Home Technology software Top 17 Best Epub Readers for Windows

Top 17 Best Epub Readers for Windows [Updated]

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There are dedicated tablets such as the Kindle that can read ebooks. However, this doesn’t mean you have to spend hundreds of money on a tablet in order to enjoy them. You can read them on your Windows computer, which will give you the same reading experience.

You can even hold the Epubs in one hand, just as you would on a tablet. A good Epub reader app is all you need to read. There are many Epub apps for Windows.

However, not all are created equal. We have compiled a list of 15 top Epub readers for Windows. So keep reading the article to get updated and follow chopnews to get more updates

Best Windows Epub Readers to Use in 2022

We have curated the top Epub readers for a variety of Windows versions, including Windows 11 and Windows 10. All the way down to Windows XP. Click on the link to jump to the appropriate program.

What is an Epub Reader?

A PC Epub Reader, in simple terms, is a program that can open e-books (a digital copy of a physical book) and process them. It is a file format similar to PDF but XML-based, so it can be used with many programs on different platforms. An Epub reader allows you to read digital books from your computer, smartphone, or other electronic device.

How to open Epub Files on Windows 10

It is very similar to opening PDF files to open Epub files in Windows 11/Windows 10. While the older Edge browser supported Epub files, the new Edge Browser based on-Chromium can’t open them. To open Epub files, you’ll need an app.

List of Top Epub Readers for Windows

1. Calibre

Calibre is the best and oldest Epub reader available for Windows 11. Calibre is loaded with features that allow you to  download Epubs, manage metadata, download covers for books and transfer books from one device to the other.

Calibre can read not only Epub novels, but also magazines and comics. Calibre is the best Epub reader available for Windows.

Special features:

  • Highly comprehensive e-book viewer
  • Download news/magazines directly from the internet
  • The ePub reader is a PC-based tool that allows you to easily share and back up your library.
  • Edit your books
  • Get support and satisfaction for all your e-book needs

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Pros:

  • Features packed
  • This tool allows you to modify the book metadata
  • Keyboard shortcut to look up words
  • Use CSS to create custom reading themes

Cons: 

  • Outdated UI
  • Slow loading speed

Download: Calibre

2. Nook

You have probably never heard of Barnes and Noble if you’re a book lover. It is the largest bookstore in the world. Barnes and NobleMostly, it is a chain with offline stores.

However, Amazon’s success in its Kindle platform enabled the offline bookseller to launch its own online service, called Nook.

Nook app is not just an app for reading Epub books but also a place to purchase them, much like Kobo.

Signing up for the service gives you a 14-day free trial during which time you can read any book or subscribe to news magazines .

The app also offers the option to personalize your reading experience by viewing books in different fonts and line spacings. It also allows you to sync online across devices and access to thousands classics.

Special features:

  • Search for books
  • You can control font size and margins
  • Synchronization
  • Conserves the unique aspects of this book
  • Clear interface
  • Automatic discovery of books

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8 (x86)

Pros:

  • Great reading modes that are more comfortable on the eyes
  • Modern UI
  • It’s easy to find the bookmark
  • Built in store to purchase ebooks

Cons:

  • It is more difficult to manage imported books
  • Only one highlight colour is supported

Download: Nook

3. Icecream Epub Reader

 

 

 

 

Icecream apps is an app developer that has created some great apps for Windows PC. My favorite is their Epub reader. Their Epub reader is not only beautiful, but also offers a lot of features.

Full-screen mode support, outstanding search capabilities, page turning mechanics and reading progress tracking are just some of the many features that this application offers.

Aside from the features mentioned above, I love the fact the reader supports not only Epub format, but all major ebook formats, including Mobi and FB2.

Special features:

  • This allows you to see how many pages you have left and allows you continue where you left off.
  • Transfer your e-book library from one Windows PC into another.
  • It allows you to search for a book based on its author name or title.
  • This tool allows you to use navigation scrollbar to navigate pages more quickly.
  • To copy and translate an eBook text, use the Google search results.

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Pros:

  • Supports multiple file types and languages
  • Supports annotations and bookmarks
  • Search Google or Wikipedia for selected text
  • Excellent search feature

Cons:

  • All the great features are behind paywall
  • Frequently asks you to upgrade to the pro version

Download: Icecream Epub Reader

4. Sumatra PDF Reader

Calibre works well for most people and is quite good. However, some users have complained that Calibre’s book opening speed is slow. This has been an ongoing issue. Sumatra PDF Reader is an excellent PDF reader and editor. It is an lightweight Epub reader and works right out of the box.

It supports tab support, bookmarks, background colors change, automatic text scaling , and more. It can open large Epub files with no hassle. Sumatra PDF Reader is a great choice if you’re looking for an easy-to-use Windows 11/10 Epub reader.

