Want free ebook downloads so that you never run out of reading material? Here are the best sites for downloading free ebooks.
If you have an ereader, there's enough reading material available to keep you busy for a lifetime—and that's just the books available for free.
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.
Overdrive is the cleanest, fastest, and most legal way to access millions of ebooks—not just ones in the public domain, but even recently released mainstream titles.
There is one hitch though: you'll need a valid and active public library card or to be a student to have access to these free ebooks. Overdrive works with over 30,000 public libraries in over 40 different countries worldwide. In addition to free ebook checkouts, you can also listen to audiobooks for free.
If you can access the service, you will have instant access to the latest The New York Times Bestsellers. The list updates weekly, so you'll never miss out on a hot read.
Library Genesis is a search engine for free reading material, including ebooks, articles, magazines, and more. As of this writing, Library Genesis indexes close to three million ebooks and 60 million articles. It would take several lifetimes to consume everything on offer here.
Both fiction and non-fiction are covered, spanning different genres and types.
Since it's a search engine, browsing for books is almost impossible. The closest thing you can do is use the Authors dropdown in the navigation bar to browse by authors. Even then, you'll have to get used to the terrible user interface of the site overall.
It's better to search instead for a particular book title, author, or synopsis. The Advanced Search lets you narrow the results by language and file extension.
The legality of Library Genesis has been in question since 2015 because it allegedly grants access to pirated copies of books and paywalled articles, but the site remains up and open to the public.
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.
Note: Since Centsless Books tracks free ebooks available on Amazon, there may be times when there is nothing listed. If that happens, try again a few days later.
Another 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 they 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 date of upload), or by random (which is a great way to find new material to read).
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, but it has since taken on an identity of its own with the addition of thousands of self-published works that have been 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.
Feedbooks is a massive collection of downloadable ebooks: fiction and non-fiction, public domain and copyrighted, free and paid. While over 1 million titles are available, only about half of them are free.
The split between "free public domain ebooks" and "free original ebooks" is surprisingly even. A big chunk of the public domain titles are short stories, and a lot of the original titles are fan fiction. Still, if you do a bit of digging around, you'll find some interesting stories.
Most of the ebooks are available in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats. They even come with word counts and reading time estimates, if you take that into consideration when choosing what to read.
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 good reason: PDFs offer universal support across platforms and devices.
If you want to stick to PDFs only, then 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.
For other formatting issues, we've covered everything you need to convert ebooks between different file types.
Open Library offers an easily searchable directory of all the free ebooks that are available on The Internet Archive. You might be surprised at the number of books available. The total library is pushing towards 1.5 million items.
On the Open Library's homepage, you can readily find the books in which you might be interested 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.
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 be able to download free ebooks from Free-Ebooks.net, you will need to sign up for an account. An account 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.
If your child is a bookworm, you could find yourself spending masses of cash on new titles. Unless, that is, you find a reliable source of free ebooks for kids. As such, the International Children's Digital Library is a godsend for anyone who has 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.
Titles are available in four languages: English, Persian, German, and Yiddish.
Don't forget about Amazon Prime. Specifically, Prime Reading, which grants access to thousands of free ebooks in addition to all of the other amazing benefits of Amazon Prime. You can easily get a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime and start reading today.
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!
Dan joined MakeUseOf in 2014 and has been Partnerships Director since July 2020. Reach out to him for inquires about sponsored content, affiliate agreements, promotions, and any other forms of partnership. You can also find him roaming the show floor at CES in Las Vegas every year, say hi if you’re going. Prior to his writing career, he was a Financial Consultant.
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