Hardcover – Letterboxd for Books
Hi HN! A little over two years ago, Goodreads announced they were shutting off access to their API. I was using it to show what I was reading on my blog at the time, and started looking for alternatives. I found a few that showed potential. I'd been using Letterboxd for a few years at that point and felt it had something that was missing from GR and the others I found, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I decided to build it instead (I'm sure many creators can relate ). I made a post on the /r/cofounders subreddit about the idea, and found Ste. With me as a full-stack product dev…
Hardcover – Letterboxd for Books launched on October 2, 2023 with 31 votes, #1,294 of 4,393 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was not reachable when checked in September 2026.
In plain words
Hardcover is a book tracking and social platform designed for readers who want to discover, log, and discuss books with a community. Built by a full-stack developer and product designer, it emerged as an alternative after Goodreads shut down its API access. The platform combines social features inspired by Letterboxd's approach to film with a focus on creating a warm, engaging space for book enthusiasts to share and explore reading.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi HN! A little over two years ago, Goodreads announced they were shutting off access to their API. I was using it to show what I was reading on my blog at the time, and started looking for alternatives. I found a few that showed potential. I'd been using Letterboxd for a few years at that point and felt it had…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
A more social, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads2022 · booqsi.com · ▲478Hey HN, I know reading books isn’t everyone’s thing, but it’s certainly been mine for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, I felt like the online book space was missing a platform that does the book community justice. Goodreads is the go-to "social platform", but if you've been on Goodreads before, you'll probably agree that it's not all that social, and overall not all that exciting. So I set out to build what I personally was looking for (but could never find). The goal: to give the book community a more social and streamlined alternative to Goodreads or StoryGraph. We also felt like…
- ISI scraped 3B Goodreads reviews to train a better recommendation modelNov 2025 · book.sv · ▲606
Hi everyone, For the past couple months I've been working on a website with two main features: - https://book.sv - put in a list of books and get recommendations on what to read next from a model trained on over a billion reviews - https://book.sv/intersect - put in a list of books and find the users on Goodreads who have read them all (if you don't want to be included in these results, you can opt-out here: https://book.sv/remove-my-data) Technical info available here: https://book.sv/how-it-works Note 1: If you only provide one or two…
ObookoFeb 2026 · obooko.com · ▲269Hey HN, I'm George. I spent few months rebuilding Obooko, a free ebook platform that's been around since 2010 with 11 million downloads. Reading is losing to scrolling, but BookTok has 370B+ views. People want book content, they're just not reading books. I think that’s because modern reading hasn’t kept up with the pace of the internet. What I built Obooko is ad-supported like YouTube. No paywall, no subscription, no account required. 4,000+ books across 30+ genres. You can read in the browser, sync across devices, or download as PDF/EPUB/Kindle. The reader is built on EPUB.js…
I built a modern Goodreads alternative2025 · kaguya.io · ▲254Since 2005, Goodreads has been the default book tracking site, connecting millions of readers. But let’s be real—it’s barely changed in 20 years. It’s the same site it was, just with more ads. Still no half-star ratings. No proper DNF (Did Not Finish) option. UI still looks like it's from 2005. Amazon owns it and doesn't care. So I built Kaguya, a modern alternative, over the past 9 months. What’s live: Custom shelves (Organize however you want) Rich-text reviews (format your thoughts properly) 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars) DNF, On-Hold, and other reading statuses Likes,…
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