Where to find free graded readers
For English, start with ER Central (a free not-for-profit library of graded texts in 20 levels), the US State Department’s American English e-books (adapted classics with audio), Paul Nation’s Mid-frequency Readers and the British Council’s Story zone. Spanish, French, German and Italian have few free graded books; levelled texts, easy news and old public-domain school readers fill the gap. Every source listed below was checked on 1 October 2026.
What counts as a graded reader
A graded reader is a book written or retold for language learners, with the vocabulary of each level kept to a set word list and the grammar to a set syllabus. That control is what makes it possible to read a whole book at A2 without stopping every few lines. How graded readers compare with original books, and when to switch, is on Graded readers or original books? This page is only about where to find them without paying.
Free material comes in two kinds. A few sites give away whole graded books, and the State Department’s come with audio. Many more publish short graded texts and news stories: good for daily practice, but they do not give you the long, connected reading that makes a book worth finishing. The two kinds are listed separately below.
Free graded books in English
| Source | What you get | Levels | Format | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ER Central Not-for-profit, started by Rob Waring and Charles Browne | A library of graded reading and listening texts: stories, factual texts and children’s texts, with a short quiz after a text | 20 levels based on the Extensive Reading Foundation’s scale, from the alphabet to near-native; no CEFR labels | Read online; separate listening library | Free; you need a free account to keep reading |
| American English e-books US Department of State | Adapted classics: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jack London’s To Build a Fire and Other Stories, Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller, O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories, Raggedy Ann Stories | Stated on each book’s page where given: Raggedy Ann Stories at the first 1,000-word level, Tom Sawyer at 1,000 headwords, Huckleberry Finn and To Build a Fire at about 2,000; Poe for high intermediate and advanced learners; no level for the O. Henry stories | EPUB, MOBI and PDF, with MP3 audio | Free download, no account |
| Mid-frequency Readers Paul Nation, Victoria University of Wellington | 18 titles for advanced learners, 17 of them classics and non-fiction rewritten in a controlled vocabulary, among them The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and A Christmas Carol; plus two short readers for beginners, Fire on the Mountain and Indonesian Love Story | Most books at 4,000, 6,000 and 8,000 words; the two short readers within 1,200 words | PDF; a few as text or ZIP files | Free; may be shared, not sold |
| Story zone British Council, LearnEnglish | Nine short stories written for learners, each in two versions, with exercises | A2–B1 and B2–C1 | Web pages | Free, no account needed |
| freegradedreaders.com Sponsored by the Extensive Reading Foundation | A small set of graded readers that are out of copyright, filed by level, plus links to publishers’ readers that can only be read on the publishers’ own sites. Several of those links no longer work. | Pages from A1 to C2; most titles also give a word or headword level | PDF and EPUB downloads; publishers’ titles as online flipbooks | Free; may be copied for students, not sold |
For absolute beginners, picture books written for children can help too. StoryWeaver, run by the Indian publisher Pratham Books, has openly licensed stories (CC BY 4.0) in four reading levels. They are made for children, so expect children’s topics.
Graded news and short texts in English
| Source | What you get | Levels | Format | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LearnEnglish Reading British Council | Short everyday texts, from menus and timetables to articles and reviews, each with tasks | A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 | Web pages | Free, no account needed |
| News in Levels | Short news stories every working day, each written in three versions | Level 1 if you know about 1,000 words, level 2 for 2,000, level 3 for 3,000 | Web, with audio | Free, with ads |
| Breaking News English Sean Banville | 3,664 news lessons with readings, listening and quizzes, made for classes but usable alone | Seven levels, from 0 (elementary) to 6 (upper intermediate) | Web, PDF handouts, audio | Free |
| VOA Learning English Voice of America | News and American Stories, adapted classic American stories, based on a core vocabulary of about 1,500 words (VOA’s Word Book), with word lists. No new items since March 2025; the archive is still online. | Beginning, intermediate and advanced sections | Web, MP3 audio | Free; VOA’s own texts and audio are in the public domain |
| ESL Fast Rong-Chang ESL | A very large set of short beginner stories and passages, most with audio | The site’s own series, such as English Level 1–6 and Graded Reading 1–5 | Web, with audio | Free with ads; an optional membership ($30 for 180 days) removes them |
| Lingua.com | Short texts with a quiz after each and printable worksheets | A1 to C1 | Web, PDF | 42 texts free; the others need Premium (US$9.90 a year) |
What to read at each level
Each source uses its own scale, and only some use the CEFR levels. The table puts them side by side, with each source’s own label in brackets.
