Zathura
A minimal, keyboard-driven document viewer.
Desktop AppFreeLinux
4.4Visit
Category
Best Reading software, apps and tools
107 hand-picked reading tools, apps and resources, each one checked by a real person. 103 of them are free or have a free plan.
Paul's Online Notes
Butterick's Practical Typography
OpenStax
Libby
Wikipedia
arXiv
Audiobookshelf
BBC Bitesize
web.dev
Google Arts & Culture
Updated
Built with love by Shushant Lakhyani. Building bestproductivityresources.com
Reading tools help you find good things to read, get through them and remember what mattered. They include free ebook libraries, read-it-later apps that save articles for a quiet moment, speed and focus readers, and apps that collect your highlights in one place.
If you want to read more, make it easy: save articles to one list instead of keeping dozens of tabs open, carry a book or app everywhere for spare minutes, and write down one idea from each thing you finish. A short note in your own words does more for memory than any number of highlights.
All resources
Type
Pricing
Platform
107 resources
AntennaPod
A free, open-source podcast player for Android with no ads.
Android AppFreeAndroid
4.6Visit
Feeder
An RSS reader that gathers news sites, newsletters and channels in one list.
Web AppFree planWeb, iOS
4.4Visit
Merriam-Webster
A free online dictionary and thesaurus with word games and a Word of the Day.
WebsiteFree planWeb
4.6Visit
Pocket Casts
A podcast player that is free on mobile and on the web.
Mobile AppFree planiOS, Android
4.6Visit
gPodder
A simple podcast client with a window and a command line.
Desktop AppFreeLinux, macOS
4.4Visit
LibreTexts
A non-profit library of free, openly licensed college textbooks.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.5Visit
PDF.js
Mozilla's PDF viewer that runs in your browser.
Web AppFreeWeb, Firefox
4.6Visit
Wikiwand
A cleaner way to read Wikipedia, with an AI that answers only from Wikipedia.
Web AppFree planWeb, Chrome
4.4Visit
CORE
Search millions of free, open access research papers.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.5Visit
Newsboat
Read your RSS and Atom feeds in a fast text-only terminal reader.
Desktop AppFreemacOS, Linux
4.4Visit
Okular
KDE's free document viewer for PDFs, EPUBs, comics and more.
Desktop AppFreeLinux, Windows
4.5Visit
Audiobookshelf
Your own audiobook and podcast server that remembers where you stopped.
Web AppFreeWeb, iOS
4.7Visit
Foliate
A clean, modern e-book reader for Linux.
Desktop AppFreeLinux, Offline
4.6Visit
Komga
A media server for your comics, manga and ebooks, with a web reader.
Web AppFreeWeb
4.6Visit
Shiori
A simple, self-hosted bookmark manager with offline copies of pages.
Web AppFreeWeb, Chrome
4.5Visit
daily.dev
A personalised developer news feed in your new browser tab.
Browser ExtensionFree planChrome, Firefox
4.6Visit
Kiwix
Read Wikipedia and other reference sites fully offline on your desktop.
Desktop AppFreeWindows, Linux
4.6Visit
Rewordify
Paste hard text and get a simpler version you can actually understand.
Web AppFreeWeb
4.4Visit
RSS Guard
A fast desktop feed reader that pulls all your news into one place.
Desktop AppFreemacOS, Windows
4.4Visit
Thorium Reader
A free, accessible desktop reader for EPUB, PDF, comics and audiobooks.
Desktop AppFreemacOS, Windows
4.5Visit
WordHippo
A free thesaurus and word finder for synonyms, antonyms and more.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.5Visit
BBC Bitesize
Free BBC study guides, videos and quizzes for school subjects and exams.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.7Visit
BetterExplained
Intuitive maths lessons that focus on understanding over memorising.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.6Visit
Hardcover
An independent book tracker for logging, rating and discovering books.
