 Best Free Movie Download Sites for 2024
• How to Find Public Domain Books Online
• 15 Best Places to Get Free Music Downloads Legally
• 9 Best Sites for Public Domain Images
• The 17 Best Android Tablet Apps of 2024
• 16 Best Ways to Get Free Textbooks
• The 20 Best Free Learning Websites for Kids in 2024
• 13 Best Places to Watch Free Movies Online
• 16 Best Free Kindle Book Sites for Kids
• The 9 Best Book Reading Apps of 2024
• 7 Best Free Classical Music Download Sources
• The 8 Best Free Wallpaper Sites

Z-Library Project - Search & Download Free Books | ZLibrary

Z-library is a free online library containing over 100 million books. Anyone can download e-books from our website without registration and in many formats.

Latest Upload

Bear's Magic (Grey Lake Shifters Book 4)

Burn Baby Burnt: A Second Chance, Age-Gap, Billionaire Romance

Curveball: End Game Book 2

UNTIL JUDE (PULSETUNES ROCK GODS Book 1)

Our Shellfish Desires (Sucker For Love Mysteries)

Time Stamps

Strapped for Cash: A Dark Mafia Romance

Bad Magic: Fated Mates Book 4

The Fire Wolf Saga: Demon Rejected

The Monster Keeps Me Safe

The Easter Hunt

House of Bastiion (The Haidren Legacy, Book 1)

The Virgin and the Billionaires: The Complete Series

The Dark Arts

A Whisper in the Dark (Charlie Travesty Book 1)

The Proposal

From Then Until Forever: Falls Village Collection

Cruel Games: A Bully Romance: (Ridgeside High Book 3)

Dark 'N Stormy (Naughty Nights Presents)

A Promise Kept (Clear Creek Brides Book 2)

Blinded By The Sun: A Dark Mafia Romance

His Saving Grace (Clear Creek Brides Book 5)

Hale’s Pawn

Most Popular

Latest upload

Editor's Picks

Self-improvement

Business & Career

Time Management

Health & Fitness

Painting & Drawing

Academic & Education

Spiritualty

Children & Youth

Engineering

Environment

Welcome to ZLibrary, a comprehensive digital library platform designed to provide free access to a vast collection of e-books and articles spanning various genres and topics. In this ultimate guide, we'll explore the benefits of using ZLibrary over traditional libraries and other online sources, helping you discover, download, and maximize your digital reading experience.

What is Z Library?

Z Library is a digital library that allows users to download books for free. The website has many books covering various genres, including fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, and research papers. Users can search for books by author, title, or ISBN, and the website also provides recommendations based on the user's search history.

Exploring ZLibrary's Collection

Variety of content.

No registration or fees are required, and the books are available in ePub, Kindle, HTML, and plain text formats. Browse our 10 million+ titles or use a powerful search to find exactly what you're looking for.

User-friendly Search Options

Navigating ZLibrary's vast collection is a breeze, thanks to its user-friendly search options. You can conduct a simple keyword search or use advanced search filters to refine your query by language, publication year, or file format.

Content Sources

ZLibrary's impressive selection comes from collaborations with libraries and publishers, and user uploads, ensuring a continually growing and diverse collection of materials for you to explore.

Benefits of Using Z-Library

One of the significant advantages of using Z-Library is the cost-saving aspect. Books can be expensive, and even borrowing from the library can incur fees. With Z-Library, users can access a vast selection of books for free. The website also provides the convenience of accessing books online, making it easy to read on the go or from the comfort of your home.

In addition to cost-saving and convenience, Z-Library also provides a vast selection of books. With over 6 million books available, there is something for everyone. Whether you're looking for a classic novel, a textbook for school, or a research paper for work, Z-Library has you covered.

How to Use ZLibrary.to?

To use ZLibrary, users need to create an account. Creating an account is easy and free, allowing users to save their search history and bookmark books for future reference. Once users have created an account, they can search for books by author, title, or ISBN. The website will then provide a list of books that match the search criteria. Users can then download the book in the format of their choice, including PDF, EPUB, and MOBI.

ZLibrary also provides some helpful tools and features for users. For example, users can filter their search results by language, year of publication, and category. The website also has a rating system, allowing users to see the top-rated books in each category.

Frequently Asked Questions

1 . Is it legal to download books from Z Library?

ZLibrary operates under the concept of fair use, which allows users to access copyrighted material for educational purposes. However, we recommend checking your local laws before downloading any material.

2 . What formats are available for book downloads?

Z-Library offers books in various formats, including PDF, EPUB, and MOBI.

3 . Is it safe to download books from Z-Library?

ZLibrary takes user safety seriously and ensures that all books are virus-free.

4 . Can I upload content to ZLibrary?

Yes, users can contribute to ZLibrary's collection by uploading content. However, it's crucial to respect copyright and intellectual property rights.

5 . How can I support ZLibrary?

You can support ZLibrary through donations, sharing the platform with others, or providing feedback to help improve the user experience. You should place the backlink to our website when sharing the content from Zlibrary.to.

6 . What are the download limits, and can they be increased?

ZLibrary imposes download limits to maintain resources for all users. Creating an account and logging in can grant you access to

7 . How often is Z Library updated with new books?

Z-Library is updated regularly with new books. However, the frequency of updates may vary depending on various factors, such as the availability of new books and the website's policies.

8 . Can I access Z Library from my mobile device?

Yes, ZLib is mobile-friendly and can be accessed from any device with an internet connection.

9 . What if I can't find the book I'm looking for on ZLibrary?

If you can't find the book you're looking for on ZLibrary, you can request the book from ZLibrary:hope , and the contributors may add it to their collection if it's available.

Z Library is a fantastic resource for book lovers looking to expand their reading collection without breaking the bank. With a vast selection of books, cost-saving benefits, and convenient online access, it's no wonder why ZLibrary.to is so popular. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free account and start downloading books today!

We use cookies to ensure you get the best browsing experience on our website. By clicking "Accept Cookies" , you agree that we can store cookies on your device in accordance with our Terms and Privacy .

• DMCA & Copyright

The best free ebook download sites: from new bestsellers to classic Shakespeare

Fill your Kindle or Kobo (or Nook or Onyx Boox) for free

If you’ve taken up digital reading recently, having picked up one of the best ereaders there are on the market, you’ll find that there are ways to fill up the device without having to spend a penny.

There are thousands of ebooks available to download legally – either because their copyright has expired, or because their authors have chosen to release them without charge. And sometimes, publishing companies make them available to a limited number of readers before a public release to get feedback.

The difficulty, however, is tracking down exactly what you want in the correct format, and avoiding anything poorly written or formatted. We’ve searched through the masses of sites to bring you the very best places to download free, high-quality ebooks with minimum hassle and no legal strings attached.

It’s worth remembering that the absence of a price tag doesn’t necessarily mean that the book is in the public domain. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the author will retain rights over it, including the exclusive right to distribute it. Similarly, even if copyright has expired on an original text, certain editions may still be in copyright due to editing, translation, or extra material such as annotations.

While EPUBs are the most common type of ebook file format most ereaders can display, you’ll find digital editions in other formats as well. So if you find an ebook in a format you need, you can convert it with free software like Calibre . Please note that ebooks that are DRM protected cannot be converted.

• Thinking of buying a Kindle? Our guide to the best Kindles

So, without much ado, here are the best free ebook download sites to help you get lost in a good story.

1. Amazon First Reads

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

A hidden treasure trove of new titles for your Kindle

It used to be called Kindle First Reads, but its rebranding has not changed what it truly is – a reading platform that gets you early access to newly released titles published by Amazon Publishing. Each month 10 new books are made available on First Reads – which you can get access to by signing up for the First Reads newsletter – and one of these is totally free for Amazon Prime subscribers . The rest of the new releases are available for a hugely discounted price. First Reads selections are announced on the first of each month, and you get the whole month to decide which title you want to read, after which the cycle begins anew.

As you’d expect, free ebooks from Amazon are only available in Kindle format – users of other ebook readers will need to convert the files – and you must be logged into an Amazon account to download them.

If you’re already invested in Amazon’s ecosystem, its assortment of freebies are extremely convenient. As soon as you click the 'Buy' button, the ebook will be sent to any Kindle ebook readers you own, or devices with the Kindle app installed. However, converting Kindle ebooks to other formats can be a hassle, even if they’re not protected by DRM, so users of other readers are better off looking elsewhere.

Amazon First Reads for US customers Amazon First Reads for UK customers Amazon First Reads for Australian customers

2. Kobo eBook Store

Over a million free ebooks for your Kobo

Kobo might make some of our favorite ereaders, but the company also has a vast store of ebooks and, the company claims, over a million of them are free. There’s a dedicated section for all the Kobo freebies on the website, with several of them being newly released titles.

You can even find the free ebooks on the Kobo Store by searching for author names, a book title or genre, then selecting 'only free items' under the price filter in the left sidebar of the search results.

Kobo’s freebies are usually for a very limited time and can change each day, so you’ll likely never run out of good reads for free. That said, the books you get from the Kobo Store, even the free ones, are DRM-protected and will be available to read only on your Kobo ereader or the Kobo ereader app for smartphones and tablets.

3. Google Books

A vast catalogue of fiction and nonfiction EPUBs

Google Books can be a rabbit hole of self-published fiction and non-fiction titles, with several really great finds in there as well. However, the vast majority of the ebooks on Google Books are in the EPUB or PDF file format. So while that’s perfectly fine for Kobo users, Kindles don’t support EPUB and the file will need to be converted to MOBI before you start reading.

Being a Google undertaking, the store is easily accessible on a web browser or Android device, but you will need a Google account to register a card before you can access the freebies. Your card won’t be charged for the free ebooks and audiobooks, but it could put some potential users off.

Moreover, the Google Books interface wasn’t designed for free stuff. To locate them, you need to search for 'free books', which then gives you a vast catalogue of free reads. If you’re after a particular genre, you can search for that, plus the word 'free' (free fantasy or free history, for example). Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy enough to discover a veritable treasure trove of free books.

4. Project Gutenberg

An immersive archive of world literature

Project Gutenberg (named after the printing press that democratized knowledge) is a huge archive of over 60,000 books in EPUB, Kindle, plain text, and HTML. You can download them directly, or have them sent to your preferred cloud storage service (Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive). 

You can search for a specific title or browse by genre (books in the same genre are gathered together in bookshelves). It’s a shame that fiction and non-fiction aren’t separated, and you have to open a bookshelf before you can sort books by country, but those are fairly minor quibbles.

The site itself is available in English, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese, and the catalog includes books in all languages. There’s a heavy bias towards English-language works and translations, but the same is true of all the ebook download sites we’ve looked at here.

Project Gutenberg is a wonderful source of free ebooks – particularly for academic work. However, it uses US copyright law, which isn’t universal; some books listed as public domain might still be in copyright in other countries. RightsDirect explains the situation in more detail .

5. Free-Ebooks.net

A self-publishing platform that’s great for authors and readers alike

Free-Ebooks.net is a platform for independent authors who want to avoid the traditional publishing route. You won’t find Dickens and Wilde in its archives; instead, there’s a huge array of new fiction, non-fiction, and even audiobooks at your fingertips, in every genre you could wish for. There are many similar sites around, but Free-Ebooks.net is our favorite, with new books added every day.

Because this site is dedicated to free books, there’s none of the hassle you get with filtering out paid-for content on the Kobo Store or Google Books. We also love the fact that all the site’s genres are presented on the homepage, so you don’t have to waste time trawling through menus. Unlike the bigger stores, Free-Ebooks.net also lets you sort results by publication date, popularity, or rating, helping you avoid the weaker titles that will inevitably find their way onto open publishing platforms (though a book has to be really quite poor to receive less than four stars).

