85% Off Blinkist Premium Text/Audio Book Summary Subscription: 1-Year Plan Expired

FWIW I went on a deep dive earlier this year on these book summary audio apps. Tried blinkist, headway, and shortform. I also have audible which is great but that's for complete audiobooks so not really the same category.

Blinkist and headway are pretty comparable - but I think blinkist has been around longer, has a larger library, and generally a slightly more polished product. The summaries were similar (I listened to some of the same books on both) but I think blinkist was a little better overall. I also don't like that headway uses robotic TTS voice for a lot of the summaries, vs blinkist mostly uses voice actors (though they do have some AI TTS now too - but it sounds better than the headway one).

Shortform is on a whole different level. It is a significantly more expensive product, the app interface is terrible (at least on android), it has a smaller library - but the summaries completely blow both headway and blinkist out of the water. Listening to atomic habits on all 3 of the apps, I was blown away by how much better shortform was. They are longer summaries, often 1-2hrs, which IMO is really necessary to get the full value of the content of many of these books. There's only so much you can condense into 15 minutes and a lot of the books on headway/blinkist start to all sound the same. Shortform also fact check authors and compare/contrast statements against other literature, peer-reviewed studies, etc throughout the summaries and include stuff like critical thinking questions at the end.

So I'd say shortform>blinkist>headway, but if your goal is just to listen to as many book summaries as possible, blinkist is probably the way to go, and IMO very good value to try out at this price. I pulled the trigger.

This may be obvious but I'll also note that these apps are all best for nonfiction/self-help genre content. I did listen to a couple of fictions, and while they weren't terrible I just don't think you can get the full effect/enjoyment from good literature in condensed form like this.

Hope this helps!

I literally just bought this for $25.

One day I'll get my sweet revenge.

Insider tip: If you immediately cancel your recurring billing, it'll offer you 50% off the next renewal as well. Cheers. 🎩

I tried this about a month ago and appreciate the "15 minute Cliff's Notes Podcast" that are the recaps. I'm good at buying books, especially business books, but never finishing them. Recommending this, especially for $15 for the year.