Kavita Hosting: Your Own Server for Books, Comics and Manga

Kavita is an open-source (GPL-3.0) reading server: you keep your ebooks, comics and manga on your own server, and read them in a web reader that remembers each person's place. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it in about two minutes after boot. You get:

• Kavita 0.9.1 with three libraries ready, Books, Comics and Manga, each watching its own folder for new files.
• An HTTPS address like kavita-k3x9q2.devoster.app with a Let's Encrypt certificate.
• Your admin account already created. A fresh Kavita lets its first visitor register as admin; here that is done on the server before the site goes public. You log in as admin with a generated password shown in the Devoster dashboard, where you can also reset it.
• Anonymous usage statistics off, so the server doesn't report back to Kavita's developers.
• Dashboard controls to open the app, restart, stop or start it, read its logs, run an update and connect your own domain.

The app is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, a dedicated IPv4, 1 Gbps with unlimited bandwidth and DDoS protection. Already have a Devoster VPS? You can install Kavita on it from VPS Control, after the panel checks the OS, free ports 80/443 and disk, or reinstall the server with it, at no charge. Other apps that install this way are on the One-Click Apps page.

Files go in over SFTP, with any client such as FileZilla or WinSCP, into the folder for their library:

Put each series in its own folder. Kavita watches these folders, so new files show up after its next scan, and you can start a scan from its settings at any time. Kavita reads the files you give it; it doesn't remove copy protection, so only add books you have the right to use.

• The web reader works on a phone, tablet or computer: a book reader for EPUB with font and layout settings, and a page reader for comics and manga with options such as right-to-left reading and webtoon-style scrolling.
• Progress per reader: every account keeps its own place in each book and series, and picks up where it stopped on another device.
• Collections and reading lists to group series and set a reading order, plus "want to read" for later.
• OPDS: each user has an OPDS address in their settings, which reader apps that support OPDS can browse and download from.

There is no public sign-up: you invite people. Outbound mail ports are blocked by default on Devoster VPS plans and no mail service is set up, and Kavita handles that well:

• Invites: invite someone by email in Kavita's user settings, choose their libraries and role, and Kavita gives you the invite link to copy and send them yourself. They open it, pick a username and password, and start reading.
• Forgotten passwords: when someone uses "forgot password", Kavita writes the reset link into its log instead of mailing it. Open the app's logs in the Devoster dashboard, find the link and pass it on.
• Your own password is reset with one click in the Devoster dashboard.
• Per-user access: each reader only sees the libraries you give them, and you can set an age rating limit per account.

Kavita runs comfortably on small plans; your library's size decides. Ebooks are small, commonly a few MB each, while comics and manga are mostly images, so a single issue or volume often takes tens of MB.

Bigger collections need bigger plans, up to 200 GB on Mega. You can upgrade from the panel later, but plans are not shrunk in place.

Backups: nightly backups (kept 3 days) and your snapshot slot cover the whole VPS. Keep the originals of your library somewhere else too, or copy /opt/devoster/data/kavita off the server over SFTP or with rsync now and then.

Updates: we check new Kavita versions and apply them in a maintenance hour you choose, or when you press Update now. A snapshot of the VPS is taken first, and if Kavita doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically.

Kavita+, the developers' paid add-on for extra metadata and scrobbling, is a separate subscription and isn't included; everything on this page works without it.

The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security and your files are your responsibility. Our VPS hardening checklist is a good hour's read.