Web AppFree planWeb, iOS
4.6Visit
Learn X in Y Minutes
Quick, code-first tours of hundreds of programming languages and tools.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.6Visit
web.dev
Free guides and courses from Google on building fast, accessible websites.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.7Visit
1MB Club
A directory of fast, lightweight websites that each weigh less than 1MB.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.3Visit
Cheatography
A huge free library of community-made cheat sheets you can download or create.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.4Visit
Glow
A terminal Markdown reader that makes notes and READMEs easy on the eyes.
Desktop AppFreemacOS, Windows
4.6Visit
Google Arts & Culture
A free window into artworks, museums and cultural archives from around the world.
WebsiteFreeWeb, iOS
4.7Visit
Kagi Small Web
A free feed of fresh posts from independent personal blogs, curated by Kagi.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.5Visit
Open Yale Courses
Free full Yale lecture courses in the humanities, sciences and social sciences.
CourseFreeWeb
4.7Visit
Paul's Online Notes
Free, clear maths notes and worked examples from algebra to differential equations.
CourseFreeWeb
4.8Visit
Search My Site
An independent, ad-free search engine for personal websites and the small web.
WebsiteFree planWeb
4.4Visit
Wellcome Collection
A free museum and library with thousands of digitised images and manuscripts online.
WebsiteFreeWeb
4.6Visit
- Kill the Newsletter
- Koodo Reader
- Butterick's Practical Typography
- Tatoeba
- Wiby
- PubMed
- Marginalia Search
- ooh.directory
- SingleFile
- Kavita
- KOReader
- OpenStax
- Calibre-Web
- Fluent Reader
- Libby
- Lobsters
- Eloquent JavaScript
- linkding
- Sidebar
- The Public Domain Review
- Wikipedia
- Hypothesis
- Miniflux
- Readest
- Sioyek
- arXiv
- Feedly
- Google Scholar
- LibriVox
- Semantic Scholar
- Glance
- Inoreader
- NetNewsWire
- SumatraPDF
- Elicit
- FreshRSS
- Linkwarden
- Open Culture
- ResearchRabbit
- Unpaywall
- calibre
- Internet Archive
- Instapaper
- Karakeep
- wallabag
- ManyBooks
- Open Library
- Project Gutenberg
- Standard Ebooks
- PrismFlowAgent
- Arc Search
- HowStuffWorks
- MIT Deep Learning Book
- Matter
- Blink
- Refind
- Dan Curtis Go
- Dan Koe Letters
- High Agency Essays
- Naval
- Blinkist
- Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader
- How to Use AI to Study Smarter
- Raindrop.io
- Shortform
- Glasp
- NotebookLM
- Recall
- Readwise Reader
- Anki
- Claude
Showing 36 of 107
Reading at a glance
Counted from the listings on this page.
- Pricing
- Of 107 picks, 84 are completely free, 19 have a free plan and 4 are paid.
- Highest rated
- Wikipedia (4.8/5), arXiv (4.8/5) and Libby (4.8/5) have the highest ratings in our reviews.
- Formats
- Most common: Website (32), Web App (26), Desktop App (16) and Browser Extension (7).
- Often also listed under
- Learning (71), Research (61), Organization (14) and Knowledge Management (12).
- Platforms
- Most listed: Web (86), Android (28), iOS (28) and Chrome (18).
- Best for
- Picked most often for Students (80), Personal Use (67) and Writers (60).
- Learning curve
- 74 beginner-friendly, 29 intermediate and 4 advanced.
- Newest addition
- Zathura, added 13 November 2026.
Reading tools: common questions
Straight answers to what people ask before picking a tool.
- What are the best reading tools?
- The highest-rated reading picks in the directory right now are Wikipedia, Libby and arXiv. Each one is checked by hand, and the full list above is sorted by our recommendation.
- What is the best free reading tool?
- Wikipedia and Libby are the top-rated completely free options. If a free plan is enough, Claude is also worth a look.
- How many reading tools are listed?
- 107 reading resources are listed: 84 completely free, 19 with a free plan and 4 paid. New ones are added as they are checked.
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