Special features:

  • The ePub desktop has a clean interface
  • Favorite documents list
  • Upgraded core PDF parsing renderings to the most recent version of mupdf.
  • You get more bugs, faster.

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, 8.1, Windows 7, Vista. and XP

Pros:

  • Clear user interface
  • Excellent reading experience
  • Light application (comes under 5 MB)
  • Super-fast loading
  • Supports comic-book formats (CBZ, CBR)

Cons:

  • Annotations are not supported on book
  • Does not have advanced features such as metadata editing

Download: Sumatra PDF Reader

5. Freda

Freda is my favorite Epub reader for Windows, just because it looks great. This app looks just like a native Windows 11 application and makes your Epubs stand out when you view them on it. Its theming capabilities allow users to personalize the app’s look and feel to their liking.

The app supports Epub as well as many other formats, including Mobi and FB2, HTML and TXT. Access to more than 50,000 classic books from the Feedbooks and Gutenberg online libraries is also available through the app. Freda is a great option if you care about looks.

Special features:

  • You can make annotations and bookmarks with this ePUB reader PC
  • Integrates with online catalogues – Feedbooks and Smashwords, Gutenberg, and others.
  • This application can be connected to your DropBox or OneDrive accounts to download books.
  • Links to Calibre’s book library
  • This ePub viewer Windows synchronizes all your reading experiences across all devices
  • This section includes dyslexia-friendly settings that can be used to help people with Dyslexia read.

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 (ARM, x86, x64)

Pros:

  • Excellent reading experience with modern UI
  • Text-to-speech reading support
  • Support for bookmarks and annotations
  • Fully customizable reading mode

Cons:

  • Sometimes, the app lags
  • Does not support older Windows operating system

Download: Freda

6. Adobe Digital Editions

 

 

 

 

 

Adobe Digital Editions, a great Epub reader for Windows PC, allows users to enjoy their favorite titles.

Adobe Digital Editions’ support for EPUB 3 is one of the most compelling reasons to use it.

This standard allows users to have a richer reading experience with support for right-to-left reading, dynamic image scaling without losing clarity, interactive quizzes and better rendering of math formulas.

Adobe Digital Editions offers many other useful features, including exceptional search capabilities, the ability of renting or borrowing Epub versions of books from local and public libraries, multilingual support, bookmarking and highlighting, notes, as well as bookmarking and note taking.

Adobe Digital Edition offers a complete, Epub-reading experience.

Special features:

  • You can borrow eBooks from many libraries to use with Digital Editions
  • This tool will help you organize and manage your digital publications with Adobe Digital Editions
  • You can access eBooks across multiple file-formats with the read, including EPUB, EPUB3, PDF, and EPUB3.

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Pros:

  • Easily sync books across devices
  • Good book organization features
  • Excellent reading experience with support to EPUB 3 standard
  • Support for bookmarks and highlights

Cons:

  • The reading mode cannot be customized
  • Slow loading if you have a large library
  • You will need an Adobe account in order to use it

Download: Adobe Digital Editions

7. Bookviser

Bookviser, an Epub reader for Windows , aims to provide a reading experience similar to that of reading physical books. The UI of Bookviser is designed to look like a book. You can change the settings to have a traditional Epub reader experience if you don’t like this UI.

Bookviser, just like Freda allows you to free classics from public catalogs such as Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg. You can also find the rest of the Epub reader features such as progress tracking, theming and dictionary support.

Special features:

  • This tool allows you to personalize your reading
  • Interface is simple and clear
  • You can browse thousands of public domain titles online with this free ePub Reader Windows 10.
  • It supports all major file formats including txt and PDF.
  • You can create custom catalogs by using their OPDS addresses.
  • You can adjust the brightness of the display in two ways: either quickly or by using the slider from the menu.

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 (ARM, x86, x64)

Pros: 

  • A simple and intuitive user interface
  • Allows you to adjust margin, font-type and spacing
  • Multiple page turning animations
  • Support to book downloads from the integrated public catalogue

Cons:

  • You can’t edit the book metadata

Download: Bookviser

8. EPubor

Epubor, another Windows eBook reader app, is available to download. It offers all the features that you would expect from an ePub app.

It supports all popular eBook formats including EPUB and MOBI. You also have a lot of customization options. You can alter the fonts and colors, highlight text and make notes. You can even bookmark pages. The app also supports horizontal and vertical reading making it even more versatile.

EPubor makes reading quite enjoyable. EPubor remembers where you were last reading so that you can go back to the same place.

The app also has a table of contents that allows you to navigate long books much more efficiently (I’m thinking of Lord of the Rings). And based on your screen size, the app can even automatically switch between single and double-page views.

The app also offers a variety of library management tools. Importing books is easy, and once your library is set up you can search through it as well. The app supports searching to find books by title, author, ISBN, publisher and many other criteria. EPubor is a great ePub reader for Windows 11.

