If you have an ereader, there's enough reading material available to keep you busy for a lifetime—and that's just the books available for free.
But free ebook downloads are hard to find unless you know the right websites to visit. As such, to help you out, this article lists some of the best sites that offer free ebooks for you to read. These free ebook download sites have something for everyone.
1. Overdrive
Overdrive is one of the best digital libraries where you can download ebooks for free—not just ones in the public domain but even recently released mainstream titles.
There is one hitch, though: you'll need a valid and active public library card or to be a student to have access to these free ebooks. Overdrive works with over 30,000 public libraries in over 40 different countries worldwide. In addition to free ebook checkouts, you can also listen to audiobooks for free.
If you can access the service, you will have instant access to the latest The New York Times Bestsellers. The list updates weekly, so you'll never miss out on a hot read. Overdrive also has a partnership with Sora, so students can get free ebooks for some classes.
2. Library Genesis
Library Genesis is a search engine for free reading material, including ebooks, articles, magazines, comics, and more. As of this writing, Library Genesis indexes close to three million ebooks and 60 million articles. It would take several lifetimes to consume everything on offer here.
Both fiction and non-fiction are covered, spanning different genres and types.
Since it's a search engine, browsing for books is almost impossible. The closest thing you can do is use the Topics dropdown in the navigation bar to browse what you want to read. Even then, you'll have to get used to the terrible user interface of the site overall.
Instead, searching for a particular book title, author, or synopsis is better. The Advanced Search lets you narrow the results by language and file extension, and you can also search for the exact book titles to see.
The legality of Library Genesis has been in question since 2015 because it allegedly grants access to pirated copies of books and paywalled articles, but the site remains up and open to the public. Library Genesis also has previous editions of college textbooks, so if you're looking to save money, you can download an older textbook ebook for free.
3. Centsless Books
Unlike the other sites on this list, Centsless Books is a curator-aggregator of free Kindle books available on Amazon. Its mission is to make it easy for you to stay on top of all the free ebooks available from the online retailer.
Note that some of the "free" ebooks listed on Centsless Books are only free if you're part of Kindle Unlimited. Unfortunately, Kindle Unlimited might not be worth the money. However, if you have it, it could be a great addition.
Note: Since Centsless Books tracks free ebooks available on Amazon, there may be times when nothing is listed. If that happens, try again a few days later.
4. Project Gutenberg
Another of the best free ebook download sites is Project Gutenberg. It's a charity endeavor, sustained through volunteers and fundraisers, that aims to collect and provide as many high-quality ebooks as possible. Most of its library consists of public domain titles, but it has other stuff, too, if you're willing to look around.
As of this writing, Gutenberg has more than 60,000 free ebooks on offer. They are available for download in EPUB and MOBI formats (some are only available in one of the two) and can be read online in HTML format.
You can browse the library by category (of which there are hundreds), by most popular (which means total download count), by latest (which means the date of upload), or by random (which is a great way to find new material to read).
5. ManyBooks
ManyBooks is a nifty little site that's been around for over a decade. Its purpose is to curate and provide a library of free and discounted fiction ebooks for people to download and enjoy.
Much of its collection was seeded by Project Gutenberg back in the mid-2000s. However, since then, it has taken on an identity of its own with the addition of thousands of self-published works made available at no charge.
Downloads are available in dozens of formats, including EPUB, MOBI, and PDF, and each story has a rating out of five stars, which is something Project Gutenberg doesn't have.
6. Feedbooks
Feedbooks is a large collection of downloadable ebooks: fiction and non-fiction, public domain and copyrighted, free and paid. Many of the books on Feedbooks are paid, but there are still some great free ebooks, which you can find in the public domain category.
There are some free original books as well, which you can find in the different categories. However, you can't sort by price.
Most ebooks are available in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats. They even come with word counts and reading time estimates, if you consider that when choosing what to read.
7. PDFBooksWorld
Between the three major ebook formats—EPUB, MOBI, and PDF—what if you prefer to read in the latter format? While EPUBs and MOBIs have basically taken over, reading PDF ebooks hasn't quite gone out of style yet, and for a good reason: PDFs offer universal support across platforms and devices.
If you want to stick to PDFs only, you'll want to check out PDFBooksWorld. While the collection is small, at only a few thousand titles, they're all free and guaranteed to be PDF-optimized. Most of them are literary classics, like The Great Gatsby, A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, and so on.
You can also read these books online, making the platform great for citations or academic projects.
For other formatting issues, we've covered everything you need to convert ebooks for your Amazon Kindle.
8. Open Library
Open Library offers an easily searchable directory of all the free ebooks that are available on The Internet Archive. You might be surprised at the number of books available. The total library is pushing towards 1.5 million items.
On the Open Library's homepage, you can readily find the books you might be interested in, thanks to the scrollable categories. Some of the most popular categories include Romance, Kids, and History. You can even find some textbooks lurking in the catalog.
The site is open source, and anyone can edit the information available for each book.
9. Free-Ebooks.net
Free-Ebooks.net offers thousands of free ebooks. The content is broadly split into six categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Romance, Sci-Fi, Self Help, and Business.
To be able to download free ebooks, you will need to sign up for an account, which is free to create. Once you have an account, you can download up to five free titles every month.
In addition to English, books are available in dozens of other languages.
10. International Children's Digital Library
If your child is a bookworm, you could spend a lot of cash on new titles. Unless that is, you find a reliable source of free ebooks for kids. The International Children's Digital Library is a godsend for anyone with young readers in the house.
Books are available in a variety of lengths and reading difficulty levels. You can even search by criteria that might stimulate kids, such as the color of the cover. Each book is listed in a specific category for easy searching.
The International Children's Digital Library does appear small, but there are still great titles to be found. The ebooks here are also available in a variety of languages, with most of the titles in English.
More Ways to Find Free Ebooks
Don't forget about Amazon Prime. Specifically, Prime Reading grants access to thousands of free ebooks in addition to all of the other amazing benefits of Amazon Prime.
The best thing about many free ebooks is that they don't have DRM. This means you aren't limited by how many devices you can read them on. So, what are you waiting for? Grab some free ebooks!