OverDrive

OverDrive is a digital reading platform that distributes ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines to public libraries and schools worldwide, best known for its Libby and Sora reading apps. OverDrive publishes a set of REST APIs that let library systems, integrators, and partners work against a library's OverDrive collection: Discovery APIs (Library Account, Search, Metadata, and Library Availability), Circulation APIs (patron information, checkouts, and holds), Reporting APIs (checkouts report), and a Title Link API. Access is authorized with OAuth 2.0 client-credentials (client authentication) for discovery and patron authentication (including QR-code sign-in) for borrowing and holds, with a dedicated integration environment for testing against real titles before going live.

OverDrive publishes 3 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Books, Libraries, Ebooks, and Audiobooks.

OverDrive’s developer surface includes documentation, API reference, getting-started guide, authentication, support, signup flow, and 13 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

27.3/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

AccessSelf serve

3 APIs

Company Books Libraries Ebooks Audiobooks Digital Media Publishing Education ReadingCirculation

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-08 · rubric v0.20.0

Composite quality — 27.3/100 · thin

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 9.3 / 17

Access Clarity 2.2 / 17

Operational Transparency 2.3 / 11

Contract Governance 0.5 / 10

Discoverability 6.9 / 9

Regulatory Posture 6.4 / 15

Agent readiness — 3/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Education & Research regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/overdrive: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

APIs 3

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

OverDrive Discovery API

Discovery APIs to search and find information about titles in a library's OverDrive collection — Library Account, Search, Metadata, and Library Availability.

OverDrive Circulation API

Circulation APIs to authenticate patrons and manage checkouts and holds against a library's OverDrive collection.

OverDrive Reporting API

Reporting API to see the titles that were borrowed from a specific collection during a specific time period (public libraries only).

Security Posture 3

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Overdrive Authentication

oauth2 · 3 schemes

SECURITY

Overdrive Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DMARC

SECURITY

Overdrive Vulnerability Disclosure

security.txt · contact published

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 3

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

DeveloperPortal

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

SignUp

SignUp

Documentation 2

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

APIReference

APIReference

Agent Surfaces 3

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

WellKnown

WellKnown

X-MCPServerCandidate

X-MCPServerCandidate

LLMsTxt

LLMsTxt

Design & Contract 3

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Lifecycle

Lifecycle

Conventions

Conventions

Conformance

Conformance

Access & Security 5

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

Authentication

Authentication

SecurityTxt

SecurityTxt

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

VulnerabilityDisclosure

VulnerabilityDisclosure

Security

Security

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Support

Support

StatusPage

StatusPage

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Source (apis.yml)

aid: overdrive
name: OverDrive
description: 'OverDrive is a digital reading platform that distributes ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines to public libraries
  and schools worldwide, best known for its Libby and Sora reading apps. OverDrive publishes a set of REST APIs that let library
  systems, integrators, and partners work against a library''s OverDrive collection: Discovery APIs (Library Account, Search,
  Metadata, and Library Availability), Circulation APIs (patron information, checkouts, and holds), Reporting APIs (checkouts
  report), and a Title Link API. Access is authorized with OAuth 2.0 client-credentials (client authentication) for discovery
  and patron authentication (including QR-code sign-in) for borrowing and holds, with a dedicated integration environment
  for testing against real titles before going live.'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/overdrive/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Self-serve signup
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://developer.overdrive.com/img/overdrive-logo.png
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- insight-partners
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-20'
tags:
- Company
- Books
- Libraries
- Ebooks
- Audiobooks
- Digital Media
- Publishing
- Education
- Reading
- Circulation
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
apis:
- name: OverDrive Discovery API
  description: Discovery APIs to search and find information about titles in a library's OverDrive collection — Library Account,
    Search, Metadata, and Library Availability.
  humanURL: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/discovery-apis
  baseURL: https://api.overdrive.com/v1
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/discovery-apis
- name: OverDrive Circulation API
  description: Circulation APIs to authenticate patrons and manage checkouts and holds against a library's OverDrive collection.
  humanURL: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/circulation-apis
  baseURL: https://patron.api.overdrive.com/v1
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/circulation-apis
- name: OverDrive Reporting API
  description: Reporting API to see the titles that were borrowed from a specific collection during a specific time period
    (public libraries only).
  humanURL: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/reporting-apis
  baseURL: https://api.overdrive.com/v1
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/reporting-apis
common:
- type: Website
  url: http://www.overdrive.com/
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://developer.overdrive.com/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/authentication
- type: APIReference
  url: https://developer.overdrive.com/api-docs/discovery-apis
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://developer.overdrive.com/getting-started/api-overview
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/overdrive-authentication.yml
- type: Support
  url: https://developer.overdrive.com/support/contact-us
- type: SignUp
  url: https://developer.overdrive.com/request-access
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.overdrive.com/
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/overdrive-lifecycle.yml
- type: Conventions
  url: conventions/overdrive-conventions.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/overdrive-conformance.yml
- type: WellKnown
  url: well-known/overdrive-well-known.yml
- type: SecurityTxt
  url: well-known/overdrive-security.txt
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/overdrive-domain-security.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/overdrive-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: Security
  url: https://developer.overdrive.com/.well-known/security.txt
- type: X-MCPServerCandidate
  url: mcp/overdrive-mcp.yml
  note: 'Renamed from MCPServer 2026-09-03 (roadmap#247): the manifest self-describes as status: candidate — a tool list derived
    from the published API contracts, not an existing server. The scorer already read the manifest and reported mcp_server
    correctly; the MCPServer type was crediting the artifact-type surfaces with a server that does not exist.'
- type: LLMsTxt
  url: llms/overdrive-llms.txt
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-20'
  status: enriched
  artifacts_added: 10
  pass: local-v1

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