Let’s start with the short answer to your question Is Scribd Free: No, Scribd is a paid subscription and costs a monthly fee after the free trial month.
But once you sign up for their book subscription, you can read and listen to lots and lots of ebooks and audiobooks from their catalog without any additional costs.
Now, that brings us to some important news. If you ended up here on Lovely Audiobooks, you are likely interested in an ebook and audiobook subscription. But Scribd has recently split its services into two different platforms!
The one named Scribd is now exclusively a document exchange. The ebook and audiobook subscription service was split off in November 2023 and renamed Everand.
I have updated the following blog post under the assumption that you haven’t heard of this name change yet, but that you are looking for – what used to be – Scribd audiobooks.
So, the next question is, is Everand / Scribd worth it? And is it even legit? Let’s take a look at what they have to offer.
**The marked links and book covers on this page are affiliate links. If you use them to purchase something, I earn a fee at no additional cost for you. Disclosure**
About my Everand / Scribd Review…
For the sake of full disclosure and because I always find this to be important info when reading reviews on blogs, yes, I am a Scribd and Everand affiliate.
However, firstly, I’m also an affiliate of Audible, Audiobooks.com, Libro.fm, and a bunch of other audiobook services because this is an audiobook blog, and it’s kind of the logical thing to do.
So, in that light, there’s no specific reason for me to recommend Scribd’s Everand instead of another audiobook subscription, other than my personal experiences and opinions.
Secondly, I have used Scribd for audiobooks A LOT myself! I have a bunch of subscriptions, a library card, and also request free audiobook review copies at times.
But I use Scribd and now Everand the most because they have a really fantastic catalog.
They have all audiobooks by Harper Audio and Harlequin, most Macmillan and Simon & Schuster titles, plus a ton of listening books from independent publishers and self-published authors, as well as their own Scribd Originals.
While the Scribd audiobook app used to be a bit temperamental on my Android tablet (hello, empty battery), I always have a great time with the service itself and enjoy it very much.
And I am actually very pleased that this company has taken the step to split its services and separate the document exchange from the ebook and audiobook library service. We’ll get back to that in a moment.
Is Scribd free? Is Everand free?
The term “free” is absolute magic in promotions. And it is not entirely out of place in relation to Scribd’s Everand. Firstly, if you haven’t tried out Everand before, you can get a free trial**.
And that’s an actual free month!
You get the full benefits of the subscription without having to pay anything. If you like, you can cancel right away after signing up and enjoy your free 30 days without having to worry about anything.
Secondly, just like Scribd before, Everand works very differently from the Audible credits system. Books in the catalog are free for you as a subscriber. You don’t need to spend audiobook credits or buy ebooks.
It’s similar to Hoopla in the way it works, but you aren’t limited to a specific number of books. And it has an excellent catalog!
How Much is Scribd and now Everand?
Everand for ebooks and audiobooks costs the same as the old Scribd subscription: $11.99 or €10.99 (plus taxes) per month after the free trial. For that fee, you get access to the entire catalog of ebooks and audiobooks.
There is absolutely no additional cost involved. Scribd and Everand don’t sell books. And there are no different levels to their plan. It’s the same subscription plan that you can get for 1 month or a full year.
Is Scribd safe and legit?
Scribd is definitely a legit company. It has been around for over 15 years and has millions of users.
Authors and publishers add their books and audiobooks to Everand either directly or through distribution services. When someone reads or listens to a title there, the author receives royalties.
However, before the split, Scribd offered a document upload feature on the same platform with ebooks and audiobooks. This sometimes caused confusion because there are documents with book covers.
And well, there have also, at times, been pirated ebooks. The company has implemented a system that should protect copyrighted works from appearing as PDFs on Scribd.
But to me, this is precisely why it was an excellent decision to separate the PDF upload feature from the book subscription service.
This functionality didn’t add any value for those subscribers who just wanted to read and listen to books.
However, the document upload was the original purpose of Scribd. And I believe this is the reason why the digital library service was renamed Everand, while the document exchange platform kept the name Scribd.
Scribd was founded as a way for researchers to share academic papers and other written content without having to wait months and months for publication. This allowed researchers to work on the basis of the findings of other teams more quickly, before the full peer review and publishing process.
So yeah, while one of Scribd’s functions has at times been misused by users of the service to spread pirated content, Scribd has always been above board, has taken steps to ensure no copyrighted content is wrongfully shared, and ensures that their service is legit.
Now, after the split of these two functionalities, as a book lover, you can rest assured that Everand is safe to use.
What is Scribd’s Everand?
Among book lovers, Scribd has become known, first and foremost, as an ebook and audiobook subscription service. You pay a monthly fee, and then you can read and listen to the books in their catalog.
They offer two apps, one called Scribd for PDF uploads and downloads, and one called Everand, for reading and listening to books.
Both apps are available on iOS and Android app stores. You can also access Everand books through the web browser on your computer.
Your account syncs across all of your devices, so you can pick up where you left off no matter what device you’re using.
Everand is not an unlimited subscription, but almost. What does that mean? Well, here it gets a bit complicated.
Scribd has always been very vague about this, and it hasn’t changed with the new name (yet), so let me try my best to explain how Everand is limited (but also not).
If you like to listen to audiobooks, you can listen every day with this subscription. However, the newest traditionally published BookTok bestseller might be considered a premium title, and you don’t get an unlimited number of those.
So, when you’re using Everand a lot in your daily life, you realistically might be able to listen to a new Simon & Schuster release and two of the latest Harper Audio titles.
But then audiobooks in your library will become unavailable until the next billing period. From now on, you can only get… well… let’s call them second-tier audiobooks. Non-premium titles. An older Harper Audio, for example. Or indie-published audiobooks. Or Scribd Originals.
That means you can still listen to a ton of audiobooks and read ebooks, and in that sense, Everand feels almost like an unlimited subscription. You can always listen to or read something.
But it is limited, in so far that you can’t always listen to all the specific titles that you might want at that moment.
But is it worth it?
Since you probably landed here because you wanted Everand / Scribd for free, it’s a bit tricky to answer this question.
If you struggle with paying $11.99 per month for books and really need free options, you could check out my guide on how to get audiobooks for free online (these are all safe and legal websites!). You will find a lot of options there that will probably fit your needs better than Everand.
But if you can afford $11.99 per month for ebooks and audiobooks, then my answer to you is: Yes, Everand / Scribd is worth it! I get a ton of listening out of it every month, even if some titles are, at times, restricted.
It’s a lot more affordable than most other audiobook subscriptions and in the same price range as Kindle Unlimited. I can find a majority of titles there that I’m interested in. (The significant exceptions here are anything from Penguin Audio, as well as Audible Studios productions.)
Plus, Everand has its own exclusive audiobooks that you can only find here.
The bottom line is that I think this is a great digital library subscription, and you should definitely give it a try with a free 30-day trial**!
While I, unfortunately, couldn’t quite provide you with a fully positive answer to the question “Is Scribd free”, I hope I could still help you form an opinion on whether their renamed book subscription service will be worth it for you, and could ensure you that, yes, Everand / Scribd is safe and a legit audiobook service that you can use, knowing that authors will get fairly paid.
If you want to know more about this topic, you can read on in my article on audiobook royalties and how to best support your favorite audiobook authors.
Eline Blackman (pronouns: she/they) fell in love with books as a child – with being read to and reading herself. 10 years ago, she bought her first Audible book. It was love at first listen! An average of 250 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.