Best Free OPDS Catalogs for iPhone & iPad (2026)

Quick answer: The most reliable free OPDS catalogs in 2026 are Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.opds/), Standard Ebooks, the Internet Archive bookserver, and OAPEN for academic titles. Several older lists still point to Feedbooks, which shut down in 2024, so skip it. To use any of these, add the catalog URL in an OPDS reader on your iPhone or iPad.

Half the OPDS catalog lists online are years out of date, recommending feeds that have quietly gone dark. This list is current for 2026, with the working URL for each catalog, an honest note on access and reliability, and the dead ones called out so you do not waste time on them. If you have not connected a catalog before, start with our guide on how to set up OPDS on iPhone and iPad, then come back here for where to point it.

The free public catalogs worth adding

Project Gutenberg

The original and still the best starting point. Project Gutenberg offers more than 70,000 public domain books, everything from Austen and Dickens to philosophy and reference, all free and legal to download. Its OPDS feed is open with no login:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.opds/

In justRead, Project Gutenberg is built in, so you can browse and run a server-side search without typing a URL at all. In other apps, add the feed above as a new catalog.

Standard Ebooks

Standard Ebooks takes public domain texts and gives them careful, modern typography and proper covers, so a free classic does not look like a scanned afterthought. The books are free. The one catch worth knowing in advance: the full browsable OPDS catalog is reserved for people who support the project (joining its Patrons Circle, producing an ebook, or qualifying as an open-source project), while the new-releases feeds are open to everyone. It is a volunteer effort, so the access model is fair, just be aware before you paste the URL and hit a login.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive's bookserver exposes a vast catalog over OPDS at:

https://bookserver.archive.org/catalog/

This covers public domain works plus titles available through Controlled Digital Lending. It is genuinely huge, but it has a history of intermittent availability, so if it does not load on the first try, it is usually the server and not your setup. Worth adding, worth not relying on as your only source.

OAPEN

For non-fiction and academic reading, OAPEN hosts open-access scholarly books, free and legal, at:

https://library.oapen.org/opds

A niche pick, but a strong one if you read research monographs or university press titles.

How to tell if a catalog still works

OPDS catalogs go dark without announcement, which is why so many lists are unreliable. Before you trust a feed, do a quick check: paste the catalog URL into a desktop browser. A working OPDS 1.2 feed returns an XML page, often a wall of tags, which is exactly what you want to see. A dead one returns a 404, a redirect to an unrelated site, or a parking page. If the URL sends you somewhere that is not the project you expected, treat it as gone. That single test catches every dead feed in the older lists, Feedbooks included.

Does OPDS 1.2 vs 2.0 matter?

For now, not much. OPDS 1.2 is the XML-based version that nearly every catalog and iOS reader speaks, so it is what you will use day to day. OPDS 2.0 is a newer JSON-based version that some servers, such as Komga, already offer alongside 1.2. You do not have to choose: add whichever endpoint a server documents and your reader handles it. If a server lists both, the 1.2 endpoint is the safe default for the widest app support.

Build your own catalog

Public catalogs are great for discovery, but the real power of OPDS is pointing your iPhone at your own library. Any of these turns your collection into a private catalog you can read from anywhere on your network:

• Calibre Content Server. If you already keep your books in Calibre, it can serve your whole library over OPDS at http://<your-ip>:8080/opds. See Calibre library sync for the full two-way workflow that also writes your reading progress and ratings back.
• calibre-web. A web front end for a Calibre library that exposes OPDS without needing the Calibre desktop app left open.
• Komga and Kavita. Self-hosted servers aimed at comics, manga, and ebooks, each with its own OPDS endpoint.

justRead connects to all of these as custom OPDS servers, with per-server filtering and pagination so a large catalog stays manageable on a phone. The OPDS reader page covers the supported servers in detail.

What to skip

• Feedbooks public domain. Feedbooks shut down and its domain has redirected to Cantook since 2024. Every old Feedbooks OPDS URL is dead. Many catalog lists still include it, which is a good sign that the list has not been updated.
• Feeds that demand an account up front for "free" books. If a catalog wants a paid login before it will show you anything, it is not a free OPDS source in any useful sense.

Putting it together

A good setup mixes one or two public catalogs for discovery with your own server for the library you actually own. Add Project Gutenberg for the classics, your Calibre Content Server for everything you have collected, and you have a reading front end that goes everywhere your iPhone does. For the step-by-step on connecting any of these, see how to set up OPDS on iPhone and iPad, or browse all of our reading guides.

Download justRead on the App Store and start with the built-in Project Gutenberg catalog.