The 6 best places to find free books online in 2021
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Hollis Johnson; Alyssa Powell/Insider
- It's great to support authors by directly buying books, but cost shouldn't be a barrier to reading.
- You can read thousands of free books online using everything from Libby to Project Gutenberg.
- You can read more about Insider's Education and Personal Development section here.
It's great to support authors by directly buying their books. But if buying every exciting bestseller isn't realistic for you, many authors are the first to say that cost should never be the reason you miss out on great books.
-Ashley C. Ford (@iSmashFizzle) June 15, 2021
Public libraries have existed to increase accessibility to knowledge and benefit the public since the 18th century (though this last year forced closures across the nation). Luckily, you can find the same books for free online (and even browse your local library's shelves via apps) if you know where to look.
Below, you'll find six places where you can read free books online, from Project Gutenberg and thousands of books in the public domain (which tend to be classics) to digitized open libraries where you can borrow and download books for free.
And if a book sparks a new interest, you can also find free online courses from some of the best universities in the world, too.
The 6 best places to find free books online:
Libby
Borrow ebooks, audiobooks, and more from your local public library for free. You can download them for offline reading via the app.
All you need is a library card, which you can potentially sign up for in the app itself, depending on the library.
What to read:
Note: select your local library to see custom search results
- "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens
- "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
- "Educated" by Tara Westover
- "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng
Project Gutenberg
Read for free on Project Gutenberg
Choose from reportedly more than 60,000 free ebooks, especially older classics for which US copyright has expired.
There's no fee or registration required, so you don't need an ID or library card to access these.
What to read:
- "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
- "Frankenstein" by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll
- "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville
OverDrive
Overdrive hosts millions of books and audiobooks online for free (and owns apps Libby and Sora). You can find everything from "The New York Times" bestsellers to children's books.
As with Libby and other library apps, you'll need a library card to access the books.
What to read:
- "The Four Winds" by Kristin Hannah
- "The Rose Code" by Kate Quinn
- "The Sanatorium" by Sarah Pearse
- "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro
- "A Court of Silver Flames" by Sarah J. Maas
Open Library
Open Library's eBook lending library gives you access to millions of books through the Internet Archive, an American digital library and preservation project that has been the subject of some controversy.
Unlike other sites, you'll be flipping through images of a book that's been digitized rather than downloading a PDF.
You can register with an email address, and you won't need an ID or library card to use it.
What to read:
- "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz
- "Snow Falling on Cedars" by David Guterson
- "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien
- "Pale Blue Dot" by Carl Sagan
LibriVox
Listen to free public domain audiobooks read by volunteers from around the world. Audiobooks range from historical fiction to children's action and adventure.
LibriVox's collection is also included in the Internet Archive.
What to listen to:
- "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy
- "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë
- "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain
- "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Digital Public Library
Read for free through the Digital Public Library
Download free ebooks within the public domain without creating an account.
You can search the Digital Public Library site by title, or scroll through collections that range from textbooks, children's books, young adult titles, language-specific books, works most recently added to the public domain, and editor picks.
What to read:
- "Monah Loves the Market" by Nathalie Aigil
- "Japanese Fairy Tales" by Yei Theodora Ozaki
- "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare
- "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius
- "Introductory Statistics" by Senior Contributing Authors
While you'll find the best combination of title choices and helpful or unique features above, you can also find free books through Wikisource (a now inactive catalog of texts ranging from "The Art of War" to "Sherlock Holmes"), and some on Amazon through Kindle's free popular classics.