What an audiobook actually costs
Six services, six completely different ways of charging you — one of them free. Which is cheapest depends almost entirely on how long the books you like are — and the two biggest services pull in opposite directions.
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The one thing worth knowing
Audible rewards long books. Spotify rewards short ones. They are exact opposites, and neither tells you so.
On Audible, in their own words, “every audiobook is worth 1 audiobook credit — no matter how long it is or how much it originally cost”. A 48-hour memoir and a 29-minute summary cost you the same thing.
On Spotify you are spending hours from a monthly allowance, so the long book is the expensive one — and a 48-hour listen cannot be finished inside a single month’s allowance at all.
The six models
| Service | What you pay | What you get | Do you keep it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audible Premium | £8.99/monthA limited-time offer when we looked on 11 September 2026: £59.99 for a year — about £5.00/month. It may have ended. | 1 credit a month, any title regardless of length or price. Credits roll over, up to six. Plus an all-you-can-listen catalogue and member discounts. | Yes. “Yours to keep even after you cancel.” |
| Audible Standard | £5.99/month | 1 audiobook selection a month. It does not roll over — miss a month and it is gone. | No. You can listen “for as long as you’re a member”. This is rental, not purchase. |
| Audiobooks.com | £7.99/monthplus applicable taxes; 2- and 3-credit plans available | 1 credit a month against a catalogue they put at 700,000+ titles. Credits roll over — but expire three months after they are issued, which Audible credits do not. Their monthly Member Deals offer two audiobooks for one credit. | Mostly. Anything bought with a credit stays in your library after you cancel. VIP Rewards titles do not — those are removed. |
| Spotify Premium | Included in PremiumIndividual, or the plan manager on Duo and Family. Student plans are not eligible. | A monthly allowance of listening hours (widely reported as 15). Unused hours expire monthly. Audiobooks+ adds another 15. | No. Access while subscribed. |
| Apple Books | Per bookNo subscription at all | Whatever you buy, at cash price — typically a few pounds to about £20. | Yes. Permanent, and shareable with up to six family members. |
| Your library | FreeBorrowBox, Libby — with a UK library card | Borrow like a physical book. Waiting lists on popular titles. | No. It goes back. |
The £3 difference that is not a £3 difference
Audible Standard is £5.99 and Premium is £8.99, so Standard looks like the thrifty choice. The difference is not £3 of features — it is whether you own the book.
Audible’s own wording: purchases made with credits are “yours to keep even after you cancel”, while a Standard member can listen to their monthly selections “for as long as you’re a member”. Cancel after two years on Premium and the twenty-four books go with you. Cancel after two years on Standard and they do not.
Standard’s pick also does not roll over. Premium credits do, up to six.
A lower list price, and its catches
Audiobooks.com lists £7.99 a month for the same thing Audible Premium charges £8.99 for: one credit a month, any title, and the book is yours after you cancel.
The first catch is tax. Their £7.99 is “plus applicable taxes”, in their own words, and their pricing page does not say how much that is. Audible’s membership page quotes £8.99 with no mention of tax. So the two figures are not like for like. Before tax, Audiobooks.com is £1.00 a month less than Premium. If UK VAT at the standard 20% is added on top, it comes to £9.59 — £0.60 a month more than Premium. We have not been through their checkout, so we are not calling either one the cheaper credit.
The second is that their credits expire. They roll over, but only for three months from the month they were issued. Audible’s bank up to six and do not expire while you are a member. If you are the sort of subscriber who saves credits for a big release, that difference is the whole decision.
The third is that “3 free books” is one free book. The 30-day trial gives you a premium audiobook plus two VIP Rewards titles. The premium one you keep. The two VIP ones are removed from your account when you cancel — their own terms say VIP Rewards books “will be removed” on cancellation. It is a genuine free book and two genuine loans, described as three free books.
We earn a commission if you sign up through that link, and it changes nothing above. The catches are the reason the page is worth reading.