| Stage | Graded books | Graded texts and news |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | Paul Nation’s two short readers (within 1,200 words; A1 and A1+ on freegradedreaders.com); Raggedy Ann Stories from American English (first 1,000-word level, for high beginners); freegradedreaders.com (A1, A2); ER Central’s lower levels | LearnEnglish Reading (A1, A2); News in Levels (level 1); Breaking News English (levels 0–3); ESL Fast; Lingua.com (A1, A2) |
| Intermediate | Story zone (A2–B1, B2–C1); Tom Sawyer (1,000 headwords, for low intermediate to intermediate), To Build a Fire (about 2,000 headwords, intermediate) and Huckleberry Finn (about 2,000 headwords, intermediate to advanced) from American English; freegradedreaders.com (B1, B2) | LearnEnglish Reading (B1, B2); News in Levels (levels 2 and 3); Breaking News English (levels 4–6); VOA Learning English archive; ESL Fast (Graded Reading 4–5); Lingua.com (B1, B2) |
| Advanced | Story zone (B2–C1); Mid-frequency Readers (4,000, 6,000 and 8,000 words); Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller from American English (slightly adapted, for high intermediate and advanced); then original books, see our table of free books by level | LearnEnglish Reading (C1); Lingua.com (C1) |
Treat any level as a starting point. The test that matters is a page of the book itself: for easy reading in quantity, Paul Nation and Rob Waring suggest meeting no more than three or four unknown words on a page. If you stop more often, go down a level. How to run the test is on Is this book right for my level?
Spanish, French, German and Italian
Outside English there are few free graded books. What you will find are levelled texts, easy news and old school readers that are now in the public domain (see below).
Spanish
- Lecturas paso a paso (Instituto Cervantes): about 34 short texts at three levels, inicial, intermedio and avanzado, each with activities before and after reading. Free; older material.
- Lingua.com: 27 free texts from A1 to C1, with quizzes.
- Kwiziq Spanish readers: texts from A1 to C1 by native teachers, most with audio, behind a free login. Kwiziq says the readers are free for everyone and will stay free; after 15 October 2026 its comprehension exercises move to the paid plan, apart from a free selection.
- Old school readers on Project Gutenberg: A First Spanish Reader, Spanish Tales for Beginners, An Elementary Spanish Reader, Spanish Short Stories (arranged in order of difficulty) and Lecturas fáciles con ejercicios, which is also in our table.
French
- Kwiziq French readers: texts from A1 to C1 by native teachers, most with audio; tap a phrase for its translation. Kwiziq says the readers are free for everyone and will stay free, though you need a free login. After 15 October 2026 its comprehension exercises move to the paid plan, apart from a free selection.
- Lingua.com: 41 free texts from A1 to B2 (C1 texts are Premium).
- Old school readers on Project Gutenberg: Le Premier Livre, a beginners’ course built on Sans Famille; Contes et légendes; French Reader on the Cumulative Method; and Dix contes modernes, short stories by Daudet, Maupassant and others.
German
- nachrichtenleicht (Deutschlandfunk): daily news in plain German, with short audio. The site says it is also a help for people learning German as a foreign language. No CEFR levels.
- Lingua.com: 40 free texts from A1 to B2.
