8 Best ePub Readers for Windows 11 and 10 in 2024
Choosing the best ePub reader for Windows 11 is essential for every user experience
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Key notes
- ePub readers are fantastic apps for reading e-Book or online comics.
- There are tons of them available on the internet that come with great features like a text highlighter and cloud storage.
- This guide lists out the seven best ePub readers like Cover, Calibre, and Adobe Digital Editions.
ePub readers for Windows have been in high demand ever since the rise of the digital book market. This started in 2006 and 2007 with Sony’s and Apple’s ebook reading devices. In 2023 it has reached a staggering 34% of all the books sold with an estimated value of $16.38 billion.
Over the years many digital book formats have appeared. So, many eBook-reading apps have been developed to accommodate any user preferences. But still, ePub has remained one of the most popular formats.
In this article, we will take a look at some of the best ePub readers for Windows 11 and Windows 10. You’ll notice that some products in this list come with a price tag, while others are free, but you’ll find them a little less powerful.
What are ePub Readers?
As briefly mentioned, ePub reader software allows you to read files in the ePub format, typically digitized books, and images. Prominent examples include apps like Google Books and Apple Books, but we will be focusing on some alternatives.
Some features you might want in the best Windows 11 ePub reader include a built-in dictionary server and support for multiple languages. These aren’t mandatory but do make your reading experience that much better and more enjoyable.
What are the best ePub readers for Windows 11?
Icecream E-book Reader – Intuitive book management
Icecream E-book Reader is a compelling and free ePub reader that feels like it was specifically made for Windows 11 computers. Apart from the ePub format, Icecream E-book Reader also supports other formats like MOBI, CBR, and FB2.
This reader is especially notable for its clean, easy-to-navigate interface that displays everything on one page. Icecream has many features, including full-screen support, multiple languages, easy page-turning mechanics, and fantastic search capabilities.
Sometimes, app search engines lack their capabilities, but Icecream E-book Reader feels like the one to break that trend. Book management is pretty simple, as anything downloaded is automatically organized.
The app also has a neat feature that saves your progress on the page you left on, and when you re-open that book, the software takes you right back without missing a step. On top of that, you can add notes on the side or translate text written in a different language with the Translate feature.
Icecream E-book Reader
Try this excellent ePub Reader and manage your e-books better.Adobe Digital Editions – Great text highlighter
Adobe Digital Editions or ADE is an eBook software that allows you to seamlessly move digital books from one device to another. The e-book that you bought on one device will automatically appear on other devices that have ADE installed.
There are multiple versions of the app that work on Windows 11 PC as well as Mac computers, Android devices, and iPads. Plus, ADE gives you access to a giant library of e-books from different authors and in many different languages.
Other useful features of ADE include text highlighting, file organization, and a customizable interface that is shared through different versions of the app. See, the shining aspect of Adobe Digital Editions is optimizing the personal reading experience across tons of devices. It’s about making reading as enjoyable as possible and making access easy.
It saves a lot of time and trouble by not having to go from one device to another and downloading the e-book every single time. And the best part of it is, Adobe Digital Editions is 100 percent free. No extra features are locked behind a fee.
Adobe Digital Editions
Increase your reading experience by using this outstanding tool.FBReader – Cross-platform reader
FBReader is a great ebook reader that supports many formats and it is available on all the major Operating systems, including iOS, Linux, and Chrome OS.
For Windows operating systems this reader is completely free and it works excellent for both Windows 10 and Windows 11. You can also try to use it in older versions of the operating system, but there is no guarantee it will work.
The reader itself is really light and very easy to use allowing you to navigate to the location of your books and open them, or you can connect to different libraries and download books.
ePub is one of the main formats for FBReader, but you can also use other formats, such as fb2, fb2.zip, mobi, plain text, .doc, RTF, and even read comics with the .cbz format.
With this reader, you can also create a book network as it allows you to connect your book libraries across multiple devices and so your favorite books are never out of reach.
Epubor Ultimate – Straightforward reader
Epubor, as a service, has two different readers. The basic one goes by Epubor Reader and Epubor Ultimate. The former is a straightforward reader supporting multiple e-book formats with a nice-looking user interface.
Epubor Ultimate takes it one step further as it also serves as a tool that can covert your e-books and remove DRM protection. Converters are sometimes necessary to ensure your e-book is compatible with your device, otherwise, you may get an incompatibility error message.
