Audiobookshelf

What is Audiobookshelf?

Audiobookshelf organises audiobooks and podcasts with proper metadata, cover art and chapter support, then streams them to a web player or its mobile apps. It tracks listening progress across devices and can also serve ebooks from the same library. Podcast support includes RSS subscriptions with automatic episode downloads.

Best for

Audiobook and podcast listeners who want progress sync across devices

Why choose Audiobookshelf

Audiobookshelf is the rare self-hosted app that fills a gap the big platforms simply do not serve. Audible locks you to its store and its apps; podcast apps ignore your audiobook files entirely. This server treats both the same way — point it at a folder of audiobooks, subscribe it to podcast feeds, and you get one player with proper chapter support, reliable progress sync across phone and browser, and no dependency on any store. Your library is folders on a disk, which is how media libraries should be.

Replaces

• Audible
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Key features

• Audiobook and podcast library with metadata and chapters
• Listening progress synced across web and mobile
• Automatic podcast episode downloads from RSS
• Ebook reading from the same library

What to watch out for

The mobile apps are functional but not as polished as commercial players, and offline downloading has historically been the weak spot people complain about most. Some audiobook rips come with messy metadata — scattered files, missing chapters, inconsistent naming — and no server can fully rescue that, so expect to spend time tidying folders. Transcoding and streaming to a slow connection can stutter, and the project is maintained by a very small team, so features arrive at the pace one or two people can manage.

How to deploy

• Docker
• Linux packages

Getting started

Mount your audiobook library read-only and keep the metadata and database directories on the server side; the scanner will want to write cover images and progress data next to it. Name your folders so the built-in scanner can parse author and series correctly before the first scan, because rescanning a large library repeatedly is slow and tedious. Open the podcast section separately and add feeds there — podcast episodes are downloaded, not scanned, and they behave differently. Set up a nightly backup of the database; the audio files are replaceable but your listening progress is not.

Typical setup

The usual arrangement is a home server or NAS holding the audiobook folders, with the server running in Docker and the mobile apps pointing at a domain reached through a reverse proxy. People who listen on commutes keep a subset downloaded offline; people who listen at home stream. Podcast support means the same instance quietly downloads episodes on a schedule, so the storage footprint grows on its own and is worth watching.

Who should look elsewhere

If your priority is store-bought convenience — new releases, professional narration, apps that just work and syncing that never needs thought — a subscription platform is genuinely better. This is for someone willing to acquire and organise files, and willing to accept a mobile client that is functional rather than polished.

Project health

• GitHub stars: 14,517
• Last code push: 2026-09-29
• Open issues: 1,212
• Status: actively developed

Figures pulled from the GitHub API and refreshed periodically.