Special features:

  • Bookmark pages.
  • This tool allows you to toggle between horizontal and vertical reading modes.
  • The table of contents allows you to jump directly to any chapter within the ebook.
  • Formats supported: MOBI, EPUB AZW3, AZW3, AZW3, TXT AZW., PRC, HTMLZ.

Supported platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, macOS

Pros:

  • It supports almost all popular ebook formats
  • There are many customization options
  • Even large books libraries are easy to manage

Cons:

  • Doesn’t support encrypted ebooks

Download: EPubor

9. Cover

Cover is primarily an app made for reading comic books on your Windows 11 PC, but since the app also supports Epub format, it has made its way on the list. The main reason why Cover is on the list is that since the app is made for comics, it is great for reading books that are image-heavy.

While all the other apps on the list can handle images, they can’t do it as well as Cover can. So, if you are into books that feature a ton of images, Cover will be good for you. On the other hand, if you are into comics and manga, there is no better app that you can get.

Special features:

  • All file formats supported: CBZ/ZIP (images only), CBR/RAR (7Z/CB7), CBT, PDF, 7Z/CB7.
  • Library management in crystal-clear clarity: Shelf count, page count, read/unread status and current page
  • You can store your comic books anywhere you like: local folder, network, OneDrive or Google Drive, Dropbox.
  • You can customize your reading experience by choosing single or dual pages, fit width/height/page and background color, cropping, and night mode

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 (ARM, x86, x64)

Pros:

  • Excellent reading experience
  • Great library management
  • Reading mode can be customize

Cons:

  • Designed more for comic book readers

Download: Cover

10. Kobo

Kobo, like Kindle is an ebook reader app that also offers the ability to purchase books from its online store. Unlike Kindle, however, Kobo supports both Epub 3 and Epub 4 formats.

It offers all the features we’ve come to expect from an Epub reader, including search and bookmarks, progress tracking, theming and more. This makes it one of the most popular epub readers available for Windows 11.

The best reason to choose Kobo over other Epub reader is the Kobo store. This allows you browse and purchase from more than 5 million affordable eBooks, comics and children’s books. This is the best epub reader for Windows if you want access to all new ebooks and to buy them.

Special features:

  • You can pick up where you left off: We’ll sync all of your bookmarks so that you can continue reading on any device.
  • You can customize your reading experience by choosing the font size and style that you like, or Night Mode to read at night.
  • Get first chapters for select books, and then save them to your Library.
  • You can access millions of titles from the Kobo Store, including bestsellers, new releases and classics as well as comics, comics and books for children.

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 (ARM, x86, x64)

Pros:

  • Modern UI
  • It’s easy to find the bookmark
  • Built in store to purchase ebooks

Cons:

  • It is more difficult to manage imported books

Download: Kobo

11. Bibliovore

Another great Windows Epub reader is Bibliovore. It is free to download from the Windows App Store and easy to use. This app is great because it offers amazing organizational features that allow you to manage large libraries of books with ease.

You can also easily adjust font parameters, edit book metadata and use day/night reading mode. One of my favourite features is the ability to sync all your books across devices with OneDrive. This is my favorite epub reader for Windows 10 right now.

Special features:

  • Supports most popular eBook formats – ePub, PDF
  • Take your books and organize them at will
  • Book opening in a flash
  • Takes you back to your last read page
  • Direct access via the table of contents
  • Personalize bookmarks
  • You can adjust font parameters according to your needs (Font family size, font space and font size).

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 (x86, x64)

Pros:

  • Excellent reading experience with support for themes
  • Excellent organization features
  • Support for book metadata editing
  • Groups books from a series

Cons:

  • More customization options for fonts, spacing and other features are needed.

Download: Bibliovore

12. Neat Reader

Neat Reader is a well-named app. This is because it is definitely one of the most beautiful ePub readers I have seen for Windows or Mac. It has a simple, intuitive interface that makes it easy to use. It supports nearly all EPUB 2 and EPUB3 standard books, so most of your books can be accessed in the app.

Neet Reader supports annotations. This means that you can take notes and highlight important sections of a book with Neet Reader. There are also bookmarks that can be used to mark pages and other important items you wish to return to.

The best part is that the app can be used for free, and it will remain so forever. If you feel the need to pay, however, you will get 10GB of cloud storage to save your ebooks across devices and export notes.

You also have an ad-free reading experience, which is very important. The ads in the free version are distracting from the book and I don’t like it.

This is why the app is at the bottom of our top-rated list. Neet Reader, an ePub reader that works on Windows, is a great alternative to that issue.

Special features:

IMPORT & VIEW EPUB FILES

  • You can easily import your ePub files via wifi-transfer or other convenient methods.
  • If you choose Neat Reader when opening EPUB files with other apps, the file will automatically be added to Neat Reader library.
  • You can quickly open EPUB books and view them.
  • You can navigate the EPUB book in many ways.

