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Audiobookshelf

Audiobook & podcast server with great apps

provisional — pending verificationGPL-3.0self-hostable

Arete score

4.5 / 5

Autonomy5

Return4

Efficiency4

Transparency5

ἀρετή “AH-reh-tay” — excellence: a thing being good at what it’s for. Mean of the four principle scores. How we score →

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Plain outbound link — no affiliate parameters, no tracking redirects.

~ Provisional — seeded estimate by a human researcher; full rubric pass pending.

Why it's listed

Audiobookshelf is listed in media servers because it competes on utility: audiobook & podcast server with great apps. It's built by an independent, bootstrapped team — no growth-at-all-costs pressure, no ad-tax passed to you. Licensed GPL-3.0; pricing: free. Technically it's lean — it runs comfortably on modest hardware, which is exactly the proof-of-work efficiency we rank for. This entry is provisional — the scores are seeded estimates pending our full manual rubric pass, and the verification date will appear here once complete.

Facts

License: GPL-3.0
Pricing: Free
Funding model: Indie OSS
Self-hostable: Yes — deploy difficulty: easy
Verification: Provisional — scores are seeded estimates pending manual verification

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Spotted a problem — trackers added, dark patterns, abandonment? Report a violation. Scores change when evidence does.