About FOLIO
FOLIO is an open-access magazine platform built for curious minds. We believe exceptional editorial work should have no gatekeepers — only readers, ideas, and the pages between them.
12,400+
Issues archived
840
Publications
2.4M
Monthly readers
The Atlantic Science Issue
Vol. 332 · 2024
Wired
Issue 33.2
National Geographic
March 2025
Foreign Affairs
Jan / Feb 2025
Our Mission
Why we exist
Great magazines have shaped culture, science, and public thought for centuries. But as publishing moved online, the best editorial work retreated behind expensive paywalls — out of reach for students, researchers, and curious readers everywhere.
FOLIO aggregates open-access and public-domain magazines from institutions, publishers, and archives around the world. Our platform makes them discoverable, readable, and free — on any device, in any language.
“The archive of human inquiry is the most valuable thing we've ever made. FOLIO exists to keep it open.”
Archive · 1962
A Sense of Where You Are
Featured · Jan 2025
The Future of Open Science
What we stand for
Every decision at FOLIO flows from these values — from how we index content to how we serve it.
We wrote these down on our first day and haven't changed them. Not because we're stubborn — because they've proven right every time we've tested them.
Every article, every issue, every archive — accessible to anyone with an internet connection. No tiers, no trials, no dark patterns.
We don't rank content by engagement. We don't surface what's trending. We surface what's good — by humans who read it.
Anglophone publishing dominates the web. FOLIO actively seeks out publications in 40+ languages and regions underrepresented in digital archives.
No tracking. No behavioral data. No user profiles sold. You read FOLIO; FOLIO doesn't read you.
Every page loads in under a second. A slow platform is a platform that doesn't value your time. We do.
We don't just index. We archive. Every issue on FOLIO is mirrored in three independent repositories, guaranteed for 50 years.
Our Story
From a single shelf of digitised issues to the world's largest free magazine platform.
2019
Mira Holst launches FOLIO with 200 public-domain issues and a Raspberry Pi server. First 100 readers find it via a Hacker News post.
2020
Three university libraries join as archive contributors. Collection grows to 4,200 issues across 18 languages.
2021
Monthly readership crosses 1 million for the first time after a feature in The Guardian. Server infrastructure completely rebuilt to handle scale.
2022
Launch of full-text search in 28 languages. Arabic, Swahili, and Hindi collections added.
2023
Distraction-free reading experience. Offline capability for low-bandwidth users in 60+ countries.
2024
FOLIO reaches 840 publications and 12,400 issues. Named one of TIME's 50 Best Websites. The archive is now mirrored in 3 continents.
The people
A small, distributed team with outsized conviction that the internet's best use is making knowledge universally accessible.
Founder & CEO
Former editor at The Atlantic. Built FOLIO in 2019 after spending a decade watching great journalism disappear behind walls.
Head of Engineering
10 years in library software systems. Believes the best infrastructure is the kind you never notice because it always works.
Head of Curation
Librarian, linguist, and polyglot. Responsible for the breadth of FOLIO's collection across 40+ languages and regions.
Design Lead
Obsessed with the reading experience. Every pixel on FOLIO has been reviewed at least twice. Probably by Lena.
We'd love to hear from you — whether you're a reader, publisher, or institution.
