Stanza Redux vs Persimmon Reader

Read a chapter on the train, find your next book in an online catalog, or settle into a two-page spread at your desk. Stanza Redux is a free, open-source EPUB reader for phones, tablets, and computers. Bring your own EPUB files or browse OPDS catalogs, including Standard Ebooks, Project Gutenberg, and Ebooks Gratuits. Explore authors and subjects, see book details and covers, and download books into your library. You can add, validate, rename, and reorder your own catalogs. Browse your library by title, author, or genre. Search your books, return to recently opened titles, and keep reading without an internet connection. Your reading position is saved on this device. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is included to get you started; you can remove it at any time. Make the page comfortable: choose a typeface and text size, adjust margins and line and paragraph spacing, and switch between light, sepia, dark, or custom colors. Use a single column or a two-column layout on wide screens. Turn pages with taps, swipes, or keyboard arrows. Save bookmarks, search the table of contents, and jump within a chapter without losing your previous position. No ads, purchases, subscriptions, or account required. Your library stays on your device; browsing a catalog contacts that catalog’s server. Supports unencrypted EPUB files up to 64 MB. DRM-protected books, PDF, audiobooks, and cloud synchronization are not supported. Version 2 uses the Day framework with native controls on each platform. The interface is available in 13 languages. Source code: github.com/Stanza-Redux/Stanza-Redux

Persimmon is a simple, focused ebook reader built around one thing: reading. The interface stays out of your way and leaves as much room as possible for the book. No annotations, no AI features, no clutter—just open a book and read. Page turns are carefully tuned to feel responsive and natural. They follow your finger, stay smooth through fast repeated swipes, and are designed for people who read quickly. You can also rapidly flip through pages, a bit like thumbing backward through a paperback. Your library and reading progress can sync for free through your own cloud storage, so there’s no separate Persimmon account to create. Just use your existing cloud drive and keep reading across devices. Your books and reading data stay on your device unless you choose to sync them. Even then, they go directly to your own cloud drive.