KOReader · a comparison

Coming from KOReader, what changes.

KOReader is the reader people put on a Kindle or a Kobo when the built-in one is not enough, and for that job nothing else comes close. This page says where Tomen is a different kind of thing, where it is not a replacement at all, and who should keep what they have.

Tomen’s shelf in the Inkwell theme with the Honey accent: 229 titles as their real covers, the finished ones and a collection each stacked into one tile, pins on many. — A real library · Inkwell · Honey

Where KOReader is the answer

If your reader is a Kindle or a Kobo, stay

Tomen runs where there is a modern browser: a phone, a tablet, a PC, an Android e-ink tablet like a Boox. A Kindle, a Kobo or a PocketBook has no such browser, so Tomen cannot run on it. KOReader can, and it is the best reader those devices will ever have. This page is for people who also read on a phone or a computer, or whose e-ink device runs Android.

Where Tomen is different

The page is set, not configured

KOReader gives you every control a typesetter has and leaves the result to you, which is why people who love it love it. Tomen re-sets every book in its own typography, with the type and measure chosen once and tuned to the screen, so a messy EPUB reads as well as a designed one and nothing is adjusted per book. If you have a KOReader profile you spent an evening on, that is a loss. If you want to open a book and read, it is the point.

Where Tomen is different

Nothing to install to try it

Putting KOReader on a device is a project, and a satisfying one. Tomen is a page: go to read.tomen.app, drag a book in, read. The same shelf is what the Android and Windows apps sign into later, and one Plus purchase covers all of them. Your place, highlights and settings follow you between devices through a Tomen account.

Where Tomen is different

Comics are a shelf, not a format

KOReader opens a CBZ. Tomen treats comics as what they are: CBZ, CBR, CBT and CB7 on the same shelf as the books, spreads, right-to-left reading for manga, chapters from the ComicInfo file, and a minimap when you zoom into a page. A Calibre library comes in four ways as well; the Calibre guide has each one.

Where KOReader is ahead

What you give up

The devices. KOReader runs on e-readers Tomen never will. If that is where you read, there is no contest.
Depth of control. Margins, hyphenation, fonts, page effects, gestures: KOReader exposes all of it. Tomen exposes a type face, a size, a theme and a few layout choices, on purpose.
PDF as reflowed text. KOReader can reflow a PDF's text for a small screen. Tomen reads a PDF as pages, the way it reads a comic, and converts a scanned one to a comic for speed.
Price. KOReader is free and open source. Tomen is free to read; Tomen Plus is $49, once, for every platform.

If KOReader on an e-reader is your whole reading life, stay, and enjoy it. This page is for the phone-and-PC half of that life, or for an Android e-ink tablet where a browser and a shelf with covers are on offer.

Moving over

Your books are files; copy or share them into Tomen, or add the folder they live in. Nothing is converted.
Your highlights come too. Export them from KOReader as JSON and Tomen imports the file, placing each highlight and note by its passage and keeping its color; that is part of Plus, as is exporting Tomen's own highlights to Markdown so they are never stranded again. Page bookmarks are not in KOReader's export, so they stay behind.
On a Boox or another Android e-ink tablet, the Boox guide covers the e-ink mode and the shelf.
Try it in a browser first at read.tomen.app. Nothing to install, and the shelf you make there is the one the apps sign into.

Open the reader Everything else Tomen does

Free to read. Tomen Plus is $49, once, with a 30-day trial and no card. KOReader is an open-source project by its contributors; this page compares, it does not speak for them.