- Old school readers on Project Gutenberg: Märchen und Erzählungen für Anfänger in two parts (first, second); Ährenlese, a reader with exercises; and Eingeschneit, a comic story about three students.
Italian
- Easy Italian News: short news bulletins in easy Italian with MP3 audio, three times a week. Free. No levels given.
- Lingua.com: 42 free texts from A1 to B2.
- On Project Gutenberg we found only one school reader for Italian: First Italian Readings, which is also in our table.
Public broadcasters also publish news written for learners, for example Deutsche Welle for German and RFI for French. We have not yet checked their current levels and terms, so they are not listed above.
About the old school readers
The Project Gutenberg readers above are old school books, written for English-speaking students; the two that are also in our table date from 1897 and 1916. They are free and legal to download in the United States, where they are in the public domain; check the law in your country. Expect dated language and notes in English. They are not graded the way modern readers are, but they were made for learners, and several come with exercises and a vocabulary.
What is not free
- The big series are sold, not given away. Penguin Readers, Oxford Bookworms and Cambridge English Readers offer free teaching material on their sites (worksheets from all three, tests from Penguin and Oxford, a sample book from Oxford; Cambridge asks you to register), but no free whole books.
- Subscriptions. Oxford Reading Club gives access to Oxford’s graded e-books; on Oxford University Press Spain’s page it costs €3.10 for a month or €27 for a year. Xreading, a library of graded readers from many publishers, lists US$6 per student per month for schools, with discounts of up to 80%.
- Be careful with free downloads of new readers. The big publishers’ graded readers are in copyright. A site that offers them as free downloads without saying it has the publisher’s permission is best avoided.
When the top levels of graded readers start to feel easy, the next step is an original book with a dictionary at hand: see Reading with a dictionary.
Sources
- ER Central, About and Library pages, checked 1 October 2026. er-central.com/about-us
- American English, US Department of State: e-books and the pages of each title, checked 1 October 2026. americanenglish.state.gov/ebooks
- Paul Nation’s resources, Victoria University of Wellington: graded readers and Mid-frequency Readers, checked 1 October 2026. wgtn.ac.nz
- British Council, LearnEnglish: Story zone and Reading, checked 1 October 2026. learnenglish.britishcouncil.org
- freegradedreaders.com, level pages, checked 1 October 2026; listed by the Extensive Reading Foundation on its Free Reading Material page. freegradedreaders.com
- StoryWeaver, Pratham Books: reading levels and open content licence, checked 1 October 2026. storyweaver.org.in
- News in Levels, About page, checked 1 October 2026. newsinlevels.com
- Breaking News English, home page and About page, checked 1 October 2026. breakingnewsenglish.com
- VOA Learning English: Request Our Content page (“Learning English texts, MP3s, photos and videos are in the public domain”), Word Book and American Stories, checked 1 October 2026. learningenglish.voanews.com
- ESL Fast and its membership page, checked 1 October 2026. eslfast.com
- Lingua.com reading pages for English, Spanish, French, German and Italian, and the Premium page, checked 1 October 2026. lingua.com/premium
- Centro Virtual Cervantes, Lecturas paso a paso, checked 1 October 2026. cvc.cervantes.es
- Kwiziq blog, 15 September 2026, the same post on its French and Spanish sites, on the readers staying free and the new comprehension exercises. french.kwiziq.com, spanish.kwiziq.com
- nachrichtenleicht, Deutschlandfunk: explanation page, checked 1 October 2026. nachrichtenleicht.de
- Easy Italian News, About page, checked 1 October 2026. easyitaliannews.com
- Penguin Readers, Oxford Bookworms Library (Oxford University Press Spain), Cambridge English Readers resources, Oxford Reading Club and Xreading, checked 1 October 2026. penguinreaders.co.uk, oup.es/oxfordbookwormslibrary, cambridge.es, oup.es/oxfordreadingclub, xreading.com