BookOrbit
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 7 of 13 ebook libraries by recommenders
People recommend it for managing ebooks and syncing reading progress and annotations with KOReader, with data kept under the owner's control. Critics say it looks vibecoded.
People recommend it for managing ebooks and syncing reading progress and annotations with KOReader, with data kept under the owner's control. Critics say it looks vibecoded.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 2 months
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Syncs progress with KOReader
“I'm a huge fan of bookorbit, especially when paired with KOReader. It's been, bar none, the best reading experience.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Bookshelf – Self-hosted eBook library that runs on object storage” “KOReader paired with BookOrbit is my sweetspot and I love having all the data under my control.”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Freeink: Open Ecosystem for E-Readers” “It provides a plugin for KOReader that syncs your progress, annotations, etc.”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “KOReader” - Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “KOReader”
- Comment from 4 Oct 2026 in “Amazon introduces a redesigned Kindle family”
Keeps stats and annotations centralized
“Highlighting something in my book and then seeing it on a screen a day or two later is more fun than I would have guessed.”
Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “A Claude Code skill that recovers export-blocked Kindle highlights” “BookOrbit tracking my reading/annotations and providing my ebooks I've reached my perfect reading setup”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “More Tailscale tricks for your jailbroken Kindle” “I'm a sucker for stats like this and love having them centralized so that it's not just on my e-reader”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “KOReader” - Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Freeink: Open Ecosystem for E-Readers”
Lighter than Grimmory, scales well
“I moved from Grimmory to BookOrbit due to the lower resource usage and absolutely love it.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Bookshelf – Self-hosted eBook library that runs on object storage” “similar to Grimmory but written in Node and seems to scale better w/ 100k+ book libraries”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “KOReader” Strong functionality for a young project
“BookOrbit blows it out of the water in terms of functionality”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Bookshelf – Self-hosted eBook library that runs on object storage” “BookOrbit supports arbitrary folder hierarchies”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Jellyfin 12.0” “quite powerful for being so young”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Bookshelf – Self-hosted eBook library that runs on object storage”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Looks vibecoded, unclear what it delivers
“This feels purely vibecoded without much for understanding what is actually being delivered.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Bookshelf – Self-hosted eBook library that runs on object storage”
Other ebook libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other ebook libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anna's Archive | 134 | 57 | 70% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Project Gutenberg | 76 | 8 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Standard Ebooks | 34 | 8 | 81% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Library Genesis | 15 | 2 | 88% | 7 | — | Approved |
| BookOrbitThis page | 10 | 2 | 83% | 4 | 2 mo3 owners | Approved |
What people said
18 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Now I use Bookorbit and the Koreader plug-in for sync”
“BookOrbit supports arbitrary folder hierarchies”
“I moved from Grimmory to BookOrbit due to the lower resource usage and absolutely love it.”
“I'm a huge fan of bookorbit, especially when paired with KOReader. It's been, bar none, the best reading experience.”
“This feels purely vibecoded without much for understanding what is actually being delivered.”
“BookOrbit blows it out of the water in terms of functionality”
“quite powerful for being so young”
“Highlighting something in my book and then seeing it on a screen a day or two later is more fun than I would have guessed.”
“Last week they released a change that put the header Strict-Transport-Security into all responses”
“similar to Grimmory but written in Node and seems to scale better w/ 100k+ book libraries”
“Since then I've read over 15 books and been loving BookOrbit and KOReader.”
“may turn out to be a game changer in how I organize and access my ebook repository”
“there's a plugin that gives you the remote BookOrbit UI from the Kindle, which makes things a LOT better.”
“Ability to use things like BookOrbit (or alternatives) to manage your books and sync your progress/stats.”
“I'm a sucker for stats like this and love having them centralized so that it's not just on my e-reader”
“It provides a plugin for KOReader that syncs your progress, annotations, etc.”
“BookOrbit tracking my reading/annotations and providing my ebooks I've reached my perfect reading setup”
“KOReader paired with BookOrbit is my sweetspot and I love having all the data under my control.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.