Digital books are available as PDF, EPUB, Kindle and plain text files, though not all titles are available in all formats.

6. ManyBooks

A curated collection of free and discounted fiction and nonfiction books

At the time of writing, ManyBooks has over 50,000 titles in its library of both fiction and nonfiction. And a large part of that is available to download for free – from modern novels to classic literature. You’ll be able to find Grimms’ Fairy Tales alongside books from Agatha Christie and newer fantasy fiction. 

That’s because the vast majority of the books on the platform are seeded from Project Gutenberg, but a whole load of self-published titles have been added since the mid-2000s. They’re all available to browse in genres, all of which are listed on the homepage itself, making navigation easy.

One of the main reasons we like ManyBooks is because of the several ebook file formats available on the site. Most of the titles are available in the most common formats, including EPUB, MOBI and AZW, so you’ll be able to read on any ereader you might prefer. ManyBooks also lets you read online, if you prefer that route.

It’s also one of the few sites we know of that lets you filter books by language. You can also search by book title and author, but there’s also a curated 'editor’s choice' section if you’re looking for more choices. Downloading books, however, requires an account which can be created for free.

7. Feedbooks

Plenty of originals available to download for free

Feedbooks came into being in 2007 as a digital library for public domain books as well as a cloud publishing service. So not only does this platform give you plenty of free classics to read – from Shakespeare to Homer to James Joyce – there are plenty of original books to choose from as well.

While it’s easy enough to access the free public domain ebooks on the site, finding the original content is harder. There’s an easy link to this category on the homepage under 'browse' but it doesn’t work. So you’ll need to trawl through a vast catalogue of digital books to find those marked down to cost nothing. It’s not the best user experience, but that extra bit of work might well be worth it if you find a story you can truly get lost in.

There are several genres as well, including short stories, so there’s likely going to be something here for everyone. And if you do choose to buy an ebook, Feedbooks displays the price in your local currency by picking up your IP address.

8. Smashwords

A self-publishing platform with several free reads

It’s one of the most well-organized free ebook sites you can find and, considering it’s essentially a self-publishing platform, there’s a lot you can read for free. Authors publishing via Smashwords use it to distribute their books and, at the time of writing, there are over 85,000 titles available. To narrow down your search, there’s a handy genre list on the side, and an equally handy filter bar on the top of the page to find 'highly rated' books or the bestsellers.

You will need to set up an account with Smashwords to download books – this is completely free and gives you full access to the platform. So if you’ve got some good words to share, you can get published… for free. Creating an account also allows you to leave reviews of the books you read, which can be really helpful to the authors.

Join the club and get a free ebook each month

Tor is a publishing company known for putting out science-fiction and fantasy fiction bestsellers like Robert Jordan’s Conan and Wheel of Time series, Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti books and Brandon Sanderson’s ongoing Stormlight Archive series. So it’s not really the obvious place to look for free ebooks, but you can get one new read each month for free.

All you have to do is join Tor’s book club. 

The Tor.com eBook Club sends out regular newsletters – that you can sign up for by filling out a form for free – with a link to download a particular book, whether a standalone or part of a series. However, the duration for which the book is available for free is very limited, typically just three days, so you will need to keep an eye on your inbox for the next newsletter.

The ebooks are available in EPUB and MOBI formats, so you should be able to read on any device, whether ereader or reading app on your phone or tablet.

It’s perhaps the best source of free reads that are not self-published, particularly if you’re a sci-fi or fantasy fiction fan.

10. Your local library

Use OverDrive to borrow ebooks for free

The great thing about using Kindle and Kobo ereaders is that you get access to ebook catalogues of your local library too. The Kindle library borrowing feature, however, is limited only to the US, while Kobo’s baked-in OverDrive support will set you up in several other markets.

Almost 45,000 libraries worldwide have OverDrive support, which allows you to borrow ebooks and audiobooks, as long as you have a library card. Depending on the rules of your library, you get to 'borrow' an ebook or digital magazine for a specific period of time, after which you lose access, or you can 'renew', just like you would a physical book in a bricks-and-mortar library.

Don’t use either a Kindle or a Kobo device? Libby is the mobile version of OverDrive, so installing it on your phone or tablet will give you the ability to borrow ebooks from a supported local library you’re a member of.

• Looking for a new way to enjoy your ebooks? Take a look at our guide to the best free ebook readers

Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox

Get the hottest deals available in your inbox plus news, reviews, opinion, analysis and more from the TechRadar team.

Sharmishta is TechRadar's APAC Managing Editor and loves all things photography, something she discovered while chasing monkeys in the wilds of India (she studied to be a primatologist but has since left monkey business behind). While she's happiest with a camera in her hand, she's also an avid reader and has become a passionate proponent of ereaders, having appeared on Singaporean radio to talk about the convenience of these underrated devices. When she's not testing camera kits or the latest in e-paper tablets, she's discovering the joys and foibles of smart home gizmos. She's also the Australian Managing Editor of Digital Camera World and, if that wasn't enough, she contributes to T3 and Tom's Guide, while also working on two of Future's photography print magazines Down Under.

Kobo Libra Colour review: twice improved for better reading and writing

Color me surprised: Kobo's finally beaten Kindle with its latest ereaders

I’ve seen Sony’s impressive new mini-LED TV backlight tech in action, and OLED TVs should be worried

Most Popular

• 2 You took amazing smartphone eclipse photos, but reminded me why I didn't use Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra's 100x Space Zoom
• 3 I tested the Google Pixel’s Long Exposure photo mode – and it’s another reason to leave my pro mirrorless camera at home
• 4 Samsung’s new cheap 98-inch 4K TV with 120Hz support could be your dream gaming TV
• 5 An incredible $100 billion bet to get rid of Nvidia dependence — tech experts reckon Microsoft will build a million-server strong data center that will primarily use critical inhouse components
• 2 Apple should be worried – Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chip threatens to end the dominance of M3 MacBooks, and I played Baldur's Gate 3 on a notebook to prove it
• 3 Surfshark drops new Apple TV VPN app
• 4 The latest macOS Ventura update has left owners of old Macs stranded in a sea of problems, raising a chorus of complaints
• 5 I finally found a practical use for AI, and I may never garden the same way again

Welcome to Project Gutenberg

Project gutenberg is a library of over 70,000 free ebooks.

Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world’s great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for you to enjoy.

The Autobiography of Arthur Young by Arthur Young

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

Poimintoja Jaakko Fellmanin muistiinpanoista Lapissa by A. Meurman

Campanalogia: or the art of ringing improved. by Fabian Stedman

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 390, April, 1848 by Various

Be not afraid by Catharine Shaw

Research methods in ecology by Frederic E. Clements

The works of the Rev. John Wesley, Vol. 09 (of 32) by John Wesley

Myths of the Modocs by Jeremiah Curtin

The Great Indian Epics by John Campbell Oman and Valmiki

Some of our latest eBooks Click Here for more latest books!

No fee or registration! Everything from Project Gutenberg is gratis, libre, and completely without cost to readers. If you find Project Gutenberg useful, please consider a small donation to help Project Gutenberg digitize more books, maintain its online presence, and improve Project Gutenberg programs and offerings. Other ways to help include digitizing, proofreading and formatting, or reporting errors.

Fundraising experiment with Give Freely. US-based visitors using the Chrome and Edge browsers get an occasional pop-up invitation to install a browser extension to generate donations to Project Gutenberg. Read more about this fundraising experiment, including how to send your input about it, on Project Gutenberg’s donation page .

No special apps needed! Project Gutenberg eBooks require no special apps to read, just the regular Web browsers or eBook readers that are included with computers and mobile devices. There have been reports of sites that charge fees for custom apps, or for the same eBooks that are freely available from Project Gutenberg. Some of the apps might have worthwhile features, but none are required to enjoy Project Gutenberg eBooks.

50 years of eBooks 1971-2021. In 2021, Project Gutenberg celebrated the first eBook for reading enjoyment and unlimited free redistribution. This eBook was created on July 4, 1971 by Project Gutenberg’s founder, Michael S. Hart. Read more about this lasting innovation . Project Gutenberg is grateful to all volunteers who helped to reach this milestone anniversary. Project Gutenberg offers a vibrant and growing collection of the world’s great literature. Read, enjoy, and share!

Find Free eBooks

• Search and browse . By author, title, subject, language, type, popularity, and more.
• Bookshelves of related eBooks.
• Frequently downloaded : Top 100, or ranked by popularity .
• Offline catalogs : handy eBook listings and metadata to consult offline.
• Recently added . The latest new and updated eBooks.
• Visit self.gutenberg.org for free eBooks by contemporary authors.

Audio books

Audio books are a great way to enjoy and share literature. Project Gutenberg no longer adds new audio books to the collection, and suggests these audio book resources. These audio books are all freely available and in the public domain in the US. They may be easily played back on computers, tablets, mobile phones, and other devices. They may be shared non-commercially, without limitation except in countries where the printed source is still copyrighted. All of the sources listed below are digitizations of texts from Project Gutenberg.

• Project Gutenberg’s human-read audio books . 662 titles read by people, sometimes with sound effects or other enhancements. These are from a few different contributors.
• Project Gutenberg’s computer-generated audio books . 386 titles from 2003, using text-to-speech automation. These are listenable but relatively low quality compared to today’s technology.
• Human-read audio books from LibriVox . LibriVox is a volunteer community that produces high-quality performances that are done by many different volunteers. Follow the link to find audio books, and also to help create new audio books.
• The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection . Almost 5,000 titles from 2023, via a Project Gutenberg collaboration with Microsoft and MIT. These use neural text-to-speech technology for more natural-sounding computer-generated audio books. These audio books are also available on major music/podcast platforms as well as The Internet Archive . Project Gutenberg and partners were recognized by TIME for this work in their Best Inventions of 2023 .
• Frequently Asked Questions about Project Gutenberg.
• Help, How-To and FAQs : In depth information about many topics.
• Tablets, phones and eReaders How-To : Using tablets, Kindle, Nook, cell phone, and other mobile devices and readers.

How to Help

• Distributed Proofreaders welcomes new volunteers. This is the main source of new Project Gutenberg eBooks. Getting started is easy, and just a page a day will help!
• Fix and improve Project Gutenberg by reporting errors, bugs, typos, and suggesting changes.
• Record audiobooks with our friends at LibriVox .

Special Areas

• About Project Gutenberg .
• Donating to Project Gutenberg .
• Feeds of new eBooks.
• Linking to Project Gutenberg and roboting or crawling the site.
• Partners and affiliates .
• Permissions, copyright, licensing, and trademark information .
• What does free eBook (No Cost or Freedom?) mean?
• Terms of Use

Project Gutenberg eBooks may be freely used in the United States because most are not protected by U.S. copyright law. They may not be free of copyright in other countries. Readers outside of the United States must check the copyright terms of their countries before accessing, downloading or redistributing eBooks. We also have a number of copyrighted titles, for which the copyright holder has given permission for unlimited non-commercial worldwide use.

The Project Gutenberg website is for human users only. Use of automated tools to access the website may trigger a block of your access. This site utilizes cookies, captchas and related technologies to help assure the site is maximally available for human users. See full terms of use here .

Social Media

• News feeds of new eBooks

• Privacy policy
• About Project Gutenberg
• Contact Information

The 10 Best Free Ebook Download Sites

Want to download more ebooks so that you never run out of reading material? Here are the best sites for downloading free ebooks.

Ebooks are a great way to keep a large library of books on your phone, tablet, or computer. If you love to read and can never have too many books, you probably would enjoy reading ebooks.

But free ebook downloads are hard to find unless you know the right websites to visit. As such, to help you out, this article lists some of the best sites that offer free ebooks for you to read. These free ebook download sites have something for everyone.

