Project Gutenberg

aid: gutenberg
name: Project Gutenberg
description: >-
  Project Gutenberg is a free ebook library providing access to over 75,000
  public domain books via the Gutendex REST API. The API enables developers to
  search and retrieve bibliographic metadata for books and authors, filter by
  language, copyright status, topic, and MIME type, and access download links
  for multiple formats including EPUB, Kindle, HTML, and plain text. Project
  Gutenberg has pioneered free ebooks since 1971 and the Gutendex API makes its
  catalog programmatically accessible via a simple JSON REST interface with no
  authentication required.
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/gutenberg/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
tags:
  - Books
  - Ebooks
  - Public Domain
  - Literature
  - Library
  - Metadata
  - EPUB
apis:
  - aid: gutenberg:gutendex
    name: Gutendex API
    description: >-
      Gutendex is a JSON web API for Project Gutenberg ebook metadata. It
      provides access to the catalog of 75,000+ public domain books with
      filtering by language, copyright status, topic, author lifespan, and MIME
      type. The API returns paginated JSON results including book titles,
      authors, subjects, bookshelves, download formats, and download counts.
      No authentication or API key is required.
    image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
    humanURL: https://gutendex.com/
    baseURL: https://gutendex.com
    tags:
      - Books
      - Ebooks
      - Public Domain
      - Metadata
      - Literature
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://gutendex.com/
      - type: OpenAPI
        url: https://gutendex.com/books
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.gutenberg.org/
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://gutendex.com/
  - type: GitHubOrg
    url: https://github.com/gutenbergtools
  - type: Blog
    url: https://www.gutenberg.org/help/
  - type: Pricing
    url: https://gutendex.com/
  - type: StatusPage
    url: https://www.gutenberg.org/
  - type: X
    url: https://twitter.com/gutenberg_org
  - type: Plans
    url: plans/gutenberg-plans-pricing.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: rate-limits/gutenberg-rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: finops/gutenberg-finops.yml
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: [email protected]