Kavita

Kavita is a reading server you run on your own computer or home server. Once set up, it gives you a private website where you and your household can browse and read your personal collection of manga, comics, graphic novels, and books. Instead of relying on a third-party service, your files stay on your own machine and you access them through a web browser on any device.

The server handles a wide range of file formats. For comics and manga it accepts CBZ, CBR, ZIP, RAR, and 7-zip archives as well as loose image folders. For books it reads EPUB and PDF files. You organize your library into collections and reading lists, and the built-in readers are designed for different styles: a webtoon vertical-scroll mode, a continuous reading mode so you can move between chapters without stopping, and standard page-by-page reading.

Kavita includes user management so you can invite friends or family without giving them access to everything. You can set age restrictions and control what each person can see or do. The interface supports dark mode and custom themes, and it works on phones, tablets, and desktops without needing a separate app.

There is an optional paid subscription called Kavita+, billed separately, which adds external metadata features: it can pull in cover art, descriptions, and reading progress from third-party services and sync your ratings and reviews back out. The core server is free and open source under the GPL v3 license, meaning you can inspect the code and run it without paying anything.

Setup instructions live in the project wiki, and the easiest path is a pre-built container image you can pull and run. A public demo is available at demo.kavitareader.com if you want to try the interface before installing. The project is still actively developed and considers itself in beta, so some rough edges and occasional changes to data formats are possible before the 1.0 release.