1. Project Gutenberg

One of the best free ebook download sites is Project Gutenberg. It's a charity endeavor, sustained through volunteers and fundraisers, that aims to collect and provide as many high-quality ebooks as possible. Most of its library consists of public domain titles, but it has other stuff, too, if you're willing to look around.

As of this writing, Gutenberg has more than 60,000 free ebooks on offer. They are available for download in EPUB and MOBI formats (some are only available in one of the two) and can be read online in HTML format.

You can browse the library by category (of which there are hundreds), by most popular (which means total download count), by latest (which means the date of upload), or by random (which is a great way to find new material to read).

2. Google Play

Many people might not realize this, but Google Play has tons of free ebooks available to download. To find free eBooks on Google Play, head to the charts and select Top Free.

You will be able to find thousands of free ebooks. The best part is you can check reviews and see if they're worth the read. The charts system also ranks the best free books, so you can spend your time reading something enjoyable.

While Google Play is native to Android devices, you can also install the app to read from your iPhone or iPad.

3. Open Library

Open Library is one of the best digital libraries where you can download ebooks for free —not just ones in the public domain but even recently released mainstream titles.

Open Library offers an easily searchable directory of all the free ebooks available on The Internet Archive. You might be surprised at the number of books available; at the time of writing, the total library is pushing toward 1.5 million items.

On the Open Library's homepage, you can readily find the books you might be interested in, thanks to the scrollable categories. Some of the most popular categories include Romance, Kids, and History. You can even find some textbooks lurking in the catalog.

The site is open source, and anyone can edit the information available for each book.

BookBub is a service dedicated to making it easy to discover new authors. Because of this, BookBub has a large library of independent authors, all offering free ebooks. With BookBub, you can read reviews, check out the synopsis, and see if this is a book you truly want to read.

BookBub is best for those who've read all the classics and want some new and exciting reads.

5. International Children's Digital Library

If your child is a bookworm, you could spend a lot of cash on new titles. Unless that is, you find a reliable source of free ebooks for kids. The International Children's Digital Library is a godsend for anyone with young readers in the house.

Books are available in a variety of lengths and reading difficulty levels. You can even search by criteria that might stimulate kids, such as the color of the cover. Each book is listed in a specific category for easy searching.

The International Children's Digital Library does appear small, but there are still great titles to be found. The ebooks here are also available in a variety of languages, with most of the titles in English.

6. Feedbooks

Feedbooks is a large collection of downloadable ebooks: fiction and non-fiction, public domain and copyrighted, free and paid. Many of the books on Feedbooks are paid, but there are still some great free ebooks, which you can find in the public domain category.

There are some free original books as well, which you can find in the different categories. However, you can't sort by price.

Most ebooks are available in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats. They even come with word counts and reading time estimates if you consider that when choosing what to read.

7. Centsless Books

Unlike the other sites on this list, Centsless Books is a curator-aggregator of free Kindle books available on Amazon. Its mission is to make it easy for you to stay on top of all the free ebooks available from the online retailer.

Note that some of the "free" ebooks listed on Centsless Books are only free if you're part of Kindle Unlimited. Unfortunately, Kindle Unlimited might not be worth the money . However, if you have it, it could be a great addition.

Note: Since Centsless Books tracks free ebooks available on Amazon, there may be times when nothing is listed. If that happens, try again a few days later.

8. PDFBooksWorld

Between the three major ebook formats—EPUB, MOBI, and PDF—what if you prefer to read in the latter format? While EPUBs and MOBIs have basically taken over, reading PDF ebooks hasn't quite gone out of style yet. And for a good reason: PDFs offer universal support across platforms and devices.

If you want to stick to PDFs only, you'll want to check out PDFBooksWorld. While the collection is small, at only a few thousand titles, they're all free and guaranteed to be PDF-optimized. Most of them are literary classics, like The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, and so on.

You can also read these books online, making the platform great for citations or academic projects.

For other formatting issues, we've covered everything you need to convert ebooks for your Amazon Kindle.

9. ManyBooks

ManyBooks is a nifty little site that's been around for over a decade. Its purpose is to curate and provide a library of free and discounted fiction ebooks for people to download and enjoy.

Much of its collection was seeded by Project Gutenberg back in the mid-2000s. However, since then, it has taken on an identity of its own with the addition of thousands of self-published works made available at no charge.

Downloads are available in dozens of formats, including EPUB, MOBI, and PDF, and each story has a rating out of five stars, which is something Project Gutenberg doesn't have.

10. Free-Ebooks.net

As you can probably guess by its name, free-ebooks.net offers thousands of free ebooks. The content is broadly split into six categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Romance, Sci-Fi, Self Help, and Business.

To download free ebooks, you will need to sign up for an account, which is free to create. Once you have an account, you can download up to five free titles every month.

In addition to English, books are available in dozens of other languages.

More Ways to Find Free Ebooks

Don't forget about Amazon Prime. Specifically, Prime Reading grants access to thousands of free ebooks in addition to all of the other amazing benefits of Amazon Prime.

The best thing about many free ebooks is that they don't have DRM. This means you aren't limited by how many devices you can read them on. So, what are you waiting for? Grab some free ebooks!

15 Of The Best Places To Find Free Books Online

Nikki VanRy

Nikki VanRy is a proud resident of Arizona, where she gets to indulge her love of tacos, desert storms, and tank tops. She also writes for the Tucson Festival of Books, loves anything sci-fi/fantasy/historical, drinks too much chai, and will spend all day in bed reading thankyouverymuch. Follow her on Instagram @nikki.vanry .

View All posts by Nikki VanRy

Want to get your eyes on MILLIONS of free books online?

If you’ve been following along, you already know that you can find free audiobooks online  (woop woop!). We talked about options like LibriVox and MindWebs that are offering readers free audio books and short stories.

Now, we’ve got 15 more sites where you can read free books online when earbuds aren’t an option. You’ll get beyond the classics (though those are cool too), with free YA books, graphic novels, fanfiction, children’s books, and more.

And all together these sites have a lot of great books. A lot. Like, in the millions. Seriously. Your TBR list may be crying, but at least your wallet is happy?

Where can I download free books Online?

We give more details about each one below, but the following sites all offer (or curate a collection with) free books online:

1. Goodreads’ Free Shelves

While many of the books on the following websites are classic books and out of copyright, you can find more contemporary online books for free at Goodreads’ free eBooks shelves (either full or excerpts) or with the “ free-online ” tag.

2. International Children’s Digital Library

If you’re looking for free children’s books online, the ICDL is a nonprofit organization with a mission to: “promote tolerance and a respect for diverse cultures by providing access to the best of children’s literature from around the world.”

You can read freely and anonymously on their site, or create an account to keep an ongoing bookshelf. And there are books from all over the world (you can even search by countries on the globe). Look for great free books online like:

Related: 25 Free Amazon Prime Audiobooks

3. Internet Sacred Text ARchive

Dedicated to religion, mythology, and folklore, the ISTA online collection provides access to hundreds of sacred texts online. It also promotes religious diversity, tolerance, and scholarship baked into its mission (which is pretty rad of course).

You’ll find versions of the  Bible,  as well as the  Talmud ,  Vedas,  and more.

4. ManyBooks

Just as the name implies, ManyBooks has loads and loads of online books for free. Over 30,000 in fact. The majority of their eBooks work for Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other readers.

You’ll find thousands of books, both classic and contemporary here, such as:

5. Open Culture

Open Culture connected readers with a curated list of free audiobooks, and they’ve created something similar for free eBooks. You’ll find 800 free and downloadable eBooks through their site, ready to download for iPads, iPhones, Kindles, or to read in your browser directly.

Some knockouts include The Stranger  by Albert Camus and poems from Charles Bukowski.

6. Open Library

Open Library offers over 1.7 million free eBooks online to users. It’s part of the Internet Archive, which also allows users to contribute (and correct!) books. They both offer free versions of full books and links to access paid books elsewhere.

Books to read online include  Sherlock Holmes  by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or  Matilda  by Roald Dahl.

7. Overdrive

The Libby App by OverDrive connects you with your local libraries to check out eBooks on your personal devices. You only need a library card and you’ll be able to check out classic and contemporary eBooks for free, anywhere and anytime. They host a catalog of over two million eBooks, as well as audiobooks. And, they’ve recently made it easier to transfer books onto your device.

Of course, since it’s connected to your library, you’ll also see free bestselling YA eBooks and other more recent bestsellers and other classics.

8. Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg continues to be a fantastic resource for classic novels and obscure older texts alike that are already in the public domain. The organization is run entirely by volunteers who digitize and then also proofread works. In all, they’ve added over 50,000 free books online.

Whether you’re reading them online or downloading them to your device, you can dig into classic books like:

9. Read Print

Read Print is a user-friendly website that allows users to read classics online. It also has a fancy bookshelf widget where you can track books read and books (so many books) that you want to read.

You’ll find free classic books like:

10. Riveted

Riveted offers YA books for free online, either full books or excerpts on a time-limited basis.

By signing into the site from Simon & Schuster and becoming a member, you’ll be able to read some sweet free books, download them to any device, join in giveaways, and discuss your YA favorites.

If you love all things science fiction and fantasy, check out Tor’s eBook club and weekly newsletters .

The publisher releases weekly original short stories from some of the biggest sci-fi/fantasy authors. And, seriously, receiving a smashingly fantastic short story in my inbox every week has been such a joy and has helped me find great new authors.

They also release the eBook of the Month club where you can get free access to one pick each month.

12. WikiSource

Got a jonesing for some original source material? Even if you’re not in academia, Wikisource is the ultimate place to do a deep dive on a topic. The site hosts almost 400,000 texts in English, with user-generated submissions allowed.

You can find texts from 1846 to 1941, from authors like Rudyard Kipling and Marie de France, on werewolves specifically. Or, discover new worlds with texts from Jules Verne and Philip Dick.

13. World Public Library

The World Public Library’s online Millennium Collection isn’t free, but for less than $10 a year for *ahem* millions of free books in over 300 languages, it’s basically free. They also offer free memberships for physically disabled or special needs members. You’ll find eBooks from all over the world, including:

Some of their knock-outs include  1984  by George Orwell,  Siddhartha  by Hemann Hesse, and  The Mahabharata  translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli.

Seriously, even more Free Books Online

These are mostly websites that share free books online that have at one time been traditionally published and disseminated. But, um, there’s the internet which means there’s more books available out there than you’ll ever have time to read.

Check out WattPad for stories by independent authors, historical fiction, fanfiction, and more. There’s also a huge active community over there to talk about books with. Here’s your beginner’s guide .

FanFiction.net is a hub for short story and novel length spin-offs of your favorite fictional worlds.

Phew, we’re not done yet.  BookRix is also a community of independent authors who publish free eBooks in any of your favorite genres. We’re talking fantasy, romance, sci-fi, children’s and more.

The Library of Congress also has a small collection of classic children’s books.

Finally, also make sure to follow your favorite authors on social media. They’ll often share links to eBook deals, excerpts to upcoming novels, giveaways, or free shorts set in the same universe.

Want To Find Cheap Books?

Other cheaper options ($10 a month or less) include Kindle Unlimited , some of the books on the Google Play store, Unlimited Library , and Scribd .

You can also follow along with Book Riot’s Deals of the Day “ Book Deals ” emails where you’ll get alerts about absurdly cheap eBooks and audiobooks.

Read Next: 50+ Ways to Get Free Books

It makes my heart swell a little bit that there are SO MANY places to find free books online. That’s a lot of literature, all with a simple internet connection.

