8 Reasons Why Blinkist is Worth Your Money
If you’ve heard about Blinkist before and are now looking for an honest and comprehensive Blinkist review to see if it’s worth it for your solo business— we’ve got you.
In this post, we’ll talk about everything a solopreneur needs to know about Blinkist, including whether or not it’s worth it to invest in this service.
What is Blinkist?
Before we rush into the review, let’s first discuss what Blinkist is.
Blinkist is for anyone who is bound by the time constraints of adult life but still wants to learn and/or read.
Essentially, Blinkist is a paid summary service that provides short, 15-minute summaries of best-selling nonfiction books.
Blinkist was founded in 2012 and currently has a user base of 26 million people worldwide, with 6,500+ titles in its library.
The idea behind Blinkist was to make reading and learning accessible to all.
So, the main feature of Blinkist is Blinks, which are bite-sized summaries of nonfiction books— usually 10-15 minutes long.
Through Blinks, users can read or listen to the key ideas of popular nonfiction books and learn all the main things the book has to offer without having to read it.
Blinkist also offers a curated list of books that experts have recommended alongside personalized recommendations.
Recently, they’ve also introduced Shortcasts and Guides.
Shortcasts basically has the same function as Blinks but for podcasts instead of books.
However, the Guides provide in-depth knowledge on certain topics. These are compiled by field experts and thought leaders.
Another branch of Blinkist is Blinkist Business, which allows business owners to make courses, coaching, and learning essentials accessible to their team.
All in all, Blinkist is a service through which you can learn at any time of the day, regardless of time or location constraints.
Pricing
Blinkist offers two Premium subscription plans: monthly and annual.
Both these plans offer the same features:
- Unlimited access to all 6,000+ blinks in text and audio
- Shortcasts (podcast summaries)
- Discounts on full-length audiobooks
- Download access for all titles
- Kindle with Blinkist
As you can see below, the premium monthly plan costs $14.99/month but does not include a free trial.
On the other hand, the Premium Yearly plan is almost half the price— costing only $7.49/month.
The Premium yearly plan also comes with a free 7-day trial. During this trial, you will have free access to Blinkist’s entire library for a week.
When the trial period is about to end, Blinkist will send you a reminder.
If you would like not to proceed further, you can cancel your subscription before the trial period ends.
However, if you would like to proceed, there’s no extra step that you’ve to take— the Premium plan will begin on its own when the trial ends.
Note that you can’t switch from a monthly plan to a yearly before the month ends, and the same applies to the yearly plan too.
You can also use it for free, but with that, you can only read one title per day, which is pre-picked by Blinkist.
Quick Blinkist Review
Now that you know about all the features Blinkist has to offer, let’s talk about the pros and cons.
Pros:
➜ 6,500+ books in 27 categories
➜ Affordable subscription plans
➜ 7-day Free trial with no strings attached
➜ Offline learning possible
➜ 10-15 minute summaries
➜ Value for money
➜ Unlimited access to all titles with premium
➜ Free and Paid, both
➜ Saves time without compromising on learning
➜ Personalized experience for all users
➜ Available for both iOS and Android
➜ Available in text and audio formats
➜ User-friendly interface
➜ Responsive customer support
➜ Lists curated by experts
➜ Podcast summaries
➜ New titles added almost every day
➜ Users can suggest new books
➜ Works with Kindle
➜ 80% value in 20% time
➜ Some fiction titles in the library
➜ Expert guides on certain topics available
Cons:
➜ Not the same as reading the entire book
➜ Quick learning, not in-depth knowledge
➜ Not a lot of fiction titles in the library
➜ No ranking or critic reviews to decide which book is worth reading
➜ Discontinued Evernote and Alexa Skill syncing feature
8 Reasons Why Blinkist is Worth Your Money
Okay, but is Blinkist worth your money as a solopreneur?
Or is it just another impractical application that sounds good but doesn’t align at all with your line of work?
We think that the latter is not true— here’s why:
1. It allows you to consume full-length books within minutes
Throughout this Blinkist review, we have focused on one thing a lot.
And that is, Blinkist allows you to understand and learn an entire non-fiction book in 15 minutes.
