10 Best LibGen Alternatives 2022

Most of us prefer reading a book on a phone, tablet, or laptop rather than in printed form. And the reason is simple: convenience.

Library Genesis (LibGen) takes this convenience to a new level by giving you free access to scholarly journals, images, magazines, general interest books, non-fiction books, fiction books, audiobooks, and academic books.

The best part? You can download all these resources for free.

LibGen is a search engine consisting of five mirror websites that enable you to search an eBook’s download link and avail it to you so you can easily download the content on your device.

The platform is also known as a link aggregator or file-sharing site where you can find download links for comics, academic books, general books, scholarly journals, and images in various file formats like PDF, ePub, and Mobi.

Some countries restrict access to LibGen for legal reasons. And when I tried to search for some titles on this platform, they weren’t available.

That left me wondering, do we have other sites like Library Genesis out there? And my research showed that, indeed, there are better alternatives to LibGen.

Keep reading to discover some of the best platforms for accessing eBooks in your favorite genres.

Best LibGen Alternatives

1. Sci-Hub

This ad-free, non-profit shadow library provides open and free access to over 87,979,847 scientific research papers and articles. This number is frequently updated on Sci-Hub’s home page.

Whether you’re pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, or Ph.D. degree in a science-related field, you can access publications from this platform to enrich your studies.

Like LibGen, this platform lets you access content in multiple languages.

Sci-Hub was founded back in September 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan as a way to combat the high cost associated with accessing research papers online.

Their goal is to fight inequality in knowledge by ensuring that everyone can access the scientific library regardless of their geographical location, social status, or income.

The Sci-Hub advocates for the open access movement in science and stands against the unfair gain of publishers limiting the distribution of knowledge.

Searching for a paper on Sci-Hub is easy. You don’t need the issue number, volume number, journal name, page number, or even year of publication that most e-libraries often require. Plus, you don’t need to subscribe to access the content.

Instead, you simply need to enter the article’s URL, DOI (digital object identifier), title, or a search keyword and click open. To make things even easier, there’s a Sci-Hub extension for Chrome users like me.

I like the platform’s massive number of articles and simple user interface. You can access all the materials without charge. If you wish to support the platform, there’s a donate button for that.

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2. Z-Library

The online file-sharing and shadow library allows you to access eBooks, general interest books, academic papers, and journals. Z-Library has over 84.8 million articles and at least 8.5 million books.

Most of the books and articles on this platform are in PDF and EPUB formats. The other formats available for downloading content are AZW, DJV, DJVU, FB2, AZW3, MOBI, RTF, and more. And to search for content, you can type in the title, ISBN, author’s name, publisher, or md5.

You can also filter the search results by year from and year to, exact matching, language, and extension (file format).

The library has books and articles on many subjects, from arts to economics, religion to science, world history to politics, children’s literature to biographies, finance to fiction, and more.

If you like reading, you won’t dive into this library and come back without your computer drive overloaded with your favorite books and articles.

You aren’t a native speaker of English? Well, that can’t stop you from exploring this fantastic library. You can find articles and eBooks on this platform in Chinese, Spanish, Russian, French, Italian, Turkish, Urdu, German, Korean, Japanese, Pashto, Arabic, and so on.

What I like about Z-Library is that it has more books than what Library Genesis has. While LibGen has approximately four million books, Z-Library has over 8.5 million books, which simply means you can easily find any book on Z-Library.

Another interesting feature is that Z-Library has three packages for its users: the guest plan (free), basic member plan, and premium plan.

The basic member and guest plans are free. With the basic plan, you can download five books a day but the basic member plan allows you to download 10 books a day.

The premium plan lets you download anywhere between 10 and 999 books on a daily basis. But don’t worry about payment yet as the premium plan is donation-based.

Additionally, the premium plan allows you to email any book to yourself or other people and see the download history.

But that’s not all: you can also convert the file to other formats.

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3. PDF Drive

Do you have a penchant for PDF files? I like PDF files too because they are user-friendly.

PDF Drive is my go-to search engine for PDF documents. This website has more than 75 million eBooks, comics, magazines, and articles that you can download, save on your device, and read at your pleasure.

What I like about PDF Drive is the unlimited downloads it lets you enjoy. If you prefer not to download, you can save your titles on the cloud. This is a feature I couldn’t find on LibGen.

However, you can only save up to 100MB on the cloud. But for a small fee, you can exceed this storage capacity (more on the fee shortly).

After searching your favorite title, you can preview the content and decide whether to download it or first. So, no frustration of downloading an eBook based on the title only to find out later it isn’t what you were looking for.

You can search for eBooks in tons of categories, such as religion, lifestyle, environment, science and research, fiction, art, health and fitness, politics and laws, personal growth, and more.

You can access PDF Drive for free but may see a couple of ads and only enjoy 100MB of cloud storage. Their premium version is ad-free, offers unlimited storage on the cloud, and exclusive experiences. It costs $3.99 per month or $29.99 per year. They also have a free trial that lasts 7 days.

