12 Best Websites to Read Free Books Without Downloading

Reading books online without downloading them is one of the desires of many readers. There are so many websites that legally offer free books for people to read online without worrying about downloading them. If you have access to such websites you don’t need to worry about downloading or transferring the books to your eReader or tablet. This is because you can read the entire books easily and conveniently just in a browser.

If you are looking for websites where you can read books online, this post provides a top list of such sites. The sites listed here may offer options for downloads, but they all definitely offer free books for reading online. You can visit any of the sites to start reading any book of your choice.

1. Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg has over 60,000 free eBooks that anyone can download or even read online without downloading. This is an online library that offers the world’s great literature and classics. You can just simply click “Read this book online: HTML” to open the book in your browser and read the book of your choice.

2. Google Books

Google Books is one of the leading platforms where you can read ebooks for free. Searching for a book in Google Books works just like web search. You can try a search on books.google.com. When the book with content that contains a match for your search terms is found, it will link to the book in your search results. If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given Google Books permission, you’ll be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the full view of the entire text. If the book you’re looking for is in the public domain, you’re even free to download a PDF copy. You can checkout this site now.

3. Smashwords

Smashwords is a good website for anyone who wants to read free books that are not just fiction. There are a variety of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, essay, plays, poetry, and screenplays. Just make sure that you click the “Free” tab when you search for books, because not all the site’s 300,000 books are free. And for those ebooks that can be read online, there will be an “Online Reader” option under “Downloads” that you can click to read in the browser.

4. ManyBooks

ManyBooks currently offers more than 50,000 titles you can access and read online. Of all all the sites in this list, ManyBooks has the most beautifully-designed interface. Readers can browse the free books by genre, title, author, or search for any book you want by keywords.

5. Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library which offers free universal access to digital contents including books, images, videos, audios and software. This website makes available over 20,000,000 books and texts. You can download the ebooks to PDF, EPUB, Kindle format, or read the books online without downloading. To start reading, just click on the book cover and it will be opened automatically in the browser. This website has an impressive feature for the online reader which comes as a realistic page-turning animation, just like reading a physical book instead of an ebook. You will enjoy reading a book on this platform.

6. Open Library

Open Library is an online project which is aimed at creating one web page for every book ever published. It provides online access to 3,000,000 public domain and out-of-print books. Compared with Internet Archive, the Open Library website is more user-friendly, which makes you find the books you need much quicker.

7. HathiTrust Digital Library

HathiTrust is a unique platform which operates as partnership of over 90 (still growing) academic and research institutions worldwide. This website offers a collection of over 10 million titles from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally by libraries. Just type the book in the search bar to find the book you need. After that, simply click the “Full View” and the online reader will open immediately. You will enjoy reading books on this platform.

8. Bookboon

Bookboon is an online publishing company of ebooks which focuses on publishing eTextbooks for students. Any interested reader can sign up for free to read 1000+ free textbooks online without downloading. One unique thing about this website is that most of the textbooks in Bookboon are written by professors from the world’s top universities. The subjects covered by Bookboon’s student textbooks including Human Resource Management, IT, Economics, Natural Science, Management, Engineering and more.

9. Wattpad

Wattpad is one of the most popular ebook reading websites in the world. The website connects a global community of 80 million readers and writers through the power of story. So there is a wide variety of ebooks that can found in Wattpad. You can browse and select the book that you want to read, click on its cover and a pop-up window will appear. Then click on the “Read” button to start reading online.

10. Read Print

Read Print is an online community where users can enjoy reading a variety of books online. Members can make use of many services among which are features to read free books online, rate and review books, stories, and poems, create an online bookshelf as well as search for and create groups of books. Furthermore, Read Print is one of Time Magazine’s 50 best websites. You can find lots of classics in this site.

11. International Children’s Digital Library

International Children’s Digital Library Foundation is a free online library which offers digitized children’s books in at least 100 languages. This platform has a primary focus of identifying materials that help children to understand the world around them and the global society where they live. The materials in the collection, all presented in the original languages in which they were published, reflect similarities and differences in cultures, societies, interests, and lifestyles of peoples around the world. This is a very good website to suggest to kids as it will help them better understand the world in which they live.

12. Read Any Book

Read Any Book is one of the best places anyone can read free books online without downloading. If you find a book you want to read you can browse the book and read it free in the site. Best fiction books and free book series are always available here. You can decide on the book to read based on the ratings for books.

Finally!

Reading books online is the desire of many readers. It makes reading easy too. Finding where to get free books you can read online is very essential. Just checkout any of the websites listed here and click to read as many books as you wish.