You Might Also Like

• Gift Guides

15 Places to Find and Download Free Ebooks (Legally)

Are you looking for places to download free ebooks? If so, then you’re in the right place! Books can be expensive (which is one of the biggest problems book lovers face ), so it is wonderful when you are able to find ebooks for free!

There are actually lots of places to get free ebooks legally, so today we’re going to talk all about the best places to find and download free ebooks. These 15 sites are some of my favorite places to find free ebooks to read, so check them out and find some great new reads today!

Want to learn even more ways to get books without spending so much money? Check out my FREE guide on how to get print books, ebooks, and audiobooks for less!

1. Project Gutenberg

One of the first places you’ll want to check for free ebooks is Project Gutenberg . This is one of the best free ebook sites for classic books, so when you’re looking for free ebooks to download this should definitely be on your list to check!

This site offers downloads of over 60,000 free books in the public domain. Everything on here is free and legal, and you’ll find tons of free classic ebooks including a lot of the world’s best literature. But, of course, there are plenty of other fun and less well-known books to read as well! So whether you’re looking for Pride & Prejudice or odd little Sci-Fi short stories , Project Gutenberg’s free ebooks are certainly a treasure trove!

To find the books you’re looking for, you can use a basic keyword or author search or you can use their more advanced search form when needed. You can also discover books by browsing through the whole catalog or by taking a look at the 100 most-downloaded books from yesterday, from the past week, or from the past month.

This versatility in how to find books is refreshing, and another thing I love about Project Gutenberg is that they offer multiple formats for reading. So you can read their books online, download free epub books, download free Kindle ebooks, and more! This means you can read from your web browser, from your smartphone, from your computer, your tablet, your Kindle, etc. You have a lot of flexibility and can really read from any device you own.

So all in all, if you’re wondering where to download free ebooks then Project Gutenberg is the perfect first stop as you search for books to read!

2. OverDrive or Libby

Another of my top places to search for free ebooks is the OverDrive / Libby apps. To use these apps, you will need to have a library card since they work by syncing your device to your local library’s online lending system. But when you’re looking for free online library ebooks, this is definitely the place to go!

In both OverDrive and Libby, you can access and download any of the ebooks and audiobooks in your library’s collection. (Pro tip: if you have library cards from multiple libraries, enter all your card numbers so you can access a wider range of library catalogs!) All you need to do to get started with these apps is enter your library card number, and then you can start typing in a book title or author to see if your library has the book available to download.

Unfortunately, because this is a library lending system there are only a certain number of electronic “copies” of each ebook that they can lend out at one time. This means that if you’re looking for a super popular book (like free Harry Potter books to read ) you may find that you have to place a hold and wait for someone else to return a copy before you can check it out. Your OverDrive/Libby account does allow you to place a lot of holds, though, so thinking ahead about what books you might want to read is a good idea. If you plan ahead, you will likely be able to have at least a few ebooks available whenever you want to read them!

But while you might have to wait anywhere from a day to a couple of weeks for the most popular books at your library, you will likely find that there are also plenty of fantastic books to explore that are immediately available for download. My OverDrive app is nearly always the first place I go when I’m looking for a free EPUB download of a book I want, so I highly recommend signing up and getting ebooks for free through your local library!

3. ManyBooks

ManyBooks calls itself your “Friendly Neighborhood Library,” and this is exactly what it is! When you’re searching for free ebook download sites, this is a great one to use if you want a clean and beautiful interface.

There are over 50,000 free ebooks in the ManyBooks library, and they span across a variety of genres. No matter what genre you’re interested in, you’ll definitely find some books in that category here! Their collection includes ebooks in the public domain as well as books from a variety of self-publishing authors, so there are some fun new works to discover as well as classics to read.

One of the things that sets ManyBooks apart and makes it one of the best free ebook download sites is its commitment to quality standards. Even the self-published books must meet these standards before they are uploaded to the site, which means there is less junk to sort through as you try to find a new book to read.

All the books on this site are free and most are available in a multitude of e-reader formats, so when you’re looking for a free ebook library you can’t go wrong with browsing the selection here. And who knows, you may even find a new favorite book or new favorite author!

4. Google Play Books

While not all of the titles on Google Play Books are free, there is quite a collection of free books that you can browse. You’ll find a large collection of classics from War and Peace to The Time Machine and beyond, as well as a rather large collection of who-knows-what from more modern books to other publications.

Unless I have a specific public domain book in mind to search for, I find that Google Play Books works best when not searching for specific ebooks for free online. Instead, it’s far better when you’re simply curious about what books might be out there and are open to anything you come across (fair warning: the books you find might be trash. Or they might be amazing! That’s just the risk you take 😉)

You can use the search bar to discover what is available, by searching the word “free” or searching more specific terms like “free classic ebooks,” “free fantasy ebooks,” or “free romance ebooks.” You can then scroll through whatever comes up and decide if there’s anything you think looks interesting.

You never know what you’ll find on here, but if you’re bored and just looking for some new possibilities to read then this is a fairly good place to get ebooks for free.

5. Kindle Unlimited Free Trial

If you haven’t used Kindle Unlimited before (or haven’t used it recently) then this is a great way to find even more ebooks to read for free. Kindle Unlimited is a cool subscription service by Amazon that allows you to read as many books as you want for free every month. You can learn all about this subscription service and how it works here.

But if you simply want to sign up and try it out yourself, you can sign up for a free 30 day trial to start reading unlimited books at no cost! Of course, it’s only free for 30 days (not forever), but that’s still a pretty good amount of time to be able to read as many books as you can fit into a month for free.

While this subscription service contains the Kindle name, you don’t actually need a Kindle device to use it. All you need is the free Amazon Kindle app installed on your smartphone, tablet, computer, etc. Once you have the app installed, you’re good to start your free trial and begin reading lots of books.

If you have 30 days where you’ll have a lot of free time to read, then that is an especially good time to use your Kindle Unlimited free trial . There are over one million titles available, so you’ll have lots of free ebooks to explore!

Already used your free trial? You can still get a great deal on Kindle Unlimited by getting a 1-month or 6-month Kindle Unlimited subscription !

6. Bookboon

While most of the sites on this list are for finding fiction books, novels, and the like, Bookboon is a little bit different. Rather than fiction books, they offer more educational and learning-focused books in the economics, engineering, business, and IT fields of study. If you’re looking to read entire books online free but want the books you read to help you learn a new skill, then Bookboon is the place to go!

This site is quite easy to use. All you have to do is create an account and you will immediately gain access to over 1,000 titles for students (or for those of us who are students at heart 🙂). From books on improving your English to books introducing you to the internet of things (IoT) , you’ll be able to learn all sorts of new things when you spend time exploring these free ebooks for online reading.

But if you find you’re interested in discovering more books around the subject of businesses and working, Bookboon also offers a Business Books subscription service. While this is normally a paid plan, you can get a 30-day free trial of their business books if you want to check it out.

So while there are no fiction books or stories on this site, Bookboon still earns its place on this list of the best free ebook websites since it allows people to read free ebooks and gain new knowledge from them…which is an excellent and amazing thing!

7. Smashwords

As far as free EPUB sites go, another one you might be interested in is Smashwords . This site is somewhat similar to ManyBooks in that it offers a variety of indie and self-published books for you to explore and download for free. However, unlike ManyBooks, Smashwords does also list some books that you must pay to download.

But with over 70,000 titles on Smashwords for free, all you have to do is start browsing or narrow your search down by clicking a specific genre. And if you wish to avoid their paid books and see only the free ones, then you can check out their free ebooks page or simply make sure the filter is set to free at the top of each search page.

It’s unlikely you’ll recognize many of the authors on here, but this site makes it easy to see blurbs from the books and easy to see the ratings that other readers have given each book. With this helpful information, it’s likely you’ll be able to find a fun new read even if you don’t recognize the author!

When you’re wondering where to get free ebooks, Kobo is another great place to go! This online bookstore does offer paid books, but they also have a lovely collection of free ebooks you can enjoy.

If you’re looking for their free ebooks, all you have to do is go to the Kobo free ebooks page and you can find books to download in a variety of genres. With both fiction and nonfiction titles, there will be something for everyone and you’ll likely find plenty to keep you entertained.

But also, if it’s your first time using Kobo, send me a quick note and I’ll send you a coupon code you can use to get $5 off your first book (on a purchase of $5.01 or more). This means you can get a book free or nearly for free, depending on the price of the book you are interested in. Since Kobo has tons of books from major publishers, you can easily get any modern book that you’ve been looking for!

So if you’re looking for free EPUB book downloads or want to get a specific book using the coupon code, Kobo is the perfect site to visit!

9. Feedbooks

Feedbooks is another example of EPUB download sites similar to Smashwords and ManyBooks. But unlike those two sites, the free ebooks available on Feedbooks are only free public domain titles and not original works.

While there are a lot of sites on this list that offer EPUB ebooks from the public domain, what makes Feedbooks still worth visiting is the high quality of the ebooks. The type and formatting is quite easy to read and the books are easy to download and start using, so if you are looking for a download of free ebooks in the public domain then this is definitely still a site you should check out!

10. Amazon Prime Reading

Did you know that if you have Amazon Prime you can read ebooks for free? This feature is called Amazon Prime Reading , and with it you have access to over 1,000 titles you can read for free !

You can learn more about how to use Prime Reading here , but essentially you can keep an eye out for titles that say they are eligible or you can click the box that reads “Prime Reading Eligible” in the left sidebar of search to filter results and find free ebooks.

If you are already paying for Prime, then using Amazon Prime free ebooks is a no-brainer way to get ebooks for free online reading. Unlike a Kindle Unlimited subscription , Prime Reading just comes automatically as one of your benefits when you subscribe to Prime. So if you have Prime, then go check it out now…or if you don’t, then start a free 30-day trial of Prime to get access to this cool and free library of Prime eligible books!

Looking for even more free ebooks for downloading? Barnes & Noble’s Nook Store offers a variety of free ebooks for Nook and other devices that you can enjoy.

Whether you’re looking for a book in a specific subject or want to explore a new series that you haven’t read before, Nook offers lots to choose from in an easily accessible EPUB format. So be sure to take your time on here and browse to see which ebooks you can find for free!

12. International Children’s Digital Library

Are you hoping to find free ebooks for kids? If so, then you should check out the International Children’s Digital Library . This library is an amazing free resource online with digitized children’s books from around the world.

The ebooks you’ll find on this site are written in 59+ different languages, so there is a lot to explore no matter what language you’re interested in. And you can find books in all lengths and reading levels here, so there is something for every age of kids and quite likely a lot that adults will enjoy as well.

The website’s design is a bit bright and much to look at, but the resources they provide make it worth using despite this. Plus, you can browse books through a variety of categories including by the age of your child, by book length, by cover color, or by thematic characteristics. It’s a fairly easy system to find good books to read!

The books on this site are great to read to children or fun for them to read on their own to keep them occupied, so be sure to start browsing to find children’s literature ebooks free for your child (or for yourself) to enjoy!

13. Open Library and Internet Archive

Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive and is one of the more popular free ebook download sites on the internet. Its goal is to create a web page for every book ever published, but it also offers scanned copies of over 1.7 million books that you can borrow for free.

While many of the books on here are public domain works, there are also lots of more modern books as well. These more modern books are offered through the Open Library’s “ Book Sponsorship ” program where patrons purchase a book to donate to be scanned and distributed for others to borrow. But like a normal local library, you will have to join a wait list if someone else has already checked out the book you want.

Over the last few years, however, Open Library’s methods for borrowing and book sponsorship have created quite a bit of controversy over possible copyright violations . While there doesn’t appear to be any law they are directly violating, they are definitely pushing the bounds of current copyright law. So before you decide to borrow any works still under copyright from the Open Library, you should consider for yourself whether doing so is in line with protecting and honoring the rights of authors and creators…or if you should instead stick to only downloading public domain books from here.

