Free Programming Books

What it is

Free Programming Books is a list of links to learning material that is free to read. The Free Ebook Foundation administers it, and contributors keep adding to it. It is a set of Markdown files, not a program. You open a list, find your subject or language, and follow a link to the resource’s page. The README says the list began as a clone of a StackOverflow question and grew into one of GitHub’s most popular repositories.

1. You want to learn a subject for free
2. Open the list for your language or subject
3. Find the section and read its lines
4. Follow the link to the resource’s page
5. Check the terms there, then read or download

Who it suits

Learners who want free material for one language or one subject, teachers who build a reading list, and developers who need a book on a topic outside their daily work. Readers of other languages can start from the README’s per-language lists. A coding agent can search a local copy for you.

Skip it if you want one recommended path. The lists are alphabetical, and they do not say which book is best.

Where to use it

The lists work anywhere you can open a web page or a Markdown file.

• GitHub: the README, and each list file it links to
• The static website: the README says the page is available as an easy-to-read website
• The search site: a separate page where you search by book or author
• A local copy: clone the repository, or take the zip that the README’s repo-size badge links to, then search the files by hand or with your agent
• The maker’s checks: Node.js, Ruby or Python, only if you contribute

The README gives no steps for any coding agent. Minda’s notes for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor are ordinary steps for giving an agent a folder to read, and they say so.

How to set it up

Get it saves a zip of Minda’s setup notes in your downloads folder. The lists need no install, and the README gives no install line.

1. Read the README on GitHub, or open the website.
2. To keep a copy, clone the repository with the line below.
3. Open the folder in your editor or coding agent, and go to books/, courses/ or more/.

git clone https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books.git

The clone line is ordinary Git on the address GitHub reports. The next two lines come from the maker’s workflow file fpb-lint.yml. There, the second line ends with &> output.log, which writes the result to a log. Run them from the repository’s root. The first installs the format check, and the second runs it on the four list folders.

npm install -g free-programming-books-lint
fpb-lint books casts courses more

How to use it

Open the list that fits, then the section you want. Each line gives a title and its link, and often an author. Then come notes: a format such as (HTML) or (PDF) on a book, a platform such as (Udemy) on a course, and sometimes a license code or an access note. The title’s link goes to the most authoritative source the contributor found: the author’s site, else the editor’s, else a third party’s, or an archived copy marked archived. The download and the terms are on that page. The README’s search page takes a book title or an author’s name.

With an agent, name the file and the section, and ask it to quote the lines it used.

Open books/free-programming-books-langs.md in this folder. List the Rust books that come as HTML, with their authors and links.

Example

You want to learn Rust without buying a book. You open books/free-programming-books-langs.md and search for ### Rust, or you ask your agent for the books that come as HTML.

In the list read on 3 November 2026, the Rust section has these lines, among others:

* [A Gentle Introduction To Rust](https://stevedonovan.github.io/rust-gentle-intro) - Steve J Donovan (HTML)
* [Easy Rust](https://dhghomon.github.io/easy_rust/) - David McLeod (HTML, PDF)

You pick Easy Rust and open its link. The line gave you the title, the author and two formats. The terms and anything else about the book are on the book’s own page.

For newcomers and experts

If you are new. A list like this holds no books. Each line is a link to a book or course that someone else wrote and put online for free. The format in parentheses tells you what you get, such as HTML to read in a browser or PDF to download. A code such as CC BY-SA names the Creative Commons license the contributor found on the resource’s page. A line without a code may still be free to read but not free to copy. Start with the by-language list for the language you are learning, or the by-subject list for a topic such as algorithms.

For experts. Each list is a plain Markdown file with one resource per line and the lines in alphabetical order, so a line-based tool can read it. CONTRIBUTING.md fixes the layout down to the blank lines between sections, which makes a text search on a heading such as ### Rust reliable.

The maker’s format check, fpb-lint, is based on remark-lint. It runs on the books, casts, courses and more folders on every pull request. A second workflow runs awesome_bot on the files a push or pull request changes, and its step ends with || true, so a dead link does not fail the step. A third check covers the Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu lists.

The pull request template asks how the contributor knows a resource is really free. CONTRIBUTING.md says it helps the admins if they comment in the pull request why they think a book is free. That is a contributor’s judgment and a reviewer’s, not a license audit.

Good to know

The lists only point to resources, so nothing here runs on your machine unless you run one of the maker’s checks. The questions are about what the links lead to.

• License: CC BY 4.0. It covers the repository’s files, the lists. Each linked resource has its own owner and terms, and CONTRIBUTING.md says some listed resources are all rights reserved but free to read
• Links change: the link check runs on files that a push or pull request changes, so a line in a file nobody touched can go stale. Open a link before you rely on it
• What is left out: blogs, articles, videos that are not courses or screencasts, book chapters, teaser samples, and files on Google Drive, Dropbox, Mega, Scribd or Issuu
• Access notes: some lines ask for an email address or a Leanpub account, and a course line names its platform, which often asks for an account. The note on the line says so
• Outbound: reading loads GitHub or the websites. A local copy opens no connection by itself. Previewing README.md or HOWTO.md in a Markdown viewer loads their badge and chart images from img.shields.io, cdn.rawgit.com and apiseven.com
• Removal: delete the local copy’s folder. If you installed fpb-lint with npm, remove it the way you remove any global npm package