All about AZW3 files
Amazon's e-book format for Kindle
AZW3 is an e-book format developed by Amazon, also known as Kindle Format 8 (KF8). Amazon introduced it in late 2011 alongside the Kindle Fire to replace the aging MOBI format. Compared to MOBI, AZW3 offers significantly more design possibilities; for example, the format supports parts of HTML5 and CSS3, allows for embedded fonts, and can display more complex layouts. This enables even elaborately designed books, comics, or children’s books to be displayed on the Kindle exactly as intended by publishers and authors.
Technically, AZW3 is closely related to EPUB. Essentially, it is a compiled EPUB packaged within a Palm Database (PDB). Many AZW3 files also include a MOBI version so that older Kindle devices can open the book. AZW3 files can optionally be protected with Amazon’s DRM to restrict copying and sharing. DRM-protected AZW3 files cannot be converted to other formats.
There is now a successor, KFX (Kindle Format 10), which supports, among other things, improved hyphenation, kerning (improved spacing between two letters, increasing readability), and ligatures (e.g., ӕ). However, AZW3 remains widely compatible and is the standard format for most use cases when reading eBooks on a Kindle.
Last updated on April 26, 2026 by Sören Ramspeck with the experience of more than 128,403,541 converted files since 2013.
Convert, open and edit AZW3 files
Details about AZW3 files
- Software for opening AZW3 files
- Amazon Kindle
- Calibre
- Software for editing AZW3 files
- Calibre
- Kindle Create
- MIME-type for AZW3
- application/vnd.amazon.mobi8-ebook
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