Amazon Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading are two reading services with a lot in common, but which one is ultimately the best to use? Since the days of the original Kindle in 2007, Amazon has been a driving force in the e-book niche. It has multiple Kindle e-readers available, allows users to read books on their smartphones with the Kindle mobile app, and sells millions of e-books on its website.
While that e-book dominance is impossible to ignore, it also raises an interesting point: e-books can get very expensive very quickly. Most e-books sell on Amazon for around $10 to $20. That doesn't sound like much on its own, but for avid readers who breeze through books like nothing, it adds up fast. If someone were to buy 12 books during a year at $10 apiece, that comes out to $120!
The good news? Amazon's tried to make reading more affordable with a couple of subscription services. Instead of buying e-books individually, Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading allow subscribers to access a large collection of books for one monthly fee. Rather than paying $120 for 12 books, you could pay around that same price for thousands or millions of books. Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading both do this, but the way they go about it is dramatically different.
All The Differences Between Kindle Unlimited & Prime Reading
Without a doubt, the biggest difference between Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading is the number of books they have access to. As of 2022, Kindle Unlimited users have unlimited access to over 2 million titles. By comparison, Prime Reading has just a little over 2,500 titles. There are bound to be books in each subscription someone's interested in reading, but Kindle Unlimited clearly has a much larger selection to choose from. Furthermore, while Prime Reading has a curated selection of magazines, Kindle Unlimited members can get 3 free magazine subscriptions to read the latest issues from their favorite series.
Beyond the number of available books, other aspects of Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading are very similar. Both services have audiobook versions of certain titles available, allowing users to listen to books with Audible Narrations. Also, while both services are best experienced on a Kindle e-reader, it isn't required to use Kindle Unlimited or Prime Reading. If you don't have a Kindle, you can also get Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading on any iOS/Android device using the free Kindle app.
While it may seem like Kindle Unlimited is the clear winner, there's one final thing to discuss: price. Kindle Unlimited is a standalone subscription from anything else Amazon offers. If you want access to it, you'll need to pay $9.99/month following a 30-day free trial. By comparison, Prime Reding is just one of the many benefits included with Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime retails for $14.99/month or $139/year. Along with Prime Reading, Prime members also get free one or two-day shipping on Amazon.com, Prime Video access, free unlimited photo backups on Amazon Photos, a free monthly Twitch subscription, and a whole lot more. Anyone already paying for Amazon Prime has Prime Reading for free, but if they want Kindle Unlimited, that's another $9.99/month they need to spend. Is it worth it? That depends on how big of a reader you are. Casual readers are likely to be fine with Prime Reading, but if you're cruising through multiple books in a month, it may be worth adding Kindle Unlimited to the mix.
Source: Amazon (1), (2)