Let’s put it into perspective: On average, a nonfiction book varies from 20,000 to 60,000 words, which is 100-250 pages!
Using Blinkist is like reading the whole book but without the fluff and repetition. The 15-minute summaries highlight the key ideas of the book instead.
Imagine how much time you can save!
As a solopreneur, time is the most important resource you have, and saving up on that without compromising on necessary knowledge is a definite game-changer.
So, if you’re a self-learner who reads lots of non-fiction books for the purpose of learning, Blinkist is your go-to app.
It won’t just save you time, but it’ll help you consume a lot more books than before, enabling you to learn more in less time— the perfect recipe for solopreneurs.
Plus, you can jot down these bite-sized pieces of information in a notebook and become an efficient learner.
2. You can listen to Audiobooks and Podcasts
Shift the scenario— let’s say you are tired or you just don’t have time to sit and read the summaries.
Not a problem.
Blinkist has audio versions and podcasts of book summaries on their app and website that you can listen to any time you want.
You can find the audio player with a “Play” button at the bottom of each blink. When you press the button, an actual human will read the blinks to you.
Whether you’re on your morning jog, commuting, working, or doing house chores, just put on your earphones and listen to the summary on the go.
3. Huge Library
With over 6,500 titles in various categories and new titles added almost every other day, Blinkist Library has a broad array of spectrum for you to choose from.
With 27 broad categories with multiple subcategories in each, Blinkist might just have any and every book you need!
4. Collaboration
One of the newest features of Blinkist is Blinkist Spaces.
It allows users to organize titles and texts and also share them with others in a group.
With Spaces, you can form groups, invite your friends, share blinks, and exchange thoughts with them.
For instance, if you’re a solopreneur with friends with the same interests, you can create a Blinkist Space for a topic like productivity or mindfulness and start sharing blinks.
You can also recommend books, create insightful notes, and share them with everyone in the group.
With the premium subscription, you can create as many Spaces as you like, whether private to you or with others.
However, if you’re using the free plan, you can only accept invites from premium members and read or listen to their recommended titles, even if the title is Premium-only.
5. Daily Blinks
Being a solopreneur, you should look forward to learning something new every day.
Blinkist’s Blink of the Day feature allows you to do exactly that—reading or listening to a selected book summary in the library every day.
Every day, Blinkist features a different book—giving you a perfect opportunity to enjoy a new book every day, even if you’re a non-premium member.
Download their app or search “Free Blink of the Day“ on your web browser and click the “Start Now” button.
Below every featured book, you’ll see a “What’s it about” section, which is a quick synopsis, giving you an idea of what the book is about and if you want to read its blink.
Blinkist doesn’t want to waste your valuable time—if the synopsis of the current blink of the day doesn’t appeal to you, you can wait until tomorrow for the next blink.
6. Syncs With Kindle
If you’re an avid Kindle user, we’re thrilled to inform you that Blinkist has collaborated with Kindle.
You can read your favorite Blinkist summaries on Kindle if you’re a premium member.
The process to connect your Blinkist to Kindle is also a no-brainer:
Open the Blinkist website and add your Blinkist address in your Kindle settings to the approved list.
Next, set up your Amazon Kindle e-mail in the Blinkist app.
You can send up to 100 blinks every week to your Kindle account, and even if one day you decide to end your Blinkist membership, all the titles will remain active on the Kindle.
7. Offline Reading
With a Blinkist premium subscription, you can save your entire library offline and read at your convenience without having to rely on internet availability.
However, the feature is only available on the app version.
As of now, it’s not possible to access your library on the website without internet access.
But you can still read blinks offline on Kindle using the Send-to-Kindle feature, which is part of the premium subscription plan.
8. Better than its alternatives
Lastly, when we compare Blinkist to the best alternatives – Audible and Shortform – Blinkist clearly takes the lead.
Audible is more affordable but less efficient than Blinkist—it allows you to listen to only one book monthly on the basic paid plan, and if you want to listen to more, you will have to buy more credits.
You need to invest more or less the same amount as reading on Audible.
Shortform gives out more clear and concise book summaries than Blinkist but also costs almost twice as much as Blinkist.