The same credit, 7 very different books
Every title below costs exactly one Audible credit. The right-hand columns are what that actually works out at on Premium’s monthly price, and what the same book would take out of a Spotify allowance.
| Title | Length | Per hour on Premium | Spotify allowance used |
|---|---|---|---|
| My Name is BarbraBarbra Streisand — A memoir read by its author, for the same single credit. | 48 hrs 8 mins | £0.19 | 3.2 months |
| A Promised LandBarack Obama — And this is only volume one. | 29 hrs 10 mins | £0.31 | 1.9 months |
| The 48 Laws of PowerRobert Greene — A long non-fiction title, and good value on a credit. | 23 hrs 6 mins | £0.39 | 1.5 months |
| Crooked HouseAgatha Christie, read by Hugh Fraser — A normal-length novel. | 5 hrs 45 mins | £1.56 | 38% |
| The A.B.C. Murders (BBC dramatisation)Full cast — A radio play, sold beside the 6-hour novel. | 1 hr 27 mins | £6.20 | 10% |
| The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the HorseCharlie Mackesy — Under an hour, and a full-price listing. | 58 mins | £9.30 | 6% |
| Summary of The 48 Laws of PowerStart Publishing Notes — Not the book — an unofficial summary. | 29 mins | £18.60 | 3% |
Same credit, and a spread from pennies an hour to the price of a paperback for twenty-nine minutes. This is why the unofficial summaries matter so much: on a credit they cost precisely what a 48-hour memoir costs.
Two things about Spotify’s hours
Speeding up does not save you any. Spotify counts listening time by the audiobook’s length at normal speed, however fast you actually play it. If you listen at 1.5× to stretch the allowance, it does not work.
Unused hours expire every month. They do not bank, unlike Audible credits, which roll over up to six. A light month is simply lost.
So which one
Long books, and you want to keep them: Audible Premium. Epic fantasy and doorstop memoirs are where a credit earns its keep. An annual offer can bring a credit down further — the limited-time one on Audible’s membership page on 11 September 2026 was £59.99 for a year, about £5.00 a month — but check it is still running, and take it only if you are confident you will keep listening all year.
Long books, you want to keep them, and you use the credit every month: Audiobooks.com is worth pricing up, but check the total at their checkout. Before tax it is £1.00 a month less than Premium, which would take each figure in the Per hour on Premium column down by about 11%. With UK VAT at 20% added it is £0.60 a month more than Premium, and each figure would go up by about 7%. Against Audible’s annual offer it is dearer even before tax. The condition matters too: their credits expire three months after they are issued, so it only works if you spend them.
One or two books a year: Apple Books, or Audible cash prices without a membership. A subscription you use twice is worse value than buying twice — and on a credit plan with an expiry, a subscription you use twice is worse still.
You already pay for Spotify: use the hours before paying anyone else. For a normal-length novel the allowance covers it comfortably.
You read a lot and are not precious about owning: the library, genuinely. BorrowBox and Libby are free with a UK library card and carry far more than people expect.
Avoid: spending a credit on anything short. A dramatisation, a novella or a summary costs the same credit as a fifty-hour book — pay cash for those.
Before you spend anything
- Before you buySix ways a listing is not the book you think
- Summary audiobooksWhy a 29-minute summary costing a full credit matters
- How Audible pays authorsWhere your credit actually goes
- Free audiobooks, honestlyThe four legal routes, and why so little is actually free
Audible, Spotify and Apple terms were correct on 2 September 2026, Audible’s limited-time annual offer was last seen on 11 September 2026, and Audiobooks.com’s terms were checked on 11 September 2026. Prices and offers change often — check before you commit. The 15-hour Spotify allowance is widely reported; Spotify’s own help pages confirm the allowance and that it expires monthly without stating the figure on the pages we read. Everything above about Audiobooks.com comes from their own pricing page, FAQ and terms, except the with-VAT figure, which is our own arithmetic at the UK standard rate.