Many of us audio fans are always on the lookout for new audiobook apps that offer more and better books for a lower price. And BookBeat makes a lot of promises. Let’s take a look at what this digital library service really has to offer for European audiobook listeners!
What is BookBeat?
BookBeat is an audiobook subscription service that lets you borrow audiobooks for a flat monthly fee. It’s available in the EU and UK, making it one of the few audiobook services specifically designed for the European market.
BookBeat Cost and Plans
BookBeat’s pricing and plans differ per country. In the UK, BookBeat offers a one-month free trial. After that, you pay:
- £6.99/month for 20 hours of listening
- £10.99/month for 40 hours of listening
- £17.99/month for 100 hours of listening
As usual for this type of streaming subscription, you can cancel at any point and can still use up your hours for the rest of the billing period.
BookBeat offers a very straightforward subscription. You have your hours, and you can listen to anything in their catalog. There are no hidden limitations, no special premium content, and no credits. You pay a flat fee for a set amount of hours of listening, and you can pick any books you want.
The BookBeat Library: Actual Bestsellers
The most obvious way audiobook services differ is their subscription model. But what’s just as important for us listeners is what we actually get.
For example, Kindle Unlimited offers unlimited listening. However, their service includes almost exclusively audiobooks published by one of Amazon’s own imprints, not the latest HarperAudio bestseller.
Audible Plus also offers unlimited listening. But in this catalog, I find mainly Audible Studios and Audible Originals productions.
These titles rarely make it onto the New York Times bestseller lists and are probably not your current book club pick, either.
And while these subscriptions are great and give us countless hours of high-quality, affordable entertainment, many audiobook listeners want access to books they find on “best of” lists or that they saw in a brick-and-mortar store.
BookBeat actually has many bestsellers, current TikTok hits, and books we hear about everywhere!
The BookBeat App: Whoopsy…
The user-friendly audiobook app lets you browse BookBeat’s catalog directly on your device. It also offers tailored recommendations once you’ve picked your first books.
You can freely add as many audiobooks to your library as you want. Only when you actually listen to them will you use up your monthly hours. I found the app very easy to navigate, and the player has a great, intuitive design with all the important features we need.
The app allows you to download audiobooks, which I find very important as I often listen on trips and in areas with dodgy connection. You can create a library of downloaded titles before you go travelling, so you won’t have to worry about using up data.
The BookBeat app is available for both Android and iOS. Additionally, there’s a web version for desktop users, so you can enjoy your audiobooks no matter which device you use.
One glitch I experienced: I was close to finishing my book when the app blocked the player and told me I’d used up my hours. I had carefully checked that my two books that month totaled less than 20 hours. After some investigation, I figured out what happened: I had turned off my internet connection before bed, set a sleep timer, and the book finished while I was asleep. Without internet connection, the app couldn’t sync and blocked my access.
After turning data back on and refreshing the player, it let me restart the audiobook and go to my bookmark. You can indeed listen to a book over and over in BookBeat if you want – or finish a book when you’ve missed chapters due to falling asleep.
Nothing actually bad happened, but it did annoy me that I couldn’t finish my book without connecting to the internet again first. And this could potentially become an issue when I’m travelling and not at home, where I have a stable internet connection.
BookBeat Review: The Pros and Cons
As mentioned above, BookBeat offers three different subscription plans giving you 20, 40, or 100 hours per month for a flat fee.
As an audiobook fan, I immediately had feelings about limiting listening by hours instead of by number of books – and honestly, those feelings haven’t improved much even after using the service.
It means you need to actively plan and manage what you listen to (“Oh, this book is 15 hours long… let’s see if I find another that’s less than 5 hours long…”). And I have to admit that, at the end of the day, the time limit makes me itchy. This is my personal problem, and other audiobook listeners might feel differently about it!
I do appreciate that BookBeat creates a more transparent subscription than some competitors (looking at you, classic Everand plan). You know exactly what you’re getting and can calculate whether a book fits your remaining hours. That’s genuinely valuable.
At first glance, yes, I want unlimited listening. But that just doesn’t work if authors and narrators should still get paid fairly so they can continue creating new audiobooks, and so we all have a flourishing, sustainable audiobook market. A subscription with a flat fee needs some kind of limitation.
My issue with BookBeat’s approach: Once your hours are over, they’re over. If you got carried away and didn’t check how much time you have left, you might find yourself out of time in the middle of a book or just when you got hooked. And that’s somewhat of a nightmare for any book lover, isn’t it?!
By comparison, services like Hoopla (for library cardholders in some countries) limit you by the number of borrows, say, 5-10 full audiobooks per month, no matter if they’re all 2 hours long or 20 hours. You can finish what you start without watching a clock tick down. That feels so much more natural for how we actually consume books.
Limiting by hours instead of books does mean less of a loss, though, if you notice after one chapter that you don’t enjoy something.
