Legal manhwa sites and manga apps: where to read for free

Quick picks by what you read

• Korean manhwa and webtoons: start with WEBTOON. If a series is not there, try Tappytoon or Manta, which license many Korean series in English.
• Popular Japanese manga (One Piece, Jump series): MANGA Plus by Shueisha or Shonen Jump by VIZ. Both put new chapters out the same day as Japan.
• Kodansha manga: K MANGA, Kodansha's own app.
• Chinese manhua: Comikey carries licensed manhua, and some manhua are on WEBTOON.
• Whole volumes, free: your public library, through Libby or hoopla.

Not sure who publishes a series? Look it up on AniList. Each title page has links to its official sources, and the country of origin tells you whether it is a manga, manhwa or manhua.

Legal manhwa sites and manga apps compared

Prices are the US prices on each platform's own site or App Store listing, checked 30 October 2026. They change, and they vary by country, so check before you pay.

Best free manhwa apps

WEBTOON is the biggest, and the one to try first. Its App Store listing promises millions of episodes for free, and the app shows ads. The newest episodes of many series are behind Fast Pass, which you unlock with coins, but WEBTOON's help pages say every Fast Pass episode becomes free after a set period. Coins are sold only in the iOS and Android apps. One change to know: WEBTOON ended its Daily Pass, which unlocked a free episode a day, on 29 May 2025, so older guides that mention it are out of date.

Tappytoon and Manta are the next places to look when a series is not on WEBTOON. They specialise in licensed Korean series and work on a free-episode-a-day system on eligible titles, with points, gems or a membership to read faster. Both are rated 16+ on the App Store and carry a lot of romance, including mature titles, so younger readers and parents should check a series' rating first. If you would rather see what a webtoon is before picking an app, our explainer on what a webtoon is covers the format and how the coin systems work.

Comikey carries licensed manga, manhwa and manhua, and says you can read nearly its whole catalogue for free by watching ads. Lezhin also publishes Korean webtoons in English, but much of its website catalogue is for adults, so we do not recommend it for younger readers.

Best free manga apps from Japanese publishers

MANGA Plus by Shueisha is run by the publisher of Weekly Shonen Jump. Its App Store listing says you can read the first three and the newest three chapters of its series free, and every chapter of ongoing series once for free. MANGA Plus MAX removes ads and opens the back catalogue: $1.99 a month for Standard and $4.99 for Deluxe in the US App Store (checked 30 October 2026).

Shonen Jump by VIZ publishes the same Shueisha series in English for North America. The latest chapters are always free, and a $3.99 monthly membership opens a vault of more than 20,000 chapters. VIZ also has a separate VIZ Manga app, $1.99 a month for over 10,000 chapters (checked 30 October 2026, on VIZ's apps page).

K MANGA is Kodansha's own app, with over 500 titles. It unlocks a new chapter free every day, and sells points for more. It launched in the US in 2023 and has since expanded to dozens of other countries, including the UK, Canada and Australia, so check whether it works where you live.

Buy digital volumes

If you want to own a series, buy the digital volumes. Publishers sell them on their own sites and through the big ebook stores:

• VIZ: on viz.com and in the VIZ app, and through stores such as Kindle, Google Play, Apple Books and Nook.
• Kodansha: on its own site and through the major ebook stores.
• Yen Press: through stores including Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, BookWalker, Google Play and Kobo.
• Seven Seas: through Amazon, BookWalker, Google Play, Apple Books, Kobo and Nook, among others.

Publishers and ebook stores run digital manga sales from time to time, so keeping a wishlist of the series you want can save money.

Borrow manga free from your library

Many public libraries lend digital manga, and all you need is a library card. Two apps do this:

• Libby, by OverDrive: free, with no subscription and no late fees, on iOS, Android and the web. Your library chooses the titles, and many libraries have comics, manga and graphic novels.
• hoopla: free with a card from a participating library, and its catalogue includes comics, graphic novels and manga.

What each library carries is up to the library, so search for the series you want before giving up.

Services that closed or are closing

Apps come and go, and money spent on one can be lost when it closes. As of 30 October 2026:

• Tapas will end its service on 31 March 2027. It stopped selling Ink on 1 October 2026, and unlocked episodes will not carry over anywhere, according to its end-of-service notice as reported by Anime News Network. Use up any Ink you have, and do not start new series there.
• Pocket Comics closed its English service in October 2025. Any site still using that name is not the official service; do not sign up or pay there.
• Azuki did not close: it renamed itself Omoi in November 2025, and accounts carried over.
• INKR was bought by GlobalComix in March 2026. Its reading site is still up, but its future is unclear, so be careful about buying a lot there.

How to spot a pirate or aggregator site

Pirate sites, also called aggregators, copy chapters from official releases or fan scans and post them with ads. They pay creators nothing, and anti-piracy groups warn they can carry malware. They often look polished, so check for these signs:

• Everything, free, immediately. Every chapter of every popular series, from every publisher, with no account and no wait. No official service carries everyone's catalogue.
• No publisher named. Official apps say who they are and who licensed the series. Pirate sites rarely name a company, a publisher or a real contact.
• Pop-ups and redirects. Tapping a page opens a new tab, a fake download button, a "your phone has a virus" warning or an adult ad.
• A changing address. The same site keeps moving to new domains, or tells you to bookmark a "mirror".
• An app you have to sideload. If it asks you to install an app from a file instead of the App Store or Google Play, do not.
• Scanlator credits. A fan translation group's name on the pages means the copy is not an official release.

If you are not sure, look the series up on AniList. Its links section lists the official places to read, and if the site you are on is not one of them, it is probably not legal.

How MangaTrace points you to official sources

MangaTrace finds titles; it does not host any comics. When you search by description, genre and tags, each result shows "Read officially" links taken from AniList and filtered to an allow-list of official publishers and platforms, so a pirate link never shows up there. If you only remember part of a story, the guide to finding a manga you forgot the name of shows how to turn what you remember into a search.

Image search engines are different: their results can include pirate sites. Use those results only to get the title, then read it on an official app. New to Korean comics? Start with what manhwa is and how it differs from manga.