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If you buy something, you should own it. Amazon is, by far, the biggest name in the eBook market, but the company puts tight DRM restrictions on these eBooks so you can't take them outside the Kindle ecosystem.
Originally, you could at least download these eBooks on your PC (and research ways to crack the DRM from there), but earlier in 2025, Amazon removed the ability to download eBooks. The only way to start working around DRM was through a jailbroken Kindle device, but with the company consistently patching out vulnerabilities, even that is becoming more difficult.
You can work around these limitations and access most of your Kindle collection on your computer without needing a physical device. Thanks to useful plugins on Calibre and helpful instructions from Reddit, you can download your eBooks onto your PC and remove the DRM, so you can do whatever you want with your collection.
What you'll need
Since Amazon places DRM on their eBooks, you'll need a few programs and plugins to remove the DRM and make your purchases wholly yours:
- Kindle for PC, specifically v2.4.0 (also known as 2.4.70904)
- Calibre
- DeDRM Plugin for Calibre, specifically v10.0.9
- KFX Input Plugin for Calibre
Why Kindle for PC version 2.4.0?
Version 2.4.0 is the last version of Kindle for PC that allows you to download eBooks in a specific format. Amazon removed the ability to download eBooks to your PC in a February 26, 2025 update, making it significantly more difficult to get your eBooks into Calibre and the DRM cracked without a physical Kindle.
Unfortunately, Mac users are out of luck with this method, unless you use a virtual machine to boot Windows.
About Kindle for PC v2.8.0
Also note that r/Calibre's page for downloading older Kindle for PC app versions states that v2.8.0 can work for getting your eBooks into Calibre; and yes, you can use Kindle for PC 2.8.0 to download Kindle books to your computer and crack the DRM.
However, doing so is a far more complicated process, and can be difficult to get to work correctly. Therefore, it's best to obtain your eBook library via v2.4.0, and you may want to try the more convoluted v2.8.0 method with titles that are not available with the older version.
Setting up Calibre
To start, download the PC version of Calibre from the developer's webpage and install it. You don't need a particular version of Calibre for this process, so simply download the latest version.
With Calibre installed, it's time to install the necessary plugins to crack Amazon's DRM. DeDRM v10.0.9 needs to be downloaded from the developer's GitHub page. Unzip the main download, but not any of the zips inside the folder.
In Calibre, go to the "Preferences" menu, then under "Advanced," choose "Plugins."
Next, choose "Load plugin from file," and navigate to the DeDRM v10.0.9 zip file.
When the installation is completed, restart Calibre. For the KFX Input Plugin, return to the "Plugins" menu, go to "Get new plugins," and find KFX Input to install it.
With the plugins installed and Calibre restarted again, there is one more thing to set up before you begin importing your collection. Choose the dropdown button next to "Add Books," and go to the "Control the adding of books" option.
Navigate to the "Adding actions" tab, then check the "Automatically convert added books to the preferred output format" option. After, click the "Rules to filter added files" button to be taken to a new menu.
You'll want to add four rules to this section, which are "Ignore the file, if the filename ends with..."
- VOUCHER
- PHL
- MD
- RES
When done, your menu should look something like this:
This will exclude extra files that Kindle for PC downloads for bulk uploading, so you don't encounter any errors.
How to download Kindle eBooks and remove the DRM
Now, it's time to install Kindle for PC. Download an EXE file of Kindle for PC v2.4.0 (or 2.4.70904), and install it. It may take a while for the application to boot up completely the first time. Let it sit for a while if necessary, and it'll boot up eventually.
Whenever downloading a file from a third-party source, make sure that the site is reputable and run an antivirus scan on any download before opening it.
This is one of the trickier parts, as you need to make sure that the application doesn't update when you sign in for the first time. If the application updates to a version beyond v2.4.0, you will no longer be able to download Kindle books and will need to reinstall it.
For some, the application will attempt to auto-update as soon as you log in; for others, it simply will not. If you can't stop the installation from going through, you can try and disconnect your internet when installing Kindle for PC, or try the provided .bat file provided in this MobileRead forum thread.
Now, you've made it in, and your version is still 2.4.0—for now. Go to Tools > Options, and uncheck "Automatically install updates when they are available without asking me." With that, Kindle for PC will not install a new version unless you explicitly allow it to do so.
Choose the eBook(s) you want to download, click the three dots to the side of the book name, and hit "Download." The eBook files will be stored in C:\Documents\My Kindle Content, unless you specify an alternative file path.
If you have a big library, you're likely to run into errors downloading certain eBooks, prompting you to update your app. Unfortunately, you won't be able to download and crack the DRM of those eBooks using this method. Don't update your app.
Once all the eBooks you want are downloaded, open Calibre and click the small dropdown button next to "Add Books," and choose the "Add from folders and sub-folders" option. Choose the "My Kindle Content" folder, decide what you want Calibre to do with multi-file books, and let the program do its work.
If you're uploading a large library, this step will take some time to complete. Depending on the size, you might just want to let Calibre run overnight.
If you only have a few books to add to Calibre, you can also go into an individual eBook's folder and just drag and drop the AZW file into Calibre directly. The other files will not work for uploading the eBook.
Either way, if you go to one of your uploaded books and see it available in both the KFX and EPUB formats, the conversion was successful. Enjoy your DRM-free eBooks!
If Calibre is having trouble uploading Kindle books
If all the plugins are set up correctly, Calibre will automatically upload the Kindle eBooks and remove the DRM as it goes through the job. However, it's easy to forget a step or incorrectly set up one of the plugins—as I did on multiple occasions, even when redoing the steps for this guide.
Make sure that the two plugins are downloaded and enabled, and that you've restarted Calibre. Also, make sure that you're using DeDRM v10.0.9, not v10.0.3. Finally, ensure that all of your preferences file rule settings are accurate. The good news is that, once you've configured everything in Calibre correctly, you won't need to set it up again.
The other main issue could be that the Kindle for PC app updated without you realizing it, so make sure that you're still on version 2.4.0.
You may not be able to get everything
While this method works great overall, there's a chance you won't be able to download every book this way. Books released after April 22, 2025 will throw up an error message to download the latest version of the Kindle app to see it. While I personally didn't have any books released after that date, I still had two that failed to download—but given I had around 240 eBooks, that's a fantastic ratio.
If you want to get every single book, you'll need to jailbreak a Kindle eReader, or have an old model that's no longer getting updates, and go from there. But if you don't have a Kindle and aren't planning on getting a used one to jailbreak it, using this method to preserve your digital books and make them DRM-free is the next best thing.