ANNOTATE EPUB BOOKS

  • Highlight the contents of your book and make notes.
  • Jump quickly to the highlight position in the EPUB books.
  • When you change the theme, your highlight color will automatically change.

CUSTOMIZATION

  • You can change the font size and style of the EPUB books.
  • Choose the best color scheme for your environment.

Supported platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, macOS, Android, iPhone, Web

Pros:

  • Use it free of charge
  • Support for annotations and bookmarks
  • Supports EPUB 2 & EPUB 3 formats
  • The search feature is very useful

Cons:

  • Ads-free version

Download: Neat Reader

13. EpubReader

EpubReader, the only paid app available on this list, is another epub reader you might consider. It is an easy app to read Epub books on Windows.

You can also download books from preconfigured or personal sources. The app allows you to manage your book library and track your reading progress .

One of the best features of this app, is that you can transfer your entire library to an SD Card or OneDrive. EpubReader is an excellent app to manage large libraries without consuming any storage space on your Windows computer.

Special features:

  • Downloading Epub books from preconfigured or personal sources
  • Local library management
  • Ebooks to read
  • The app can remember the book’s position and the font/text size.

Supported Platforms: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 (x86, x64)

Pros:

  • Supports external library (OneDrive andSD Card)
  • Download books from the LIT, MOBI and FB2 formats and convert them automatically to ePub
  • Customizable font size, color, spacing

Cons:

  • Loading takes time

Download: Epubreader

14. Readium

Readium is an open source Epub reader that can be used for web reading. Readium allows you to read Epub books online without having to download any apps. Readium is a Chrome extension which allows you to read online .

You can upload your books to Readium, and you can read them there. This is a great way for you to read books on your phone without installing any apps.

The extension will work seamlessly with Microsoft Edge because it uses the Chromium engine. If you’ve never tried the Edge browser, I recommend you give it a shot. Here’s a installation guide for chrome extensions on Edge browser.

Special features:

  • EPUB 3 FXL support
  • RTL (right to left) support
  • W3C Audiobooks and Readium Audiobooks support
  • PDF support
  • Custom styles
  • Night & sepia modes
  • Pagination and scrolling
  • Table of contents
  • OPDS 1.x and 2.0 support
  • Search in EPUB

Supported Browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla, Microsoft Edge

Pros:

  • You don’t need to download a separate app
  • Excellent reading experience
  • A simple and intuitive UI

Cons:

  • Google has removed Chrome apps and it will not receive any future updates.

Download: Readium on chrome / Readium on Mozilla

15. Read Ebooks in the Command Line with Epy

Epy is the Windows 11 epub reader that you should consider if you prefer to use the commandline over a GUI. Technically, EPY is a fork from the EPR repo. It supports ebooks in EPUB and FictionBook (FB2) formats. It can also read ebooks directly from URLs.

There are many other features in the command line program. You can see the progress of your reading, it supports bookmarks, integrations to external dictionaryaries (such as dict and wkdict etc.), text-to-speech, and many other features. It’s easy to install on Windows 11 thanks to the standalone binary.

To learn more about the app, you can visit its GitHub repo ( besuchen ) and fork it to get additional features.

Special features:

  • Epy is a free.
  • open source, command line ebook reader written in Python.
  • It supports many ebook formats, for example: Epub (.epub, .epub3), FictionBook (.fb2), Mobi (.mobi), and AZW3 (.azw3).

Supported platforms: macOS, Linux, Windows

Pros:

  • Feature rich
  • Open source, completely free

Cons: 

  • It doesn’t offer the same feature set as other epub readers.

Downloads: epy

16. Sony Reader for PC

Sony Reader for Windows is a free software program that falls under eBooks software. It is a great ePUB reader that you can access different types of eBooks, Newspapers and Magazines from Reader Store.

Special features:

  • This eBook reader PC allows you to sync your Reader Store content across all your PCs, Macs, Android devices, and Macs.
  • The eBook reader for PC syncs with the Sony cloud
  • Jump to specific pages
  • View single-page or double-page
  • Tab-view allows you to view magazines and newspapers.

Supported Platforms: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Vista and Windows 7 PC

Download: Sony Reader

17. Google Play Books

Google Play Books is an official Google reader. This app is essential for buying audiobooks and ebooks from Google Play. There are millions of bestseller e-books, comics and textbooks available. You can also buy audiobooks or e-books with this official Google reader software.

Special features:

  • Get free samples of millions of books
  • This ebook reader software allows you to read comics, books, and textbooks from Android, iOS, and your web browser.
  • Tap the page to view your favorite comic book
  • You can take notes with your Google Drive, and share them with a group
  • You can adjust the brightness and background color automatically using the Night Light setting.

Supported Platforms: Android

Download: Google Play Books