If you want to stop your current listen in BookBeat, you might have lost one hour. In Hoopla, you would have lost the entire borrow. In the Everand classic plan, you might find more books in your library locked that you would have liked to listen to next.
But I, personally, would still prefer a book-based limit over an hour-based one any day because the idea of not being able to finish my current listen once I’m hooked is just too terrible!
BookBeat vs Audible
How does BookBeat compare to Audible? This is an important but nuanced situation.
I have such mixed feelings about Audible. On the one hand, they’re simply amazing for customers. There are very few drawbacks for you as a subscriber, and you get a whole lot of listening for your money.
On the other hand, being an audiobook blogger and getting a look behind the scenes, I know that Audible uses its powerful position as market leader to put pressure on publishers and even on small indie authors who might only have time to write in the evenings, wishing they could make a living as authors.
Being a bookworm means, for me, that I want what’s best for authors and audiobook narrators. And Audible’s monopoly position isn’t that.
So, I like to encourage my blog readers to try different audiobook subscriptions and stores. Because we, as customers, can put pressure on Audible this way!
Related article: How to best support your favorite Audiobook Authors
BookBeat and Audible have two very different subscription models. BookBeat gives you free choice of all its titles for a limited number of hours.
Audible gives you, in its standard plan, one credit to purchase any audiobook from its entire premium catalog. In addition, you have unlimited access to the Audible Plus catalog with thousands of audiobooks.
Now, theoretically, unlimited listening is better than limited hours. But we book lovers often want one specific book. And the chances that you find specific books to borrow in BookBeat are higher than in Audible Plus.
As I said earlier, the Audible Plus catalog mostly offers Audible Studios and Audible Originals productions. These are Audible-exclusive and not the type of books you’ll find recommended on bestseller lists or on BookTok.
Don’t get me wrong, these are often very fun audio productions, and I enjoy them greatly. They’re the main reason why I still have an Audible subscription. But they’re not the books you discuss in your book club.
Related article: Are Audible Exclusives bad?
So, who wins in BookBeat vs Audible? You have to be the judge, as it depends entirely on the types of books you’re looking for. But with the BookBeat 40-hour plan, you can probably get the two or even three specific books you wanted for a lower fee than on Audible. While on Audible, you get that coveted unlimited listening, plus that one specific book you wanted.
BookBeat vs Everand: What changed?
Update October 2025: When I originally reviewed BookBeat in 2024, I compared it extensively to Everand’s subscription model. At that time, Everand was better for my personal listening habits as I could always find something interesting to listen to. However, Everand switched to a credit-based system recently, which fundamentally changed this comparison.
What happened: Everand used to offer audiobook listening with some throttling on bestsellers but without any other limitations. Their model was less transparent than BookBeat’s hours, but if you listened widely across genres (especially indie and backlist titles), you could get more listening time from Everand.
Now: Everand operates on credits similar to Audible, removing the almost-unlimited listening that made it special. This makes BookBeat’s transparent hour-based model significantly more appealing.
Current verdict: BookBeat now offers better value than Everand’s new credit model. BookBeat’s clear hour limits and unrestricted catalog access (including bestsellers!) make it the winner where it used to be the runner-up.
If you’re choosing between BookBeat and Everand today, BookBeat is the better choice for transparency and catalog access.
Conclusion: Is BookBeat worth it?
I would describe BookBeat as a solid option for specific types of listeners. It’s an interesting alternative, in particular to Hoopla, for European audiobook fans who don’t have access to a card from a participating library.
I would describe the result of my BookBeat review as “mixed”. It’s not a subscription that I use all the time, but I have returned a few times after my initial free trial. It’s by no means a bad service!
BookBeat is a great match for:
- Bestseller hunters who like to listen to several popular releases every month
- Anyone buying Audible credit bundles regularly (BookBeat will likely be cheaper)
- Multilingual readers who want audiobooks in multiple languages
- UK/EU listeners without library access to services like Hoopla
BookBeat may not be ideal if:
- You listen more than 3-4 hours daily (the hour limits will feel restrictive)
- You prefer indie/self-published audiobooks over mainstream releases
- You have a library card with free alternatives (Hoopla, Libby, or others)
For European audiobook listeners, BookBeat is an interesting alternative to Audible’s dominance. Even though I’m not loving it yet, the transparent hour-based model, access to actual bestsellers, and reasonable pricing make me think that it is worth a try for my blog readers.
More audiobook service reviews and recommendations:
Eline Blackman (pronouns: she/they) fell in love with books as a child – with being read to and reading herself. 11 years ago, she bought her first Audible book. It was love at first listen! An average of 200 audiobooks per year has become the new normal, and you will rarely see Eline without a wireless earbud. Romance and Fantasy are the go-to genres for this audiobook fan.