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Price: Plan pricing, discounts and free trial length Features: Ads, podcast integration, playback controls, accessibility features, offline listening Devices: Number of compatible devices available Content: Original content library, member-only discounts and overall library size Satisfaction: Aggregated score of App Store, Google Play reviews and our own editors’ hands-on experience
Back in 2020, Google started releasing free audiobooks via the Google Play Store that relied entirely on the company’s text-to-speech tech. In the years since then, Google has further refined this into a feature called Read Aloud. Once enabled, Read Aloud can instantly turn any ebook in your Google Play library into an audiobook. What’s more, this feature is supported not just by books bought via Google’s own online storefront but also those bought elsewhere and imported into the app. The listening experience here is nowhere near as cinematic or feature-rich as what you’ll get from a modern and mainstream audiobook provider like Audiobooks.com or Scribd. Nevertheless, if you’re looking to work your way through a more academic text or are keen to save that little bit of extra cash amid rising inflation, this is one of the best legal ways to start listening to audiobooks for free in 2023. At the time of writing, Australian prices for audiobooks on Spotify seem to vary between $20 and $50 per title. However, this is not the only available option for those looking to sign up for the service. If your appetite for audiobooks can’t be sated by a single read each month, there’s a second subscription tier available that costs $27.45 per month. This tier is more or less identical to the cheaper one, except you get 2 credits to cash in each month rather than just one. If you’re looking to save money, then paying for a year of Audible in advance is another option worth considering. A standard annual plan costs $164.50 and includes 12 credits to spend as you wish. This works out to be around $3 cheaper than the cost of paying month-to-month each month, for a total of around $33 saved each year. Finally, the most expensive of the four Audible plans available costs $274.60 annually. This one gets you 24 credits to spend and represents around $5 saved each month compared to the $27.60 monthly plan and $55 in savings over the course of a full year. In some ways, what’s on offer here is a different product to what most audiobook subscriptions offer. Still, it might work just as well depending on who you are and what you’re looking to get out of your next listen.
