self-hosted, story-first · pre-release

Read by story.
Not by file.

Longboxes is a self-hosted server for digital comics that treats your collection the way the comics treat themselves — as arcs that span series, characters that thread across decades, and crossovers that fit together. Not a folder of files.

Get started → View on GitHub

longboxes.home.lan / volume / avengers-the-initiative-2007

Longboxes volume page showing the Doomed story arc with the arc rail tracing issue continuations across multiple series

Six arcs visible at once on the left rail. The orange and green arrows mark issues sourced from other series; the blue arc below stays inside this book. Every arc, at a glance, in one image.

What you get

Everything Komga and Kavita do —
plus the connections in between.

Built for self-hosters who've outgrown folder-based libraries and want to actually explore what they own.

ComicVine enrichment

Point Longboxes at your CBZ/CBR files and it auto-matches every issue against ComicVine — pulling in covers, summaries, creators, characters, and story arcs.

Follow every thread

Jump from an issue to its writer, to every other series they wrote, to a character's first appearance. Your collection becomes a web of stories, not a folder tree.

Self-hosted, your data

One container, your hardware, zero telemetry. Your library and reading history never leave your network unless you say so.

Duplicate detection

Multiple copies of the same issue? Longboxes ranks them by page count, resolution, and metadata coverage, then recommends a keeper. The hoarder's audit, automated.

Multi-user, per-person progress

Per-user accounts with private reading history. Resume where you left off across devices. Incognito mode skips progress tracking when you want a clean re-read.

Open source

Licensed and built in the open. Audit it, fork it, self-host it forever. No accounts, no lock-in, no subscription required.

The arc rail

Stop browsing folders. Start tracing arcs.

Most servers give you a grid of files. Longboxes draws the story structure of your library directly into the page. The arc rail traces every cross-volume story arc as a branch on a spine — so you can see, at a glance, which arcs continue elsewhere, which ones you're partway through, and which ones weave together across multiple series.

Cross-volume arcs as branches

An arc that enters from another volume gets a left arrow. One that continues elsewhere gets a right arrow. The whole inter-series weave becomes legible.

Multi-arc overlaps as ties

When two arcs share issues (The Fracture + The Hollow Year, for example), a faint tie connects their branches. You can see the overlap the way the comics actually published.

Gaps you can finally see

Missing issues show as dashed outlines on the shelf and a visible break in the arc's branch. The shape of what's complete and what isn't lands in one glance.

arc rail · close-up

Up in minutes · indexed overnight

One compose file. Your server. Done.

No database to set up by hand. No build steps. Pull, point, let it work.

~ / longboxes setup

$ mkdir longboxes && cd longboxes
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/↩
     longboxes/longboxes/main/deploy/docker-compose.yml
$ echo 'LIBRARY_PATHS=/library' >> .env
$ echo 'POSTGRES_PASSWORD=change-me' >> .env
$ docker compose up -d
# ↳ web, workers, scheduler, postgres, redis — bundled.

Pull the stack

Web, workers, Postgres, and Redis come bundled in the compose file. Nothing to install by hand — just docker compose up.

Point at your library

Longboxes scans your CBZ/CBR/CB7/PDF files in place. Nothing is moved, renamed, or modified on disk — the library mounts read-only.

Match & explore

Add a ComicVine API key and let the matcher work. A large library matches overnight; come back in the morning to a collection that knows itself.

Free forever

Open source, like the tools you already trust.

No tiers, no seats, no paywalled features. If you already run Komga or Kavita, here's what changes when you add Longboxes to the rack.

Capability	Longboxes	Komga	Kavita
Self-hosted, one compose file	●	●	●
CBZ / CBR / CB7 / PDF	●	●	●
Browser-based reading	●	●	●
Manga / right-to-left reader	●	●	●
ComicVine matching	●	◐	◐
Browse by character / creator / team / arc	●	○	○
Cross-volume story arc threading	●	○	○
Duplicate detection & recommendation	●	○	○
OPDS / mobile reader apps	○	●	●
Free & open source	●	●	●

● full · ◐ via plugin or sidecar · ○ not yet

FAQ

Questions from the homelab.

Still stuck? The docs cover deployment in depth, or open an issue on GitHub and the community will jump in.

Can I migrate from Komga or Kavita?+

Yes — point Longboxes at the same library folder and the matcher will index everything in place. Read progress doesn't transfer automatically yet; if that matters to you, open an issue and we'll prioritize it.

Do I need a ComicVine API key?+

For full enrichment, yes. Keys are free from comicvine.gamespot.com after registration. Longboxes runs fine without one, but you'll miss the story-navigation features that are the whole point.

Does it modify or rename my files?+

Never. Files mount read-only by default. All metadata lives in Longboxes' database, separate from your archives.

What hardware do I need?+

A Raspberry Pi 4 handles a few thousand issues comfortably. For 10K+ issue libraries, any x86 NAS with 2GB free RAM is plenty.

Which reader apps work with it?+

Today: the built-in web reader, in any modern browser, on any device. It handles CBZ, CBR, CB7, and PDF natively, with manga (right-to-left) mode per volume and resume-where-you-left-off. OPDS support for mobile reader apps like Panels, Chunky, Tachiyomi, and KOReader is on the roadmap.

Is my reading data private?+

Yes. Zero telemetry, no analytics, no phone-home. The only outbound calls are to ComicVine (if you configure a key), and those are cached aggressively.

Read by story.Not by file.

Everything Komga and Kavita do —plus the connections in between.