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4. Open Library

Open Library has over three million books and is part of Internet Archives, a bigger library with millions of free movies, books, software, websites, music, and more. Open Library has digital shelves arranged like those in a physical library.

Immediately you visit the homepage, you can see the shelves and what’s on them. The visible digital shelves include classic books, books we love, romance, recently returned, textbooks, thrillers, and kids.

Open Library has an interesting feature that I couldn’t find on LibGen; allowing you to borrow a book and return it. In other words, you can pick any book, read it from the platform and return it when done.

I tried to use this feature and it was fantastic. After accessing the home page, I checked on the classics shelf and borrowed Henry James: A Life in Letters.

I had an option to return the book after two hours or 14 days. Immediately, I clicked borrow, I accessed the book on an interface where I could read it.

At the bottom of this interface, I could see the page I was on and the total number of pages. I could also see the viewing options, including one-page view, two-page view, and thumbnail view. There’s even an option to read the book aloud (listen to the audio version).

Other than choosing a book from the digital shelves, you can also browse by subject. You’ll see different subject categories and the number of books under each.

The available categories are art, science fiction, biographies, fantasy, romance, recipes, science, history, children, textbooks, religion, medicine, mystery, and detective stories, among others.

There’s a third way to quickly find your favorite book on Open Library, and that’s by typing the title in the top search bar.

Did I mention they also feature a K-12 Student Library as well? You can find the option under Browse then select it from the drop-down menu.

The K-12 Student Library has several shelves, including Grades K, 1 & 2, Grades 3, 4 & 5, Grades 6, 7 & 8, Grades, 9 & 10, and Grades 11 & 12.

More importantly, you can change the website language to Espanol, Deutsch, Francais, English, and more languages.

The ability to access this massive library for free is the cherry on top.

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5. Free-eBooks.net

Free-eBooks.net is another platform for downloading fiction books, non-fiction books, academic books, classic books, textbooks, and others.

The categories listed on the homepage of this website are more organized than what’s on LibGen. First, Free-eBooks.net has broader categories like fiction, classics, non-fiction, academic, and textbooks. But under each of these categories, we have a list of sub-categories or topics with clickable links to take you to a page with relevant books.

You can download books in PDF, Mobi, ePub, or even HTML. This provides users with a variety of options to read their favorite books on their devices.

Searching books on this platform is pretty straightforward. Simply type a title in the search bar and if it’s available, you can head over to the book and download it.

Once you search for a book, the results page shows you the title in green with the book cover to the left. You can also see the number of downloads, number of pages, and when the book was published on the platform.

And that takes us to the next feature on this website, which is the publishing option. Not only can you download and read thousands of books on Free-eBooks.net, but you can also upload a book and have people download it.

This platform has over 10.4 million readers so publishing a book here is a big deal, especially if it’s on a popular topic. Being a published author also gives you lifetime access so you can download unlimited books.

Free-eBooks.net has another outstanding feature that you wouldn’t find on Library Genesis or other libraries on this list. They have the best books feature, which is perfect for those of us who don’t have a specific title in mind.

For example, if you’re looking for the best romance book, simply click best books, then select based on the year. The best books in a specific category have more downloads, more star ratings, and many reader reviews posted below the page.

Free-eBooks.net has a free membership plan and V.I.P. membership. As a free user, you can download five books per month and no one will force you to pay.

The V.I.P. membership costs $19.95 per year. There’s a free trial that lasts for seven days and you can cancel anytime within the trial period.

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6. Bookboon

Bookboon is a platform that features high-quality books for students, professors, and entrepreneurs. The platform has over 1000 textbooks and at least 1700 business eBooks.

They have over 1000 textbooks for students that you can access for free and download in PDF format. Now, free doesn’t mean these books are sub-par. On the contrary, the textbooks are authored by professors from the world’s top universities.

Bookboon believes that students should attend university at a subsidized cost, which is why they provide free access to textbooks. I was left wondering, how does the platform make money?

Well, they allow some companies to run ads on the site, but the ads don’t interfere with the books’ academic experience and quality.

The other category of their books is business, with a focus on soft skills and personal development. You’ll come across books on working with MS Office, improving communication skills, maximizing leadership potential, and more.

The business hands-on guides are below 50 pages, making it easy for professionals to implement everything they learn. The business eBooks are over 1700 and available in both English and other languages, including French, German, Finnish, Norwegian, Spanish, Czech, Swedish, and Dutch.

Bookboon knows that soft skills training can boost productivity by 12% and grow ROI by 256%. That’s why they provide these learning resources to businesses.

Besides, they allow business owners to use the platform’s books on their website as lead magnets to collect the visitors’ contact information and drive leads.

If you’re looking for the best LibGen alternative with a strong academic and business inclination, Bookboon will do.

Students can access Bookboon free and download over 1000 high-quality eBooks and textbooks with memo and bookmark tools. Businesses can access the business section of the platform for only $5.99 per month.

