Here’s the Deal

Sumatra vs Calibre

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When comparing Sumatra vs Calibre, the Slant community recommends Calibre for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop readers?” Calibre is ranked 1st while Sumatra is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Calibre is:

Features include metadata editing and downloading, coverpage downloading., book tagging and categorization, webpage-to-ebook converter for popular websites, etc. Lots of plugins available to extend functionality.

Specs

LicenseGPL-3.0-only

PlatformsWindows

LicenseGPL-3.0-only

PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux

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Common Questions

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Pros

Pro
Reads many file types

Including PDF, XPS, DjVu, CHM, EPUB, Mobi, FictionBook, PalmDoc, and comic books.

Pro
Book updates on the fly

If Book font, style is changed, Sumatra will take the update instantly, No need to close first and import again! Huge time saver for self publishing.

Pro
Portable

The application consists of a single file that can be run without installation. You can put it on an external device, such as an usb thumb stick and run it on any Windows machine from the thumb stick.

Pro
Multilingual

It's available in 69 languages.

Pro
Free and open source

Sumatra is available for free, licensed under GPL with source code available on GitHub.

Pro
Powerful book management software, very customizable and scriptable

Pro
Cross-platform

Calibre is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows, 32-bit or 64-bit.

Pro
Open Source

Pro
Portable

Calibre has an optional portable build that can be stored on external media along with the users library. It can then be opened from the external media on any windows device.