The books on this site are in scanned format to read online without downloading, or if you prefer you can install Adobe Digital Editions to download an encrypted EPUB or PDF file that will automatically disappear from your device after two weeks. (Note that the sync function on Adobe Digital Editions does not work well between devices, so you should download the book directly on the device you wish to read on).

While there is some controversy to consider when you download ebooks online from this site, the public domain ebooks here are certainly a good find and you’ll also discover that there is a read aloud feature with every book you download (which makes this an especially good site for the print disabled). So if you are looking for an out-of-print or rare book, or for something in the public domain, then this is one of the free ebook websites you should be sure to check out!

14. Amazon’s Always Free Kindle Books

Amazon gives one more option for ebook free downloads, and you can find it in their always-free ebook selection . This selection consists primarily of classic ebooks free to read, but if you dig around you might find some other cool offers for free or cheap. Amazon definitely is one of the best ebook download sites for quality and ease of reading, so it’s awesome when you can find something you like on here for free!

15. Free Book Promotion Sites

Last but not least, if you aren’t looking for anything in particular and would prefer someone else to do the work of finding good free ebook deals for you, then there are several sites that offer information on limited-time free and legal books for you to download.

If you want ongoing information on new free books then you can either bookmark these sites to visit regularly and see new deals…or you can sign up for email lists to get free book suggestions straight to your inbox. Whatever you decide to do, here are a few of the best sites to find awesome book offers put together by others:

• BookBub : Bookbub curates limited-time free books from across 20 genres (from both big publishers and excellent independent authors). Then they pass along this information to you with links to take you directly to the free books. It doesn’t get better than this!
• Freebooksy : If you want to get books for free, then Freebooksy is a good place to look. The books you’ll find here are usually free for only around 24-48 hours, so you really have to snatch them up quick when you see them.
• Reddit Free Ebooks : Reddit’s Free Ebooks subreddit is a place where people share about the free books they find across the internet. All links posted in this subreddit are supposed to take you to legally free books, so take a look and see what you find! It’s not very well organized for searching for a specific book, but who knows when you’ll find a gem as you browse?

Save for Later

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Entertainment
• Beebom Gadgets

16 Websites to Download Free ebooks Legally

Legally Download eBooks for Free

1. open library.

An initiative of the non-profit Internet Archive, Open Library has a collection of 1 million public domain eBooks, all of which can be freely downloaded in numerous formats like EPUB, DJVU, MOBI , and PDF . You can also read the eBooks online, and the collection includes eBooks on numerous subjects/genres like Fiction, Classics, Children, and Drama. Open Library also records important information (e.g. author name, classification, current edition) about the eBooks in its database, pulling the information from sources like the Library of Congress, and Amazon. It also partners with numerous book stores, enabling users to borrow books for reading online.

2. Project Gutenberg

Visit Website

3. Smashwords

4. Loyal Books

What makes Bookbub stand apart from the others is that it not only gets you some really great eBooks, but also serves up personalized recommendations based on your interests.

6. MobileRead Forums

As the name suggests, MobileRead Forums is a web-based forum. It is a community driven website, having numerous user submitted threads divided into a bunch of primary categories like eBook readers, eBook software, and more. So whether you’re thinking about buying a new eBook reader device, confused about the different eBook formats, or just want some recommendations about what your next read should be, MobileRead Forums’ community will help you out. One of the more interesting sub-sections of the website is the eBook uploads sub-section, where users upload many great eBooks in various, spanning multiple genres/categories such as Non-Fiction, Drama, and Thrillers. The uploaded eBooks are generally public domain, and often sourced from databases like Project Gutenberg. Furthermore, they are available in almost all popular formats, such as EPUB, MOBI, TXT, and PDF .

7. Wikibooks

8. ManyBooks

9. Feedbooks

10. Bookboon

Just like their physical counterparts, eBooks are not just limited to novels and short stories. They also include academic eBooks, which are specifically useful for the student community. And this is where Bookboon comes into the picture.

11. HathiTrust

Essentially, HathiTrust is a collaborative effort of numerous academic and research organizations in the U.S., aimed at providing students, researchers (and anyone, in general) free access to content digitized from libraries around the world. You can use its powerful search to look for any title across the millions of eBooks in its database. Not only that, you can also go through the pre-curated collections, consiting of titles covering genres/subjects like Ancestory & Genealogy, Manuscripts, and 19th-20th Century Psychology Texts. Just about every eBook in HathiTrust’s digital library can be read online. However, if you want to download eBooks for offline reading and create your own collections, you need to login with the official email address provided by your educational institution.

12. Free Ebooks

13. Baen Ebooks

eReader Device Specific Online eBook Stores

Apart from the great eBook sources discussed above, there are also many online stores that sell free (and of course, paid) eBooks specifically for the eReader devices that they are related to. And it goes without saying that to read the free eBooks sourced from these online stores, you need to have the respective eBook reader device as well

14. Amazon Kindle

15. Barnes & Noble Nook

Have a Nook eBook reader device? Then you also have access to the incredible collection of free (and paid) eBook titles from Barnes & Noble. Go to the Nook store, search for “free eBooks,” and you’ll find thousands of great free titles, spanning across categories/genres like Biography, Literature, Philosophy, Travel, and much more. The free eBooks can be synced/downloaded to your Nook device, and are automatically saved to your Barnes & Noble account.

Bonus: Reddit’s Free eBooks Thread

Craving for even more eBook goodness? Then you have to check out the absolutely amazing Free eBooks thread on Reddit . It’s a near-daily updated source of some really great free eBooks that you can download legally, having titles across all genres and subject categories. It also includes links to even more sources of Free eBooks.

All Pumped Up To Start Reading?

Rajat Sharma

From Automotive Design to Cosmology, and from World Music/Movies to Psychoanalysis, Rajat has a lot to call his avocations. A self-professed grammar Nazi, he's an atheist who believes science has/will ultimately have answers to everything, and that everyone should question their very existence, if they don't know their purpose in life. Oh, and he's also quite an aficionado of gadgets and tech, but you already know that, don't you?

Add new comment

8 Of The Best Websites To Find And Download eBooks For Free

If you're an avid reader or audiobook listener, you've probably explored Amazon and similar sites for your next great read. However, did you know there's a treasure trove of free books available at your fingertips? 

While there are dedicated e-readers, the associated costs of purchasing books through their platforms can get pricey. The good news is that the following websites are great places where bookworms can find and download ebooks — and even audiobooks — for absolutely free. If you're missing the library vibe, several of these sites allow users to borrow digital titles, just like you would at your local public library.

Of course, clicking on a link that promises free products online can sometimes feel risky. However, rest assured that every site mentioned in this list has been verified to genuinely provide free ebooks or audiobooks in various file formats. Additionally, these sites are user-friendly and completely legal for downloading content — after all, nothing is worse than clicking on a free link only to receive a free virus or a DMCA violation.

Modern technology has made it easier than ever to read a wide range of books and grow your digital library without breaking the bank. Here are eight of the best websites to find and download ebooks for free.

For free physical books, you turn to your local library. For free ebooks, the solution is OverDrive , a digital library platform offering patrons access to a vast collection at no cost.

Overdrive is a system used by public libraries around the world. It makes it easy for you to find the books you're looking for and download them directly to your Kindle or device, completely free of charge. The system works just like a library. To sign up, simply input your local library account information and then select which books you want to check out. The books are then downloaded directly to your device for a set duration, usually about two weeks. When it's time to return the book, the lending license expires and is automatically made unavailable so that the next person can download it.

While OverDrive provides a convenient and legal avenue to access fresh ebooks outside the public domain, there is a limitation to note. Due to copyright restrictions, each ebook has a set number of licenses available for lending. This means that, at times, you might encounter a waitlist for popular titles. The system ensures copyright compliance, preventing unlimited duplications of a single ebook. So, while OverDrive offers an exceptional free and legal resource for the latest reads, you just may have to wait in line for really popular titles.

Internet Archive: Open Library

Have you ever considered the monumental task of archiving the entire internet? While it may seem impossible, that's exactly what the Internet Archive is attempting. Founded in 1996 during the rise of public internet access, the Internet Archive: Open Library is an online library and repository whose mission is to archive as much of the digital world as possible, including websites, music, and ebooks.

The Internet Archive is the largest repository of historic website data with snapshots dating back to 1996 that capture the evolution of websites over time. You could spend hours reliving the '90s internet in the Wayback Machine . The site's digital library has an impressive collection of both public domain titles and copyrighted works shared with appropriate permissions. All content on their platform is accessible to the public at no cost.

The site hosts millions of books and different texts that are freely available for download, making it one of the easiest places to find free ebooks online.

Google Play Books

Google Play Books is another easy way to fill your digital shelves with paid and free ebooks. The app is incredibly intuitive, making it easy to store and organize your digital library by genre, series, or any other criteria. If you do end up purchasing a book, it stays with your account forever, granting access to it on any of your devices. The app also has a massive library of free ebooks that anyone can access with their Google account.

It may take a bit of looking and adjusting filters in their store, but Google Play Books has over 10 million free ebooks available for download. There's no cost or subscription fee. Users can simply browse through the listings and choose the ones they want to appear in their Google Library.

Many of the titles for free are public domain works that are free from copyright laws. This category includes timeless classics and favorites such as the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. However, the free offerings don't stop at the classics. Google Play Books also showcases an extensive list of contemporary works that have been submitted by authors or requested to be made publicly available.

From acclaimed New York Times best-selling authors to budding literary talents, Google Play Books has something for everyone. You can also take advantage of their occasional promotions, where you can snag modern titles at a steal or even for free.

BookBub isn't a library or an ebook repository, but signing up for an account will definitely help you find ebooks for cheap — and occasionally even for free. When major platforms like Google Play host flash sales or offer ebooks at reduced prices, BookBub monitors the retailers and sends out alerts to subscribers.

Upon registering with BookBub, users can specify their literary preferences by genre or book type. That way, whenever a deal aligns with your reading tastes, BookBub promptly notifies you about the discounted price and the corresponding retailer. This makes BookBub an easy way to fill up your hard drive with free and legally downloaded ebooks.

Beyond mere alerts, BookBub fosters a vibrant community of avid readers. The platform encourages user-generated content, including book recommendations tailored to your favorites. For instance, if you're a fan of "The Lord of the Rings," fellow users might suggest diving into "The Wheel of Time" series. It's a friendly community of book lovers, and most are more than happy to chat about their favorites.

Drawing from its Latin roots, Libri (books) and Vox (voice), LibriVox is a vast repository that offers a plethora of free audiobooks to the public.

Largely, the collection at LibriVox contains public domain works, making it less likely to offer contemporary titles. The platform's main mission is to ensure audiobooks are available to anyone with an internet connection. This is a daunting task since audiobooks typically require extensive production and drastically increase the price of a book. However, LibriVox manages to offer them at no cost, thanks to the dedication of volunteers who record the books. These volunteers range from ardent fans of the literature to professionals, ensuring a rich and immersive listening experience.

For those who prefer a synchronized reading experience, LibriVox often provides links to the exact text referenced during the audio recording, consolidating the search for both ebooks and audiobooks . The platform's admirable mission has significantly expanded public access to literary works. For those inspired by the cause, LibriVox welcomes new voices, offering an opportunity to volunteer and contribute to their ever-growing collection.

Initially established in France, Feedbooks has grown into a globally-recognized digital library and publisher. It works similarly to Google Play Books in that it offers a wide range of ebooks, both paid and free.