DRM (digital rights management) protections are control technologies that restrict the usage of copyrighted material and can be annoying. Essentially, you are forced to use those e-books how the company intended them and not however you want.
But Epubor Ultimate removes that restriction and allows you to use your e-book however you want. The app can take in various formats like AZW, PRC, and HTML, and convert them to ePub or PDF.
Because of this capability, you’ll have to purchase this software, but you can try out the free trial before committing to it and see what it has to offer. Epubor even has guides on its page that teach you how to convert.
Epubor Ultimate
Try this advanced-shape eBook tool and enjoy reading your books more comfortably.Calibre – Very easy to use
Calibre has the distinct honor of being one of the oldest free ePub readers for Windows on the internet today. It has maintained consistent popularity and is still highly used to this day. It is said that Calibre is what laid the groundwork for the other apps that came later down the line.
Alone, its a great e-book manager that gives you access to thousands of digital books with a comprehensive user interface to store and manage it all. Its vast library includes famous works of literature, educational books, self-help books, and even magazines.
Its features include the ability to share your library with other people, back up your content so you don’t lose anything, and even the ability to edit and convert formats, just like Epubor Ultimate.
And if you like to have even further control, Calibre allows you to download special covers for your books so you can customize how the titles present themselves to suit your needs.
Kobo – Built-in dictionary
Kobo shares many of the same features and capabilities that other ePub readers for Windows have like the ability to curate your library of digital books. It also has a built-in dictionary, annotation marker, bookmark adder, text highlighter, and other features.
It even has a well-kept review system that anybody within the Kobo community can interact with. People can add their reviews of a book they just read on a scale of one to five. With over five million books on Kobo, the reviews seem almost endless. Plus, you can directly buy books from a store.
In the online store, you will find free and affordable books as well as comics. The desktop app is designed to help you read however you want by allowing you to choose from multiple font styles and sizes, plus how text is arranged.
Unique to Kobo is that it allows aspiring writers to publish their own work on the platform and build a community of fans across their work. The ePub reader is free to download and the author program free to join, as well.
⇒ Get Kobo
Neat Reader – Data synchronization
Neat Reader provides its users with access to thousands of high-quality books from different authors and genres, and much like the other apps on this list, allows you to curate your own library. It has some great features like the ability to add text within a book and a built-in dictionary.
Plus, you can add bookmarks and annotations for a worry-free reading experience. It has a simple and robust user interface that’s easy to follow and not cluttered, although there are ads on the pages.
There are two versions of Neat Reader: a free version and one where you have to. The free version gives you what was just mentioned plus access to an Android or iOS app so you can take the book on the go.
The paid Annual version has 10GB of cloud storage, data synchronizations, note export, and advanced settings on the apps, and it’s ad-free. The developer behind Neat Reader plans on adding more features to the Annual version soon.
Cover – Limitless library
Cover is one of the specific and unique ePub readers on the market because it’s primarily for reading comic books on Windows 11. It supports the ePub format, plus CBR/ZIP, and PDF. As for image formats, Cover also supports JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and WEBP.
It has in-app purchases for a seemingly limitless library. The user interface is great as well because it separates the comic books you purchase into their own shelves and it keeps track of the ones you have read and saves where you left off.
Cover also saves the page count, which is extremely useful for huge omnibuses often hundreds of pages long. And if you’re a fan of manga, Cover has you covered as it has many manga volumes on its service, and you can change how to read it with right-to-left mode.
You can use it to read any comics on your OneDrive or Dropbox accounts. All in all, Cover is a fantastic ePub reader for comic book fans.
What other kinds of apps come highly recommended?
If you want to get the most out of your Windows 11 computer, there are particular apps that you should get. This is especially important if you want to keep your computer’s performance at its best and not have it degrade.
You may also be interested to know which virtual machines work the best on Windows 11. Virtual machines are useful if you want to try out the latest features of Windows 11 or the beta version, but don’t want to deal with bugs or glitches. One of the best ones VMware Workstation for its high versatility and how easy it is to set up.
And for fun, you should download a photo viewer. A good photo viewer does more than view pictures, but also comes with great features like editing tools and taking screenshots. In fact, the Photo viewer app that comes with Windows 11 natively has a ton of features. But if you prefer a third-party app with more, an app like Movavi is the way to go.
Besides, you might also be interested in the best ways to open EPUB files in Windows 11.
Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions on other Windows 11 apps. Also, leave comments about guides that you’d like to see or information on other Windows 11 features or list guides like this.