And there’s a free trial for 30 days. The third plan is for accessing a corporate e-library at a custom quote.

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7. Project Gutenberg

Another LibGen alternative to consider is Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg is known to be the first platform to provide access to free eBooks. The platform’s founder, Michael Hart established the platform in 1971.

To read an eBook from this platform, I don’t need to install a special app. I can read it directly in the browser or on a regular eBook reader on my phone or computer.

Finding an eBook on Project Gutenberg is effortless. You can pop the title in the quick-search bar at the top of the homepage or click the Search and Browse on the menu.

You’ll see the drop-down menu that consists of book search, bookshelves, frequently downloaded, and offline catalogs.

The book search option has a user-friendly interface with more options, such as advanced search that lets you type in the author, title, subject, language, file type, and more. The full-text search is another option on this interface that lets you search for your book on Google, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.

But that’s not all. The interface has browsing options to let you search the author or title alphabetically, language, special categories (like an audiobook, recorded, moving pictures, etc), and recency.

The bookshelves for Project Gutenberg are more organized than anything I have ever seen on Library Genesis or other online book libraries.

Here’s what makes the shelves on this site different: they are arranged alphabetically. For each letter, there’s a list of all the book categories available on the site.

What makes Project Gutenberg widely popular is that it’s completely free to readers. However, they have a donation button that lets readers send any contribution they’d wish.

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8. Manybooks

This is another beautiful eBook database with at least 50,000 books that you can access at no cost. The books are available in multiple formats, including HTML, PDF, TXT, RTF, PDB, FB2, MOBI, EPUB, and more.

What gets my attention as soon as I visit this website is their attractive bookshelves on the homepage. The bookshelves are arranged according to creative titles like Editor’s Choice, Today’s Free eBooks, Deals, Popular Classics, Trending Books, and so on.

ManyBooks has a long list of genres and most of the genres are extraordinary and rare to find on LibGen or other eBook platforms. We are talking about genres like Etiquette, Pirate Tales, African-American Studies, Pulp, Post-1930, Satire, Women’s Studies, Espionage, and many others.

At the very bottom of the homepage, there’s a section of recently answered questions. In other words, you can see the questions fellow readers are asking and the answers to those questions.

This section is a rich source of inspiration as it lets you tap into the mind of fellow readers to improve your reading experience. You can also learn more about other genres.

For example, one reader asked about which books have a better mix of science fiction and fantasy. Someone answered by mentioning authors who have achieved the same.

Finding a book here is easy; you can search by title, author, or keyword. If you’ve got nothing specific in mind and are out to explore exciting titles, look at the bookshelves on the homepage or browse by genres.

In terms of cost, Manybooks is free, but they also feature best sellers at discounted costs. Remember, you need to sign up (with your Google account) to download books from this site.

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9. Free Kindle Books: Kindle Store

With more than 60,000 books to choose from, this platform allows you to access some of the best books by scouring the Amazon library.

Choosing a book from this library is super easy due to the numerous search filters. You can filter searches according to customer reviews, from one star all the way to four stars and above.

You can also choose from the genres on the left-hand side, which include romance, science fiction & fantasy, literature & fiction, mystery, and thriller & suspense.

Are you into book series? You can filter by series too and select options such as Willa Bay, Mulberry Lane, Delta Force Heroes, Follow Me, An Adele Sharp Mystery, and more.

Not looking for English titles? Amazon has got you covered by listing books in German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Italian, Russian, Arabia, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, Bulgarian, Dutch, Polish, and more.

You could also search according to new releases: last 90 days, last 30 days, or coming soon. The other filter is the Romantic Kindle Themes, such as love triangle, vacation, secret baby, amnesia, medical, workplace, international, second chances, and wedding.

If you want eBooks with audible narration, that filter is available too.

What makes Amazon Kindle Free Books a fantastic LibGen alternative is that you can rent books at no cost from the local library or even share some books with friends via the Amazon Household feature.

To download free books from this platform or rent them out, you need to subscribe. But to read them on your Kindle is free of cost.

10. PDF Books World

This high-quality library contains free books in PDF format. The books are available on a variety of subjects for users of all ages. The genres are fiction, academic, nonfiction, juvenile fiction, and juvenile nonfiction.

What makes PDF Books World an exceptional LibGen alternative is how they have professionally created their PDF files. The eBooks from this site have legible font sizes, illustrations, table of contents, and internal reference links.

The website’s interface is easy to navigate and uses responsive web design to ensure you can access the site from a device of any size, such as laptops, mobiles, and tablets

Exploring the library is easy as pie. The menu bar features useful links to genres, books, and author pages, making it easy to find what you want. I also like the search options that simplify the book search process.

Final Word

If I had to choose the best Library Genesis alternative, I would go for Open Library.

I like the beautiful arrangement of books on their shelves right on the home page. Their read or borrow options are fantastic.

The platform has so many options for searching for a book and allows you to add books as well. I also like the K-12 collection that this platform boasts.