On Feedbooks, users can easily access thousands of free ebooks, either through their user-friendly app or their online platform. Once a book is downloaded, it remains in the user's account, available for direct reading via the app. Additionally, like other online book retailers, Feedbooks periodically offers special deals and flash sales, giving opportunities to get books at substantial discounts or entirely for free.

What sets Feedbooks apart is that they don't specifically cater to English text. While many platforms provide ebooks in various languages, Feedbooks prioritizes offering a wide linguistic range. This includes, but isn't limited to, French, Ukrainian, and Spanish. Furthermore, to cater to diverse reading preferences, their ebooks are available in formats compatible with Android, Kindle , and Apple devices.

Manybooks began as a platform to help fledgling authors publish their works and gain a following. It has since evolved into a comprehensive repository for ebooks. All of the books on the site are completely free and legal to download.

While Manybooks collection includes a wide range of public domain works, the best part is how the site helps to promote new authors. It is used as a starting point for authors to publicize their books, get feedback from readers, and start to build an audience. Many authors will post the first book in a series for free as a strategy to engage readers and solicit feedback. This approach paves the way for readers to discover lesser-known yet talented writers.

Using Manybooks is very easy, thanks to its intuitive interface. Users can easily filter their searches by genre or explore unique combinations. It's a great way to explore works that you may not otherwise find. Beyond its free library, Manybooks also curates newsletters and author spotlights to aid subscribers in finding interesting reads.

Project Gutenberg

Established in 1971, Project Gutenberg has been a pioneering force in the free distribution of ebooks to the public. Its enduring mission is "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."

Named after the Gutenberg press, its founder, Michael Hart, envisioned the computer's important role in storing and spreading information, particularly books and literature. He recognized that once digitized, information could be endlessly replicated and shared, enriching society through free access.

Today, Project Gutenberg offers thousands of public domain works and legally submitted content for download within the United States. For those outside the US, it's crucial to check your nation's copyright laws before downloading.

Beyond ebooks in various formats, Project Gutenberg also provides a diverse range of audiobooks. This collection includes both human-narrated audiobooks by volunteers and voice actors, as well as AI-generated readings, offering users a broad spectrum of listening experiences that might otherwise not be available.

Ebook Friendly

25 best sites with free public domain ebooks and audiobooks.

Do you want to load your e-reader or tablet with free ebooks or audiobooks, legally? Check out this list of sites that offer free public domain books in electronic and audio format.

Every year, new publications enter the public domain . It means their intellectual property rights have expired or are not applicable any longer.

The content of these works becomes available for public use. Anyone is free to use or reuse it. What does it mean, exactly?

You are allowed not only to legally download the ebook edition of the book. You can also publish it again, or mix with the content of other books, or freely use the characters in your merchandise.

As a result, you may see that the books that have entered the public domain are available in major ebookstores – both as free and paid products.

Why pay for an electronic version of the public domain book, if you can have it free of charge?

My advice is that if you want to get an ebook version of a classic novel, you should first check out the sites listed below.

The dates books enter the public domain vary between countries. Some rights depend on registrations on a country-by-country basis, but the most important factor is how many years have to pass after the death of the creator.

Which file format to choose?

Since mid-2022, the default file format for ebooks is epub . You will be able to add it to your e-reader or book-reading app, regardless of which platform you use: Kobo, Google Play Books, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Nook – and also Amazon Kindle. Yes, you should download epub to your Kindle or Kindle app, as mobi is no longer supported.

Best sites with free public domain ebooks and audiobooks

1. project gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg is a top destination for free ebooks on the web. It’s a first ebook initiative in the world, established by Michael S. Hart in 1971.

Over 60 thousand publications were digitized by Project Gutenberg volunteers, so far. The books are available for download in several formats (as I said, epub is the most popular one), and you can also read the books online, in your internet browser.

What’s more, over 100,000 free ebooks are available through Project Gutenberg’s partners and affiliates.

You can quickly browse the list of most downloaded books in the last day, week, or month. Each month, between 5 and 15 million books are being downloaded by users from around the world.

An interesting way to browse available titles is through bookshelves – collections of books, based on author, genre, or topic.

2. Europeana

Europeana is a digital platform that provides access to millions of digitized items from European cultural heritage collections.

These items include books, music, artworks, archival documents, and audiovisual content from archives, libraries, and museums across Europe.

Europeana allows users to search the platform for items, explore collections, and create their own personal collections.

More than 2,000 European institutions across Europe contribute to the site, including the British Library and national libraries from many countries.

To find free public domain books, search for the author or title, and in the right-side panel narrow results by Type of Media (select “text”), and by Can I Use This (select “Yes”).

3. Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a non-profit organization that provides access to millions of digital resources from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States.

It is an online platform that serves as a gateway to the vast and growing collections of digitized materials held by libraries, archives, and museums around the country.

Through the DPLA, users can search, browse, and discover the collections of libraries, archives, and museums, and use those collections to support their research and learning.

Well over 20 million items are classified on DPLA as “text” , with 16 million marked as ready for unlimited re-use. From a book detail page, you’ll be redirected to a relevant website, where you can further read it online or download.

4. Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library that provides free public access to millions of books, movies, audio recordings, software, and more.

It was founded in 1996 and is one of the largest open-access digital libraries on the internet.

The library has an extensive collection of webpages, music, movies, images, and documents related to the history of the internet, as well as many other topics.

You will find on the Internet Archive, well over 30 million text files, in 25 thousand collections. 20 million files and books are freely downloadable.

5. Open Library

Open Library is a free online library with millions of books, movies, music, websites, and other materials that can be accessed by anyone. It is intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”.

It is managed by the non-profit organization Internet Archive and is part of the larger Open Knowledge Network.

The library provides access to an ever-growing range of public domain and out-of-copyright materials, as well as titles from major publishers, including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Penguin Random House.

If the book is available for free in a digital format, a Read button is shown next to its catalog listing.

6. Feedbooks

Feedbooks is an online platform that provides access to a wide range of e-books, audiobooks, and other digital publications.

The platform is available on multiple devices, including smartphones and tablets. Feedbooks offers a variety of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, children’s books, cookbooks, and much more.

Users can access the platform for free, or upgrade to a premium membership for more features and access to exclusive content.

Feedbooks offers  thousands of public domain ebooks  in five languages. Unlike in Internet Archive, most of the free books have covers that will look good on your e-reader or e-reading application.

7. Manybooks

For a long time, Manybooks was a popular catalog of public domain ebooks, with over 50 thousand titles, sourced from Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive.

The site has evolved into an ad-supported ebook platform, but the free classic books from the public domain are still there.

The books are available in different file formats, so if you are looking for less popular ones, like Plucker or FictionBook2, Manybooks is a good destination to explore.

To find free public domain books, look on the front page for a section called “Popular Classics.”

8. DailyLit

DailyLit is an online platform that delivers serialized fiction and nonfiction in daily installments directly to readers via email or RSS.

It offers a range of titles from classic and contemporary authors, as well as original short stories.

DailyLit also gives users the option to customize their reading experience by setting their preferred reading speed, choosing the day and time for delivery of installments, and selecting their preferred genres.

Apart from DailyLit’s own serialized fiction, you can find here hundreds of classic novels.  Pride and Prejudice and War of the Worlds were two first books offered on platform’s launch in 2006.

9. Library of Congress

Did you know you can read the world’s beloved children’s classics on the Library of Congress website?

The digital collection of Classic Books includes “only” about 60 titles, but they are the ones you can’t find anywhere else.

This catalog looks like a great idea to spend some time with your kids reading together the books in their original look and feel. The books are scanned and digitized beautifully, and the interface looks gorgeous!

10. Google Book Search

Google launched its own ebookstore some time ago, but the earlier book scan project, Google Book Search, is still there.

Perform any search, and you’ll see a list of results. If you see Preview  or Full View link under the book’s title, it means you can read its scan in the browser.

11. Loyal Books

The site offers over 7 thousand of free public domain books, like audiobooks or text files. Titles in 30 languages can be found here.

12. The Literature Network

The site calls itself a “searchable online literature for the student, educator, or enthusiast.”

Currently, there are over 3,600 full books and over 4,400 short stories & poems from over 250 authors.

The key to exploring the site is author index, from where you can browse linked books, quotes forum threads, and quizzes.

13. Bartleby

The site offers free Harvard Classics – complete volumes of the most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time (read-online, no downloads offered).

14. Authorama

This simple-to-explore site lists free books from a variety of different authors.

The site’s purpose is to bring public domain books from sites like Project Gutenberg into a form easily readable in a web browser.

15. LibriVox

Founded in 2005, LibriVox is a non-profit initiative to record and catalog audio versions of public domain books.

The goal of LibriVox is to make all public domain books available, for free, in audio format on the internet. LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net.

Volunteers can choose from a variety of books to record, and LibriVox provides the recording tools and guidance to help them.

In August 2022, the site offered as many as 17,000 completed completed audiobooks.

The site offers free stories and poems in an audiobook format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages.

Many classic books and stories are included in the Lit2Go catalog, from Lewis Carroll, to Aesop, to Anne Brontë, to Jack London.

17. Legamus

The site makes free audiobooks from texts that entered the public domain in Europe.

18. Open Culture

Open Culture is a popular blog that curates access to educational and cultural media.

Among several collections, you can find here a directory of over 800 free ebooks . Most of them are in public domain.

19. Classic Literature Library

The site offers public domain books organized into collections. You can find here the complete works of William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, among others.

20. The Online Books Page

The site, managed by the University of Pennsylvania, offers a clean interface to browse for over 3 million free ebooks from around the web.

21. Great Books and Classics

A repository of works of classic writers and philosophers, from Sophocles to Epicurus, to Sun-Tzu.

The books in digital format can be read here online as html files.

22. Planet Publish

A decent collection of popular works of classic literature, in pdf format.

23. Classical Chinese Literature

Chinese classics, with each character hyperlinked to its definition and etymology.

24. Wolne Lektury

It’s an extremely well-managed collection of free public domain books in the Polish language.

Currently, there are well over 2,000 titles available, either for online reading or ready for download (epub, mobi, pdf formats).

25. Projekti Lönnrot

Public domain books in Finnish and Swedish.

Keep exploring. Here are other popular lists and tips:

• Free ebooks for Christmas 2023: here are the top 20 downloads Just like a year ago, we are presenting the list of ebooks that were most downloaded from Project Gutenberg in […]
• 12 best personalized gifts for librarians and library supporters These library-themed gifts are extremely easy to personalize. All you have to do is add your own text!
• Here are the 12 best iPhone case covers for book lovers In this updated overview, you’ll see gorgeous iPhone covers that will remind you of the joy of reading books anywhere, […]
• 12 best metal accessories and home decor for book lovers Explore some of the best home decor items for book lovers that are handmade from metal: steel, brass, copper, bolts, […]

If you don’t want to miss future updates, make sure to enable email notifications in the comment box below. We are also waiting for you on WordPress Reader , Mastodon , Tumblr , and Facebook . You can also add us to your Google News channels.

If you buy an item via this post, we may get a small affiliate fee ( details ). We only use the cookies that are necessary to run this site properly ( details ).

