Fabulous service - even with limitations

Scribd truly blows Kindle Unlimited (and even Audible to some extent) out of the water, especially if you read a lot of serious non-fiction. They also have an amazing selection of British mystery audio books btw. I have to admit I have not run into the 'limit' problems some others have reported. I have no idea why, but this may well be because I don't tend to check out bestsellers or really popular titles.

However, if you are interested in Art, History, Culture, Language etc., I can pretty much assure you that you have discovered Valhalla with Scribd. To me, it's like a massive digital treasure house set up for easy browsing. I often find obscure monographs here I can access nowhere else online for any price. Also rather than waiting weeks to checkout a title via our local library via Overdrive, I usually have instant access through Scribd.

That said, I do still have occasional problems with the search function finding a particular title even though it turns up being included after all. Our excellent local library system makes a valiant effort to have many e-books available, but only has a tiny fraction of what I can access via Scribd. Anyway, 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️'s - a great value and I am a very satisfied subscriber.

Dishonest & Glitchy

I had subscribe to the service for about five months or so then decided to cancel recently just to find out the date it cut me off a day early. I just needed to save some money recently so I decided to cancel for a short period of time but I’m not sure I’m coming back after my experience. During the time I subscribed, I kept having issues that the audiobooks I wanted to listen to were unavailable until the next renewal date. I would still have 10 days left on my subscription and find out that I couldn’t listen to the next audiobook I wanted to listen to in the series because it wasn’t available until my next subscription renewal date. This happened three times and it was very annoying. While this service may be cheaper than Audible, the aggravation may not be worth it.

The app is also glitchy. I had times when I would answer the phone and the audiobook would still play in the background while I was trying to hear phone calls. I would set up to play the audiobook sometimes, and it would just cut off by itself while I was driving. Which is annoying because I live in a hands-free state and can’t go back and reboot the app. The glitches seemed to happen more often after I decided to cancel for a little while. The audio player with clothes for no reason in recent weeks and I kept having to stop what I was doing to reopen it just to get it to play again. Probably won’t renew now after the recent experience. You should shop around.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for informing us! I apologize for the negative experience. It sounds like you were encountering our rotating library, which can cause some titles to go temporarily unavailable from time to time, however, there will still be thousands of titles always available to enjoy right away on Scribd. You can read more on that process here: https://bit.ly/3oK7abz and let us know if you have any questions about that.

That said, we are encountering some issues with iOS skipping as well that you may have also been encountering. We are working on resolving that issue. If you need help from support in the meantime, please feel free to update this review and we'll get back to you ASAP. Thanks! -EC

Not “Unlimited”

Scribd sells their subscription as “unlimited,” which is true...if what you’re after is an unlimited catalog of books you’ve likely never heard of and have no interest in reading/listening to. You can listen to between 1 and 3 popular or recent books, and then you’re prevented from reading other recent literary and/or popular titles until the following billing cycle. This is fine if you know it going in (a big if, as they’re not upfront about the details of their model for obvious reasons), but disappointing if you learn about it the hard way. I read and listen to upwards of 12 books a month, mostly recent releases. I was hoping to find a better model for my audiobook consumption (I listen 3-5 per month), but Scribd is not the one for me. It may work for you if you read significantly less or have an interest in backlist titles you’ve probably never heard of. I’m sure there are hidden gems in the part of the catalogue that’s always available, but my purpose in trying Scribd was to work through my massive TBR, not to waste hours of potential reading/listening time sifting through a virtual stack of books, the vast majority of which have little to no appeal to me. I’m left wishing that Scribd were honest about the service they offer—a couple of audiobooks per month for less than the price of one from the most popular audiobook distributor. That’s not a bad service to offer! But the mendacity of claiming the service is “unlimited” chafes me, so I’m out.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for your feedback, we're sorry to hear Scribd was not the best fit for you! We're constantly growing and improving, and hope you'll check us out again in the future! If you'd like to email us at help@scribd.com, our team is happy to assist you with anything else. Thanks!