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Your own ebook library: organise, convert and read your books on any device, free

Your whole book collection on your phone, in a reader that runs in the browser, served from your own laptop over Wi-Fi. calibre is the free, open-source ebook manager that does it: a tidy library with covers and series, a one-line converter for Kindle and Kobo, and a built-in web reader. No account, no subscription, and it all lives in one folder.

40 minBeginnerTools: FreeStep 1 free
Tested 9 Oct 2026 · calibre 9.16 Portable, 7 public-domain EPUBs from Standard Ebooks and Project Gutenberg, Microsoft Edge, Intel Core Ultra 7 laptop, Windows 11
A tidy library of your ebooks with covers, series, tags and a reading list
Any DRM-free book converted for a Kindle, a Kobo or as a PDF, in seconds
Your whole library in a web browser, with a built-in reader that fits a phone screen
  • Everything in one folder you can back up, move to a USB stick or delete
Before you start
  • About 900MB of free disk space: the download is 217MB and calibre is 663MB once unpacked (you can delete the download afterwards)
  • DRM-free ebooks, ideally EPUB. No books yet? Step 2 gets you free, legal classics
  • The terminal basics from Level 0 (opening a terminal and pasting a command). The steps are written for Windows PowerShell, with the Mac and Linux setup in step 1
01/06Download calibre Portable0 done
STEP 01 of 06~5 min

Download calibre Portable

The Portable version needs no admin rights and keeps calibre, your books and your settings together in one folder.

  1. Here's where you're heading: your own books, in calibre's reader, on a phone-sized screen.

    calibre's reader at phone size, showing a page of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in large, readable text
    calibre's web reader at phone size (390 by 844), served from the laptop.

  2. On Windows, this mission uses calibre Portable: calibre's own site describes it as self contained, with your library and settings kept together in one folder, and nothing installed into Windows. Open PowerShell and paste these lines. They download the official installer from calibre's GitHub page (217MB) and unpack it into a Calibre Portable folder in your user folder:

    Windows PowerShell
    $dl = "$env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\calibre-portable-installer-9.16.0.exe"
curl.exe -L -o $dl "https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/releases/download/v9.16.0/calibre-portable-installer-9.16.0.exe"
Start-Process $dl -ArgumentList "`"$env:USERPROFILE`"" -Wait

  3. Giving the installer a folder like this is calibre's documented "automated install": no questions, no admin prompt, and it's done in under a minute. The finished folder holds the program, an empty Calibre Library and a Calibre Settings folder.

  4. Now point this PowerShell window at calibre's command-line tools, and keep their settings inside the portable folder (the same thing calibre-portable.exe does when you double-click it):

    Windows PowerShell (paste in every new window)
    $cal = "$env:USERPROFILE\Calibre Portable"
$env:Path = "$cal\Calibre;$env:Path"
$env:CALIBRE_CONFIG_DIRECTORY = "$cal\Calibre Settings"
$env:CALIBRE_PORTABLE_BUILD = "$cal\calibre-portable.exe"
$lib = "$cal\Calibre Library"
calibredb --version
    Output
    calibredb.exe (calibre 9.16)
    TipThe CALIBRE_PORTABLE_BUILD line keeps calibre's cache inside the portable folder too. Without it, the tools make a calibre-cache folder in AppData.

  5. On a Mac or Linux, install calibre from its download page ↗. On a Mac, drag it into Applications. On Linux, calibre's official installer can put it in your home folder with no admin rights:

    Linux
    wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sh /dev/stdin install_dir=~/calibre-bin isolated=y

  6. Then set up the same shortcuts in Terminal (paste them in every new window):

    Mac Terminal
    export PATH="/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS:$PATH"
lib="$HOME/Calibre Library"; mkdir -p "$lib"
calibredb --version
    Linux Terminal
    export PATH="$HOME/calibre-bin/calibre:$PATH"
lib="$HOME/Calibre Library"; mkdir -p "$lib"
calibredb --version

  7. Every later command works the same on Mac and Linux with two changes: write paths with forward slashes ("$books/sign-of-the-four.epub" instead of "$books\sign-of-the-four.epub"), and put $lib in double quotes (--with-library "$lib"), because the folder name has a space in it.

✓
Checkpointcalibredb --version prints calibre 9.16 (or newer).
If it breaksError: Path to Calibre Portable (...) too long. It must be less than 59 characters. + 2 more
Error: Path to Calibre Portable (...) too long. It must be less than 59 characters.
The full path to the Calibre Portable folder must be 58 characters or fewer. Click OK (and Cancel if it then asks you to pick a folder), then run the command again with a shorter place, such as your user folder (as above) or a folder on a USB stick like E:\Books. Put that folder in place of $env:USERPROFILE in the Start-Process line and in the first setup line below.
curl gives a 404 error
A newer version has come out and the old link has gone. Open calibre's releases page ↗, copy the link to the file starting calibre-portable-installer, and use it in the curl line instead (change the file name in the first line too).
'calibredb' is not recognised
The setup lines only last for one PowerShell window. Paste them again in every new window.
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