Share this:

• Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

27 responses to “25 best sites with free public domain ebooks and audiobooks”

[…] you have to do is wait for these titles to be released by the public domain sites. I recommend checking out Project Gutenberg every few weeks. You can add the list of books added in […]

[…] the Austen adventure. Works of one of the most beloved writers in English literature are in the public domain. It means you can read them free of charge – […]

[…] doesn’t have the online novel you want for free, then there are a ton of sites out there.  Ebookfriendly.com has a list of 25 places to find free online novels and classics.  Project Gutenberg is the best, […]

[…] to locate books without a copyright is Project Gutenberg.  You can also use this comprehensive list of public domain book sources to find what you’re looking […]

[…] Things to Do With a Thumb Drive. 25 Behind the Scenes Movie Photos You Can't Un-See Slideshow. 25 sources of free public domain books. 3 big Facebook privacy changes – Sun. Dec. 8, 2013 – pd.hillebrand – Gmail. 32 essential Android […]

[…] https://ebookfriendly.com/free-public-domain-books-sources/ […]

[…] à Austin. Les œuvres de l’un des écrivains les plus aimés de la littérature anglaise propriété publique. Cela signifie que vous pouvez les lire gratuitement, […]

[…] ordering a hard copy, first, try to find an online textbook. You can use various websites or just conduct your research using Google (remember to type a format, like epub, pdf, txt, mobi). […]

[…] most beloved classics are available online for free. They are the so-called public domain books. They are free because their intellectual property rights have expired, and everyone is entitled […]

[…] are several sites on the web that offer free ebooks to download in a variety of formats compatible with almost any […]

[…] bought the book in the third-party ebookstore or found the book in one of the sites that offer free public domain ebooks, make sure to download the file in mobi […]

[…] of free ebooks that you can download to your iPad and iPhone. These books are available in the public domain – their intellectual property rights expired, and anyone can use them without breaking the […]

[…] email is useful for everyone who reads lots of ebooks from other sources than Amazon, for instance, public domain books or third-party ebook […]

[…] if you wanted to add to your Kindle library an ebook from a third-party source (such as sites with free public domain books), you had to select mobi. If you downloaded an epub file to your computer, you had to convert it to […]

[…] method applies to books that you add to your Kindle from third-party sources, such as sites with free public domain books or independent platforms that offer books without DRM […]

[…] you create an ebook collection out of public domain ebooks, you may find Apple Books on your laptop quite helpful. Also, there is a growing number of […]

[…] you are looking for ways to read free books online, the best option is to go for any app that supports epub format, not […]

[…] if the original epub file doesn’t include a cover image, for instance, if you download it from sites with public domain books, you can add it easily using a quick and free online […]

[…] possible cost, you don’t need to hunt for ebook deals or reread classic novels from the public domain. There is also a third option – the best […]

[…] if most of your ebooks were downloaded for free from the sites that offer free public domain ebooks? You don’t need the Kindle app to be able to read them. You can pick up any other app that […]

[…] are free of charge – you don’t force yourself to finish them. It’s quite similar to free ebooks you’ve downloaded from public domain sites – you own hundreds of them, but have finished only […]

[…] can find the opening paragraphs from Franz Kafka’s The Trial and dozens of other public domain classics. Contemporary books are on the list as well. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Gone Girl by Gillian […]

[…] possible thanks to the fact that the books used for the campaign are already in public domain. It means they can be legally republished and […]

[…] looking at an older book that may now be in the public domain (and is therefore typically free), check out this list of 25 sources for free public domain ebooks. If you are interested in audiobooks in the public […]

[…] don’t get ebooks from the Kindle Store – if all your ebooks come from public domain sites or third-party ebook platforms that support Kindle format, you can download them to your Kindle via […]

[…] Almost half of books I keep in my Kindle library in the cloud are bought in Polish-language ebook stores. After the purchase I add the book manually to the Kindle by sending a file as an attachment to an email address associated with my Amazon account. I also have multiple classic novels I downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg. […]

[…] you need to buy a textbook, try to find it online first. You can use various websites or just conduct your research using Google (remember to type a format, like epub, pdf, txt, […]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Popular posts.

Free ebooks for Christmas 2023: here are the top 20 downloads

Just like a year ago, we are presenting the list of ebooks that were most downloaded from Project Gutenberg in the last 30 days.

Ebooks may be a gateway to a harmful surveillance

The fact that you don’t reveal your reading activity to the public doesn’t mean your sensitive data is 100% protected.

All your print and digital Amazon books are now in one place – except the sideloaded ones

Amazon has just launched Your Books, a personalized space with all your print, Kindle, and Audible books. However, the service doesn’t include your sideloaded ebooks.

Turn your Kindle lockscreen into a custom composition notebook cover

This simple guide will let you use an iconic composition notebook design as a Kindle screensaver image.

Audiobook listening in 2023, according to Spotify

Spotify’s announcement of the introduction of audiobooks in the U.S. comes with an infographic about audiobook listening habits.

Almost 1,100 Kindle ebooks are on sale for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023

This shopping season, forget about the Kindle, and get Kindle books instead. In three combines deals, well over 1,000 books are featured – and Cyber Monday hasn't started yet.

Start Reading

Big magic: creative living beyond fear.

by ELIZABETH GILBERT

Once upon a time, there was a man named Jack Gilbert, who was not related to me – unfortunately for me. 

Jack Gilbert was a great poet, but if you’ve never heard of him, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. He never much cared about being known. But I knew about him, and I loved him dearly from a respectful distance, so let me tell you about him.

Jack Gilbert was born in Pittsburgh in 1925 and grew up in the midst of that city’s smoke, noise, and industry. He worked in factories and steel mills as a young man, but was called from an early age to write poetry. He answered the call without hesitation. He became a poet the way other men become monks: as a devotional practice, as an act of love, and as a lifelong commitment to the search for grace and transcendence. I think this is probably a very good way to become a poet. Or to become anything, really, that calls to your heart and brings you to life.

176 words read ...

New at Reader Updated

• ALA report: public libraries see 92 percent increase in number of titles targeted for censorship 
• Study: reading on paper improves comprehension even 8 times more than digital
• Christmas reading challenge (cartoon)
• Discover the positive side of life through illustrations by Elise Gravel
• Gen Z vs. Millennials – how they read books and use libraries (report)
• Goodreads Choice Awards 2023: the winners are here!
• The current book reading habits in the U.S. (survey and infographic)
• What if Wes Anderson visited a library and made a movie about it? (video)

Revolution Begins Book Lover Funny T-Shirt – Time to start a revolution, comrades! Wait, I need to finish the book, first – and a bookmark comes as a handy excuse. This vintage artwork says: “The revolution begins as soon as I remember where I left my bookmark”.

Join Discovery, the new community for book lovers

Trust book recommendations from real people, not robots 🤓

Blog – Posted on Monday, Sep 16

20 of the best places to get free kindle books.

We’re all about directing you to your next glorious read at Reedsy Discovery. Looking for the next audiobooks that will turn your road trip into an epic adventure? We’ve got you covered. Want a book that will tide you over between Stranger Things seasons? Check these out. Creating a list of books you absolutely need to read in your lifetime? This list will come in handy!  

Our newest list is perhaps one of the most useful ones we’ve featured yet! Because it will open not one, but twenty potential doors to free reading for you. Without further ado, here are our top picks of places to find free Kindle books.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great books out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized book recommendation  😉

Which book should you read next?

Discover the perfect book for you. Takes 30 seconds!

Where to find free ebooks for Kindle

When it comes to scoring free Kindle books, there are two main groups of readers: those with Amazon Prime, and those without. If you have a Prime account, Amazon offers a number of ways to bury your nose in an ebook at no cost — well, other than the cost of your Prime account, of course, which you might already have for the handy one/two-day shipping perk. 

But for Prime-less readers who typically wait 10-12 business days for Amazon packages to arrive, there are still a number of ways to find free Kindle books. Let’s start with those.

1. Amazon Best Sellers - Top 100 Free Ebooks 

Sometimes it just makes sense to go straight to the source. If you’re a fan of genre fiction, the list of 100 best selling free Kindle books on Amazon will be for you. There are romance, crime thrillers, and urban fantasy abound, and downloading your free copy is never more than two clicks away as you browse your way through.

Check it out if: nothing quite conjures up the same level excitement for you as the words “free,” “genre,” and “fiction.”

2. Free Popular Classics

This section of Amazon’s Kindle bookstore includes both free and low-priced classics — currently Les Misérables and A Tale of Two Cities tops the list — as well as a number of translated classics, particularly Arabic and Russian editions. Been a while since you read Ivanhoe ? This list has got you covered. Lost your old copy of David Copperfield ? Download the ebook free here.

Check it out if: there’s something poetic to you about consuming literature that was written centuries ago on a piece of technology only a little over a decade old.

3. Overdrive 

Popular children’s TV show Arthur told us: “Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.” We’d like to add an addendum to that pearl of wisdom that reads: “Reading free Kindle books isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card at a library that works with Overdrive .” 

Overdrive allows book-lovers to access free ebooks and audiobooks — including new releases or current best sellers — through their local libraries. At the moment, Overdrive is partnered with more than 30,000 libraries in 40 countries. See if that includes one near you with their library locator tool ! 

Check it out if: obtaining your driver’s license was far less exciting than pocketing your first library card.

4. Project Gutenberg 

This is another good pick for lovers of classic literature. It boasts over 60,000 ebooks, most of which are older titles with expired US copyright. The best part: Project Gutenberg is powered by thousands of volunteers who digitize the books so the rest of us can enjoy them for free.

Check it out if: you enjoy both gratis reads and gothic banners.

5. Weber Books Kindle Buffet

Every day, the kind folks at Weber Books post several top picks for free or discounted Kindle books, including a blurb for each book and the download link. You can also subscribe to their list and have their recommendations delivered directly to your inbox each morning. 

Check it out if: you prefer to be directed towards books, instead of perusing them on your own.

6. The eReader Cafe

Like the other aggregators on this list, The eReader Cafe posts new listings every day for free Kindle — and also free Nook — books. The handy rating shown at the top of each listing will help you find your next read if you’re a four-star only kind of bibliophile.

Check it out if: you think nothing quite goes with free novels like a cup of joe.

7. Free Kindle Books & Tips

New free and discounted ebooks is the name of the game with this site ! An added bonus, though, is their search feature, which lets you search for gratis reads based on whatever keyword you want.

Check it out if: you want to subscribe to a newsletter about free ebooks.

8. Many Books 

While many of the other sites in this post have a fairly basic-looking interface, Many Books has a definite leg up in the aesthetics department — making it not only a useful site for finding no-charge novels, but also one you’ll enjoy using. 

Check it out if: you want the option to search for no-charge reads by genre.

9. DigiLibraries

As their site professes, “ DigiLibraries.com offers a digital source of free eBooks for any taste, a vast range of titles in digital format and our free eBooks collection is growing all the time.” As with Many Books, one of the handy functions of this site is to search by genre and category.

Check it out if: you want to be able to download titles in either EPUB, PDF, or MOBI formats.

10. Centsless Books 

What sets Centsless Books apart from the rest of the gang is their newsletter, delivered every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, promising freebies, gift cards, and giveaways. Seriously, who doesn’t want to wake up three times a week to the prospect of book-ish goodies?

Check it out if: you sometimes go to Costco just for the samples — this site has your love of “free” covered.

11. BookBub

BookBub is something of a household name in the world of ebooks. As their site boasts: 

BookBub is a free service that helps millions of readers discover books they'll love while providing publishers and authors with a way to drive sales and find new fans. Upon joining, members receive unbeatable deals selected by our expert editorial team, handpicked recommendations from people they trust, and real-time updates from their favorite authors.”

Check it out if: you don’t want to be limited in terms of genres — BookBub has a wide variety of categories.

12. Freebooksy

Free Kindle and Nooks books are advertised on Freebooksy , as well as no-charge reads from Kobo, Google, and Apple. It’s a free book-lovers paradise! Make sure to check-in often as new titles are posted every day — and sometimes several of them go up at once.

Check it out if: you have an insatiable hunger for complimentary ebooks on a daily basis.

13. One Hundred Free Books

One Hundred Free Books alerts you to the latest limited-time free books in the Kindle store. Quick false advertising disclaimer, though: One Hundred Free Books is actually home to a number closer to 7,000 books. 

