Tachiyomi vs Kotatsu: One of These Is No Longer Maintained

Most comparisons come down to preference. This one comes down to a date.

In January 2024, Tachiyomi's developers announced the end of the project. The app did not stop working — it still installs, still opens, still reads a library that was already set up. What stopped was maintenance, and for this particular kind of app that matters more than it would almost anywhere else.

Kotatsu is actively developed, needs no setup, and is half the size. That is the recommendation. The rest of this explains why the answer is not quite as simple as "install the maintained one", and what to do if you already have a Tachiyomi library.

The specs side by side

Two rows decide it, and they point the same way. Maintained is the one everybody should read first. Sources is the one that determines whether the app does anything at all on the day you install it.

One row points the other way, and it is not trivial: local CBZ import. Kotatsu does not support importing your own CBZ archives. If you have a collection of files you already own, that is a real gap and it is the single strongest argument for looking elsewhere.

Why an unmaintained reader is different from unmaintained software generally

Plenty of software works fine for years after development stops. A text editor from 2019 still edits text. This category does not behave that way, and the reason is structural.

Neither of these apps hosts anything. They are clients that connect to third-party manga sites, parse the HTML those sites return, and render it as pages. That means the app depends on the exact shape of somebody else's website — and websites change. A layout update, a new anti-bot check, a moved API endpoint, and the parser for that source stops working.

In a maintained project, someone ships a fix within days. In an unmaintained one, that source is simply gone.

So Tachiyomi does not break all at once. It erodes: one source stops working, then another, and the library gets progressively less useful over a timescale nobody can predict. It might be fine for months. It will not be fine indefinitely, and nothing you do on your end changes that.

What Kotatsu does differently

The architectural difference is where sources live. Kotatsu ships its source parsers inside the app. Tachiyomi keeps them in separate extension packages that you install from repositories you add yourself.

Tachiyomi's model is more flexible — anyone can publish an extension, sources can be added without touching the app, and the ecosystem grew large because of it. It also means a fresh install does nothing until you find a repository URL, paste it in, and install extensions one by one. That step is where most new users stop.

Kotatsu opens with search working. You type a title, it finds it, you read it. The trade is that adding a source Kotatsu does not already support requires the project to add it, not you.

For someone installing a manga reader for the first time in 2026, built-in wins comfortably. For someone with a very specific source that only exists as a Tachiyomi extension, it does not.

The other difference: Kotatsu will not read your own files

Kotatsu does not import local CBZ archives.

If your reading is entirely from online sources, this costs you nothing. If you own a collection of scanned or purchased volumes as CBZ files, it is a hard blocker — the app has no way to open them, and no setting changes that.

Tachiyomi does support local files, and so does Mihon. That is a genuine reason to choose the Tachiyomi lineage even given everything above, and it is the case where "install the maintained one" gives the wrong answer.

Licences: Apache 2.0 versus GPL-3.0

Both are open source, and the difference between them is only visible when a project ends — which is exactly what happened here.

Tachiyomi is Apache 2.0, a permissive licence that lets anyone take the code and continue it, including in a closed-source product. Kotatsu is GPL-3.0, which lets anyone continue it but requires that derivatives stay open source too.

Tachiyomi's Apache licence is why Mihon exists at all: when development ended, the community could legally pick the codebase up and carry on. If Kotatsu ever stops, GPL-3.0 means the same is possible, with the added guarantee that any continuation stays open.

What about Mihon

Mihon is Tachiyomi's continuation — same codebase, same interface, same extension system, maintained by the community that formed when the original project ended.

It is not in this catalogue, so this guide cannot link to a page for it. It is still the honest answer for one specific reader: someone with a large existing Tachiyomi library and extensions they depend on. Migrating to Mihon keeps everything and restores maintenance. Migrating to Kotatsu means rebuilding around a different source model and losing local file support.

Tachiyomi's own release notes point at Mihon as the successor. That is the app's developers telling you where to go, and it is worth taking seriously.

There is also TachiyomiJ2K, a fork with a different library interface that predates the shutdown — covered in a separate comparison if that interface is what you are after.

Which one to install

Installing a manga reader for the first time? Kotatsu. It works immediately, it is 13.4 MB, it is being maintained, and it runs on Android 5.0 which is a lower floor than Tachiyomi's 6.0. There is no reason to start a new library on an app that stopped being developed two years ago.

Already have a Tachiyomi library you care about? Move to Mihon rather than Kotatsu. You keep the library, the extensions and the interface, and you get maintenance back. Export a backup first, from Settings, before you touch anything.

Have your own CBZ files? Not Kotatsu. It cannot open them. Mihon or another local-capable reader is the answer.

Want to try Kotatsu without committing? Export your Tachiyomi backup, install Kotatsu alongside it, and import. Both can coexist. Check how much of your library survives the import before you uninstall anything — how much does depends entirely on which sources you used.

For the wider field, including readers built specifically for webtoons and vertical-scroll formats, the Android manga reader roundup covers seven apps including both of these.

Before you install either

Both arrive as APKs rather than through the Play Store, which brings two predictable stops.

A refused install is almost always a signing-key conflict — different builds of the same app signed by different keys cannot replace each other, and the fix is covered in the "App not installed" guide. And Play Protect will likely warn about an unknown developer, which is a statement about who signed the file, not about what is in it.

Check the SHA-256 of whichever you download against the publisher's published value before installing.

The short version

Kotatsu for new installs: maintained, no setup, smaller, lower Android requirement.

Mihon if you already have a Tachiyomi library, or if you need to read your own CBZ files.

Tachiyomi itself, unmodified, for nobody starting today — not because it is bad, but because the people who wrote it stopped in January 2024 and said so.

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