Is gutenberg.org legit or a scam?
Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org) is the official, long-established free eBook library operated by a registered US nonprofit since 1971.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
MT Intelligence
Our antivirus network flagged zero malware or phishing threats across 92 engines, and the hosting IP has a clean abuse record. The domain is nearly 30 years old (registered 10,785 days ago) and carries valid SSL from a recognized certificate authority. Business registration confirms operation by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit chartered in Mississippi with an active tax-exempt status (EIN 64-6221541). The site's content — a searchable catalog of over 75,000 public-domain titles in multiple formats — matches its stated mission. Independent sources, including Reddit users and third-party trust aggregators, confirm the site is safe and legitimate. No scam reports, complaints, or fraud allegations appear in any search results.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for gutenberg.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Project Gutenberg at gutenberg.org is the original free eBook library founded in 1971, offering over 75,000 public domain titles in multiple formats with no fees, registration, or apps required.
- Operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (PGLAF), a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Mississippi (EIN 64-6221541), with tax-deductible donations.
- Scamadviser rates it as very likely legit and reliable; Reddit users confirm downloads are safe with no malware or copyright violation risk when on the official site.
- Has faced temporary blocks in some countries (e.g., Germany 2018-2021 over copyright differences, Italy 2020 over unrelated piracy concerns), but these do not indicate scams.
- No user complaints, scam reports, or fraud allegations found across searches for scam, fraud, phishing, or complaints.
- Emphasizes public domain works (primarily pre-1929 US publications); volunteers produce the eBooks; site has operated continuously for over 50 years.
- Scamadviseropen
"In summary, gutenberg.org is very likely not a scam but legit and reliable."
- Redditopen
"Their library includes only free books, and those with expired copyrights. Therefore, there's no any risk."
- Wikipediaopen
"Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
Operated by Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (PGLAF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation chartered in Mississippi in 2000, EIN 64-6221541, tax-exempt.
We searched scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, and general web sources for gutenberg.org and found zero scam reports or complaints. Instead, we found three independent positive endorsements: a trust aggregator rated the site as very likely legitimate and reliable; Reddit users confirmed downloads are safe with no malware or copyright-violation risk; and Wikipedia documents Project Gutenberg as a long-established volunteer initiative founded in 1971. Business registration confirmed the site is operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Mississippi with active tax-exempt status (EIN 64-6221541).
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No contact email found anywhere on the page.
- No phone number listed on the page.
- Postal address visible on the page.
- Links to 2 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1302http://gutenberg.org/
- 2200https://gutenberg.org/
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on gutenberg.org and not a lookalike like g-utenberg.org.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on gutenberg.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- gutenberg.org passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 94/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. gutenberg.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Network Solutions L.L.C. · Network Solutions RSA OV SSL CA 3, expiring in 154 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- gutenberg.org is 29.5 years old, registered on 12/1/1996 through Network Solutions, LLC. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report gutenberg.org as clean.
- No. gutenberg.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- gutenberg.org resolves to an IP operated by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in US (usage type: University/College/School). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- Yes. gutenberg.org sits in the global top-100k on Cloudflare Radar, which means it has substantial real-world traffic. That does not automatically make it safe, but established brands almost always rank here and throwaway scam domains almost never do.
User reviews & comments(0)
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