Check it out if: you’re all about getting in on limited-time offers.

14. Free Books Hub

Variety is the spice of life, and Free Books Hub knows it. That’s why they offer a number of different lists: dollar books, featured free Kindle books, free Prime books, and free Smashwords books. 

Check it out if: you’re an Amazon Prime member who wants an aggregator all for themselves.

15. Ebook Daily 

Three new free Kindle books are added to a range of different genres every day on the Ebook Daily site. The best part? You can sign up for a free account and set your preferences for personalized reading recommendations on the regular.

Check it out if: you enjoy the personal touch.

16. PixelScroll

Perhaps you’re not completely committed to free books exclusively. Perhaps you’re also interested in no-charge audiobooks, or are willing to spend a few dollars on a heavily discounted — and typically pricey — piece of literature. Pixel Scroll to the rescue! Their pick of the days, featured deals, and bargain features will give you all of the above.

Check it out if: your purse strings aren’t irrevocably locked, and are willing to budge just a little.

If you have Amazon Prime

Signing up for AmazonPrime ($99/year) to read for free is a bit of an oxymoron. Prime itself isn’t free, so technically the reading you do through the program isn’t free either. But if you work your way through enough of the titles that are available at no extra-charge to Prime customers — then the membership really does end up paying for itself! So if you’re someone who’s looking to consume more mainstream content in the cheapest way possible, you and Amazon Prime will likely get along nicely.

17. Prime Reading 

We get it –– you love your Kindle but you don’t want to be tied down to just one ereader. Prime Reading not only offers thousands of free books, magazines, comics, and more, it also allows you to read this content on any device. Our favorite part: Prime Reading includes books with Audible narration, meaning you can switch back and forth between reading and listening to your chosen titles . 

18. Kindle Singles

Kindle Singles offers a vast variety of reporting, essays, memoirs, narratives, and short stories that serve to entertain and educate. We believe that short fiction and non-fiction is an ever-increasingly popular form of literature, and Kindle Singles is a great place to start! And, of course, it’s free from Prime members.

19. First Reads

Love to be the first in the know? You’ll like First Reads . It gives Amazon Prime members two free pre-release (and typically highly anticipated) books every month. There’s a number of different genres you can choose from, including thriller, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, psychological thriller, true crime, suspense, fantasy, and children’s.

20. Kindle Unlimited

This is another “not technically free” option, but again, if you do enough reading, it ends up being worth the cost. Kindle Unlimited is widely known as “the Netflix for books,” as it allows people to read as much as they’d like in exchange for the cost of a monthly subscription  — $9.99/month. 

Kindle Unlimited is separate from Amazon Prime — the latter is Amazon’s premium subscription service for all products, while the former deals exclusively with books. 

While Kindle Unlimited is currently home to about 1.5 million books, many of the titles are from self-published authors, so it’s important to weigh your reading expectations against what the program offers before signing up. Check out our Kindle Unlimited 101 post for a full rundown of the service! 

Have an ePub file you want to convert to MOBI to read on your Kindle ereader? Try out our totally free ePub to MOBI converter!

Continue reading

More posts from across the blog.

NetGalley: How Does It Work for Reviewers?

If you’ve ever wondered how to snag an ARC of a much-anticipated book, or enviously browsed Goodreads reviews of as-yet-unreleased titles, then you may already be familiar with NetGalley. Now over a decade old, this well-known platform lets autho...

10 Interesting Short Stories That Could Change the Way You Think

Some people see short stories as somehow lesser than novels: charcoal sketches compared to the massive oil canvases. B...

15 Best Toni Morrison Books: Where to Start

Choosing the very best Toni Morrison books would be near impossible (and totally subjective). So instead, to introduce you to this literary giant, we've curated the perfect route into a lifetime of remarkable writing...

Heard about Reedsy Discovery?

Trust real people, not robots, to give you book recommendations.

Or sign up with an

Or sign up with your social account

• Submit your book
• Reviewer directory

free public domain audiobooks

Free public domain audiobooks.

Read by volunteers from around the world.

LibriVox audiobooks are read by volunteers from all over the world. Perhaps you would like to join us?

LibriVox audiobooks are free for anyone to listen to, on their computers, iPods or other mobile device, or to burn onto a CD.

Browse the catalog

Latest audiobook releases, the black cat vol. 04 no. 02 november 1898.

Complete | Collaborative | English

The Red Hawk

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875 - 1950)

Complete | Solo | English

The Re-creation of Brian Kent

Harold Bell Wright (1872 - 1944)

Von Wundern und Tieren

Wilhelm Bölsche (1861 - 1939)

Complete | Solo | German

History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution Vol. 3

Mercy Otis Warren (1728 - 1814)

The Diamond Lens with Other Stories

Fitz-James O'Brien (1828 - 1862)

Berlins Drittes Geschlecht

Magnus Hirschfeld (1868 - 1935)

Orlando. A Biography (version 2)

Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941)

The World that Never Was

Arthur St. John Adcock (1864 - 1930)

Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America

Herbert Spinden (1879 - 1967)

Latest News

Posted on January 1, 2024

Happy New Year! A new year brings fresh starts, a chance to try something again or to go for something entirely new. Get inspired with 10 gems from our catalog. Let’s start at the beginning – of humankind. C. H. Robinson follows the development of human society from the discovery of fire and working all […]

Merry Christmas Season!

Posted on December 1, 2023

So many celebrations this month! Whether you celebrate Christmas, the winter solstice or just the end of the year, get in the mood with 10 gems from our catalog. Every year, kids anxiously await Christmas. “How many days left” can be easily deduced from an Adventskalender counting down the days with little daily gifts. This […]

The World of Men

Posted on November 1, 2023

It’s International Men’s Day on November 19, a perfect time to celebrate all men: Fathers and sons, brothers and husbands, or simply loved ones outside of family ties. Here are 10 gems from our catalog to do just this. Whether son or daughter, the closest man in everybody’s life is their father. Mamie Dickens, oldest […]

Animals are People, too!

Posted on October 1, 2023

World Animal Day on October 4 seeks to protect animals and their habitats. Learn about all sorts of beings that live among us with 10 gems from our catalog. Before there were humans, strange animals roamed the planet. George Langford weaves palaeontological research about prehistoric elephants, squirrels or horses into his Stories of the First […]

Librivox Statistics

• Cataloged works: 19,274
• Works cataloged last month: 120
• Non-English works: 2,385
• Number of languages: 47
• Number of readers: 13,762

The best websites to download audiobooks for free in 2024

A udiobooks are an incredibly convenient format for those who enjoy reading but struggle to make time for it in their everyday lives. They’re portable. You can listen to them on the way to work, while you’re exercising, or even when you’re doing chores around the house.

And along with their ease of use, quite a few audiobooks can be accessed for free, if you know where to look. That’s where we come in. In the guide below, we’ll go over some of the best options around for downloading audiobooks for free. So you can get all of the convenience of listening to an audiobook without spending a dime.  Audible isn’t the only game in town, so let’s take a look at some of your free options.

Open Culture

Open Culture is one of the better gateway websites for educational and cultural media. The site gathers content from around the web to present an admirable audiobook collection — primarily classics — you can stream or download.

The site organizes audiobooks by genre (fiction and literature, nonfiction, and poetry) and alphabetically listed by the author’s last name.

Lit2Go offers one of the finer sources for free audiobooks. The throwback site, “a part of the Educational Technology Clearinghouse” and run by The Florida Center for Instructional Technology (University of South Florida), contains a comprehensive collection of downloadable short stories, books, and poems. The site delivers most audiobooks as a single MP3 or as short, segmented passages of specific chapters.

The homepage search option is a nice touch, as is the black-and-white artwork accompanying each title and book collection. You can browse by author, title, genre, collection, and reading level (grades K through 12).

Formerly known as Podiobooks, Scribl showcases some of the best, off-the-beaten-path audiobooks found on the internet, many of which are recent publications. The site distributes content that mostly requires payment, but its collection does include free content among its e-books, audio e-books, and podcasts. Podcast versions of books are usually free while e-books and audiobooks are only sometimes free.

Loyal Books

Formally known as Books Should Be Free, Loyal Books is a family-friendly website catering to the classic literature devotee. The site offers a nice collection of public-domain novels and short stories in multiple languages. They’re available in MP3, as a podcast, iPod/iPhone M4b, and as an RSS feed . You can also stream book chapters.

The site lists titles by genre, language, and popularity. You can search for specific books using the integrated Google search bar along the top. Plus, most books offer ratings and reviews from fellow listeners, thus giving you a slightly better idea of what to expect before you click play.

There’s hardly ever enough time for bedtime stories — no matter how amazing you are as a parent. Thankfully, Storynory provides a solution for those who simply have a hard time reading to their kids. It offers a collection of original and classic fairy tales along with short novels specifically tailored for children.

The site currently offers a few hundred audiobooks, a number that steadily grows as Storynory routinely publishes at least one new story each week. Storynory also touts some of the most exuberant narrators around.

Given that each story utilizes an HTML 5 player for playback, you can listen on nearly any smartphone, tablet, or browser.

OverDrive currently does not allow users to purchase audiobooks directly from the platform. Instead, this app pairs with your local library or school and shares audiobooks with users, like you, for free. The app functions similarly to a library— the same rules apply as though you were borrowing a book straight from your library; it’s just all done virtually. The book you’re borrowing online is still free for you to read, but you’ll only have access to it for a brief time. You will have to have a valid library card or a school ID to use this digital service. Unfortunately, you’re going to be limited to the catalog available in your library or school’s digital collection.

Keeping that in mind, the availability of titles will depend on your specific institution. To borrow an OverDrive audiobook, you can simply check it out via an electronic checkout. If it’s not available right now, you can put it on hold and wait for your turn, like at the library. 

To find your local library or school’s catalog of titles, try checking out OverDrive’s Libby app. That app functions well on mobile devices, like Android or iOS, and it supports several public libraries. If not, you could try out Sora, which provides audiobooks to students through their school. If you own a Sonos speaker, the Libby app recently became compatible on those devices.

Google Play Books

Google Play Books is a mobile app that is available for both Android and iOS devices. For the most part, this app largely offers ebooks and audiobooks you’d have to pay for. But it also offers a limited selection of free, auto-narrated audiobooks (as in they’re not narrated by human but by artificial intelligence). These particular audiobooks are usually classics, and span both fiction and non-fiction. Google Play Books also offers a few audiobooks for free that aren’t auto-narrated and are more contemporary; and you can view them by searching for “free audio books” in the search bar at the top of the app or by selecting the Free button in the Audiobooks charts section of the app’s Shop tab.

While Google Play Books is mostly known for its mobile app, you can also access it as a website .

Frequently asked questions

Can i listen to audiobooks for free.

Yes. You have a lot of options when it comes to listening to free audiobooks. Check out some of the best places online that offer free access to audiobooks in our list above. It is worth noting however, that while there are free audiobooks you can listen too, they’re not likely to be current bestsellers. Free audiobooks are more likely to be classics and in the public domain. If you want to listen to more recent works for free, your best option is using an app like Libby that is linked with your local public library’s collection. But this depends on your local library’s particular collection of audiobooks.

Is there a way to listen to audiobooks without a subscription?

Yes, if you have a library card, many public libraries let their customers checkout downloadable audiobooks for free via apps like Libby. If you don’t have a library card, you could also use the Google Play Books app, which offers a limited collection of free audiobooks.

What is the best audiobook app?

The best audiobook app really depends on your specific needs, but we can help narrow it down for you. If you’ve got a library card (and a participating local library), you really can’t beat one of our favorite audiobook apps, Libby . If you need other, non-library options, feel free to check out our guide to the best audiobook apps for Android and iOS .