Reading books is one of the most popular and oldest hobbies. The problem is that it can be an expensive hobby. Printed or digital books can cost a lot. They also take physical space or storage space in your device. Fortunately, there are free online book websites. With these, you can access hundreds of full books without spending any cash! In this article, you will learn the top 10 of these websites.
Some of the websites allow you to download the books as PDFs for offline reading. You can use Wondershare PDFelement to open them for the best digital book reading experience.
In this article
Part 1. Top 10 Free Online Book Websites
Here are the 10 best sites to read books for free.
1. Openlibrary.org
Openlibrary.org is a free book reading website built by the community. Anyone can add books, fix typos, and write widgets. This project has added 20 million records from a wide variety of catalogs and single contributions. And there's more that's being added.
On this website, you can read textbooks, horror books, fantasy books, kids books, and more. You can read these online or download them as PDFs or ePUBS.
2. Project Gutenberg
Read full books online for free on the Project Gutenberg website. Here, you will find thousands of books, but do not expect to find new books here. Project Gutenberg focuses on works for which U.S. copyright has expired. They are added and proofread by thousands of volunteers.
What's so likable about this website is it does not require registration. You can start reading as soon as you hop on the website.
3. Bookreadfree.com
Another free book website to read online is Bookreadfree.com. You can find so many free books - even including popular titles. You can sort them by genre, series, or by author. Thus, it's super easy to find books that will pique your interest.
Some book series are even compiled into one book. That's convenient. You do not have to search for the next installation after reading a book. You can just go to the next page, and it will start the next book in the series.
4. Readanybook
On the Readanybook website, you can find more than a book to read online for free. There are hundreds of books and book series on this website. You can also add more if you want to. You can search by book title or by authors. The feature that we like most is the rating system. Based on the number of stars a book has gotten, you can decide whether or not it's worth your time. You can also read reviews posted by other readers.
The reading experience is great, as you can view one or two pages at a time. Readanybook also allows you to download books for offline reading. You can download them as PDFs, ePUBs, FB2s, or TXT files.
5. Monkey Pen
Is your son or daughter into reading? Monkey Pen is the best website where they can read books online for free in a PDF format. Other websites will have adult books in their collections. You would not want these near your children. On Monkey Pen, you can find nothing but kids' books. So it's safe for your little ones. Even better, you can download the books as PDFs. Letting your children read them offline eliminates the risks of them finding materials that are not age-appropriate.
6. Allnovel.net
Where to read books online for free? You can find really popular books on the free online book reading website, Allnovel.net. The most popular ones are displayed on its landing page. You can see how many views each book has. Of course, if there are many views, it means people are enjoying the book, meaning it is worth reading.
Allnovel.net also has a filter that lets you easily find newly added books. Similar to the other websites, you can also search using book titles, series names, authors, and categories.
7. Read.gov
The government has created a website where you can find books to read online for free. Read.gov is the official website of the Library of Congress. You can find many classical works and fables on this website. The digital books are made by scanning the physical books. As such, the original font styles, format, notes, and images are all preserved. Combined with Read.gov's book reader's attractive interface, this makes it feel like you are reading a physical book - visually, at least.
8. Wattpad
Wattpad is a popular website for authors and readers. Aspiring authors can post their works here for free. Thus, you can find so many books to read online for free in English and other languages. They can post finished stories or stories that get updated every week. This gives readers a unique experience where they can see how the story progresses and even contribute to it. Readers can comment on the books and the lines in the books and chat with the writer.
To use Wattpad, however, you need to create an account. But registration would not take too much of your time.
9. Archive.org
If you want to read digital versions of popular books, head to Archive.org. This free book reading site has more than 7,500,000 books in its collection. For each book, you can see the views, ratings, and comments. These will help you find the books that are worth reading. You can also sort by date published, date archived, date added, and author to make your searches shorter.
You can find books written in different languages on this website. Of course, you can filter the books by language.
Archive.org also has audiobooks, perfect for people who prefer to listen to stories.
10. Authorama
Authorama has a huge collection of public domain books. This free online book website lists books alphabetically, using the author's surname as the basis. If you have a specific book in mind, you can use the search feature.
What we like most about this website is its simplicity. It uses a white background, and there are no ads, like on the other websites. It's very distraction-free, allowing you to focus on reading.
Part 2. Read PDF Books Offline
What’s a better question than “How to read books online for free”? That would be “How to read books offline for free?” This way, you would not be interrupted if you suddenly get disconnected from the internet. Fortunately, some of the websites that let you read books for free also allow you to download those books.
How to read the downloaded books? The books are usually available in PDF. Therefore, you need a PDF viewer. There are some built-in apps on your computer, like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Preview. But if you want an even better reading experience, install Wondershare PDFelement.
Wondershare PDFelement is a cross-platform PDF solution that's available on Mac, iOS, Windows, and Android. You can upload the PDFs to the Wondershare Cloud. With that, when you switch from your PC to your smartphone, you can still access the ebook.
Wondershare PDFelement for Android also has a liquid mode. What it does is it makes the PDF more mobile-friendly. You do not have to pinch, zoom, and span because liquid mode adjusts the PDF's contents and optimizes the file for mobile viewing.
Conclusion
Free online book websites are wonderful. They allow you to read the classics and even some popular books without spending money. Additionally, online digital books also do not require space on your bookshelf or storage device.But please note that you can't access these websites when you do not have an internet connection.
That said, we recommend downloading the books as PDFs when possible. You can read these books with Wondershare PDFelement, which has a bunch of tools that can improve your reading experience. It is also on PC and mobile. Since you can upload the books to the Cloud, you do not have to transfer or copy the book.