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18 open-source education apps

Open Source Flashcard, E-book & Education Apps

The most popular open-source education apps for Windows, macOS and Linux on GitHub are Anki, Koodo Reader and Calibre. appsgit lists 18, including free alternatives to Kindle, EndNote and Mendeley, each with its platforms, license and install commands.

Updated Oct 28, 2026

Open Source Flashcard, E-book & Education Apps

All desktop apps A to Z · JSON API

FAQ

Education, flashcards & reference: FAQ

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What are the best open-source education apps?

By GitHub stars, Anki is the most popular (32,354 stars), followed by Koodo Reader and Calibre. People often use these instead of Kindle, EndNote and Mendeley. Each page lists the platforms, license and last commit.

Which of these run on Windows, Mac and Linux?

17 of the 18 open-source education apps listed here run on Windows, 15 on macOS and 17 on Linux; on a Mac, the most starred is Anki. 6 can be installed with a package manager such as Flathub, Homebrew, winget or Chocolatey.

Are these open-source education apps free?

Yes. All 18 use an open-source license (OSI-approved or FSF-free), so you can use, copy and change them for free.

How are these open-source education apps chosen?

Apps come from desktop awesome lists (Awesome Linux Software, awesome-mac, awesome-windows, awesome-electron and the media and file sections of awesome-cli-apps), more than 70 GitHub topics such as desktop-app, electron-app, tauri-app, gtk, qt, macos-app, pdf-editor, cad and remote-desktop, and a hand-picked list of flagship apps. An app is listed only if it has a license (one GitHub detects, or one appsgit checked by hand), a README and a commit in the last six months, is not archived or a fork, and has 1000+ GitHub stars (topics), 500+ (awesome lists) or 100+ (hand-picked). It must also be an end-user application with a desktop signal: installers in its releases, install instructions for Windows, macOS or Linux, or a Flathub, Homebrew, winget, Chocolatey, Snap or AUR package. Libraries, frameworks, themes, plugins and servers are left out, and source-available apps are labelled as such.