Alternatives and competitors

Sites like Project Gutenberg

The 20 closest digital library alternatives to Project Gutenberg, ranked by what they actually offer, and the 3 technologies behind it.

Looking for an alternative to Project Gutenberg? The closest matches are Open Library, JSTOR and Wikisource. We match sites by what they actually offer, from their homepages, Wikidata and a summary by Claude, in any language. Vote on each alternative and leave a short note to help the next person choose.

Neighbours
k = 20
Sites searched
4,032
Vector
384-d
Query
16 ms

01 · Entity

About Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org

Free eBooks | Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a library of over 75,000 free eBooks. Choose from ebook formats or read online. No fees, no registration, no ads.

Wikidata: free digital library

Top 10K · #2,546 English 3 technologies Crawled Nov 6, 2026
Visit Project Gutenberg

Summary by Claude

A free digital library of nearly 80,000 public-domain eBooks, mostly older works whose U.S. copyright has expired, digitized and proofread by volunteers and available to download in open formats or read online.

Who it’s for
Readers, students and researchers
Business model
Donations

02 · Embedding space

Competitor map

Each alternative by how close its vector is to Project Gutenberg’s (x) and how much traffic it gets, how much of the stack it shares, or where it sits in the embedding space itself (y). Lines split each axis at the median. Hover for the numbers, click to jump to it in the list.

similarity × popularity

Library of CongressOur World in DataOverDriveWikipediaWikibooksScribdInternet ArchiveWikisourceJSTOROpen Library

03 · Nearest neighbours

Alternatives to Project Gutenberg

Thumbs up if it’s a real alternative to Project Gutenberg, thumbs down if it isn’t.

Only in English
  1. 01
    Open Library openlibrary.org Top 10K English

    Welcome to Open Library | Open Library

    Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Read, borrow, and discover more than 3M books for free.

  2. 02
    JSTOR jstor.org Top 10K English

    Client Challenge

    distributor of eBooks and other digital media

  3. 03
    Wikisource wikisource.org Top 10K English

    Wikisource

    online multilingual library that collects open-content source material

  4. 04
    Internet Archive archive.org Top 1K English

    Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

    U.S. non-profit organization and digital archive

  5. 05
    Scribd scribd.com Top 1K English

    Scribd: Home to the world’s documents.

    Get to the source. Specialized knowledge on any topic, and answers you won’t find anywhere else. Home to the world’s documents, 300M+ and counting.

  6. 06
    Wikibooks wikibooks.org Top 10K English

    Wikibooks

    free multilingual online collection of textbooks

  7. 07
    Wikipedia wikipedia.org Top 100 English

    Wikipedia

    Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

  8. 08
    OverDrive overdrive.com Top 10K English

    OverDrive: Free ebooks, audiobooks & movies from your library.

    Thousands of libraries & schools offer free digital content thru OverDrive's suite of products/services. Learn more about Libby, Kanopy, Sora & TeachingBooks.

  9. 09
    Our World in Data ourworldindata.org Top 10K English

    Our World in Data

    Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.

  10. 10
    Library of Congress loc.gov Top 1K English

    Home | Library of Congress

    The world's largest library. View historic photos, maps, books and more. Contact experts for help with research. Plan a visit. Home of U.S. Copyright Office.

  11. 11
    De Gruyter Brill degruyterbrill.com Top 10K English

    De Gruyter Brill

    De Gruyter Brill | Over 300 years of publishing excellence

  12. 12
    Creative Commons creativecommons.org Top 1K English

    Building tools for shared knowledge - Creative Commons

    family of public copyright licenses for allowing free use of a work

  13. 13
    BibleGateway.com biblegateway.com Top 1K English

    BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages.

    Read, hear, and study Scripture at the world's most-visited Christian website. Grow your faith with devotionals, Bible reading plans, and mobile apps.

  14. 14
    Khan Academy khanacademy.org Top 10K English

    Client Challenge

    non-profit educational organization

  15. 15
    litnet.com Top 10K Russian

    Читать книги онлайн бесплатно полностью, скачать в fb2, epub, mobi — «Литнет»

    Самая крупная литературная платформа и библиотека, которая превращает чтение и публикацию книг в удовольствие. Более 180 000 книг, которые можно бесплатно читать онлайн и скачать. Все популярные жанры: любовный роман, фэнтези, фантастика и другие.

  16. 16
    Wikimedia movement wikimedia.org Top 1K English

    Wikimedia Error

    global social movement for free educational knowledge

  17. 17
    ThriftBooks thriftbooks.com Top 10K

    US-based online used bookseller

  18. 18
    mechacomic.jp Top 10K Japanese

    漫画なら、めちゃコミック(めちゃコミ)

    無料漫画が42733作品567990話以上!気になるマンガが見つかったら、まずは試し読み。オリジナル・独占先行配信や注目の話題作・感動の名作など充実の品揃え。

  19. 19
    Goodreads goodreads.com Top 1K

    Goodreads | Meet your next favorite book

    Find and read more books you’ll love, and keep track of the books you want to read. Be part of the world’s largest community of book lovers on Goodreads.

  20. 20
    mail.com Top 10K English

    Free email accounts | Register today at mail.com

    Email how it is supposed to be: ✔ Free, simple and secure ✔ Manage multiple mail accounts in one place, from any device ✔ Sign up today!

Ranked by score: the cosine similarity of each site’s vector to gutenberg.org’s, less a small penalty for generic sites that are close to everything. Highlighted technologies are ones Project Gutenberg uses too. Votes and comments come from visitors and don’t change the ranking.

04 · Fingerprints

Technology

What Project Gutenberg is built with, and what its closest competitors use, from its homepage’s code and its DNS records.

SimilarSiteSearch

Competitors by meaning, stacks from the source. Data from public homepages and DNS.

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