Of course, we cannot crown one app and call it a winner, but compared to its alternatives in overall aspects, it is a better option.
Who is Blinkist for?
As a solopreneur, you will be doing all the work that goes into your business.
So when you look at Blinkist review for solopreneurs, you should know all the aspects of your venture that it can help with.
1. Freelance writers
Blinkist is widely used by freelance writers as writers cover various topics and subjects, and being knowledgeable helps in creating unique content and copy.
With Blinkist, they can read a minimum of 365 books a year, including top-rated ones like Writing That Works by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson!
So now, if we look at it from your perspective, Blinkist can help you write better content and/or marketing campaigns for your business.
2. Self-improvers
There are 27 different categories on Blinkist, including various self-improvement sub-categories, including productivity, health and nutrition, money management, and relationships.
Needless to say, anyone who is into self-improvement finds Blinkist helpful.
Say you’re struggling with leadership and self-confidence.
In that case, all you’ve to do is get onto Blinkist and read or listen to 15-minute Blinks a day, and hopefully, you’ll see improvement.
Some examples of titles on leadership in the Blinkist library include:
- Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
- The Introverted Leader by Jennifer Kahnweiler
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
3. Anyone Short on Time
Blinkist allows you to keep the reading and learning habit no matter how busy your life gets.
Their mobile app also helps with this by allowing multitasking.
Entrepreneurs
Besides saving time and maximizing learning, there’s also Blinkist Business, helping entrepreneurs seamlessly integrate learning and reading habits in their employees.
Reading is also a valuable habit that all successful entrepreneurs have— it helps them grow and outgrow the competition.
Blinkist helps with growth by allowing entrepreneurs and solopreneurs like yourself to outlearn competitors.
How to Use Blinkist
To start using Blinkist, download the app on your device via the Apple App Store or Play Store. Then, sign up for the free trial.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll be directed to the dashboard, where you can find personalized book suggestions based on the quiz you took upon signing up.
When you click on a book, Blinkist will show a summary of the summary, so you can decide if you want to continue reading or not.
You can also search for books, explore categories, and follow authors to stay updated with their new releases on Blinkist.
Need more help? Watch this video by Blinkist on YouTube to understand how the app works:
FAQs
Is Blinkist worth it?
Blinkist currently has more than 6,500 summaries in its library, and it costs only $7.49/month.
Content-wise, it has more content than most free summary sites.
Cost-wise, it is cheaper than all other paid alternatives.
Given these factors, plus all the other features Blinkist has to offer, it is definitely worth it.
What is better than Blinkist?
If you’re looking for alternatives to Blinkist, try Headway, Instaread, or Shortform.
Audible and Goodreads are also considered alternatives to Blinkist.
However, Audible solely offers audiobooks, and Goodreads offers reviews by people who have already read the books.
Each of these platforms, including Blinkist, has its own pros and cons.
Which is better, Audible or Blinkist?
Audible and Blinkist are considered competitors, but both of them have completely different offers.
Audible is a platform that offers audiobooks, while Blinkist offers summaries of nonfiction (and some fiction) books.
To decide which is better is a matter of personal preference— if you would like to have the complete content, Audible is better.
However, if you’d like to skip the extra information and only read the important parts of the book, Blinkist is better.
Why do people use Blinkist?
People use Blinkist primarily to save time, as the service allows them to learn without having to spend hours reading a complete book.
Other times, people use Blinkist because they like to learn or want to learn but don’t necessarily enjoy reading.
Summary
To sum it up, Blinkist is worth it for all solopreneurs.
It provides great value for money and makes sure you can learn in the most efficient manner possible.
You can listen to or read book summaries and podcasts within minutes for as little as $7.49 a month.
The only real cons are that you don’t actually read the whole book, and there are no rankings.
However, the first one isn’t really a con if you’re already short on time.
Even the rankings part can be easily dealt with—just look up the reviews on Goodreads or read the summary blurbs Blinkist provides!
With that said, our Blinkist review has now come to an end.
If you have any questions, let us know in the comments.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
With over 14 years in tech, marketing, and AI, including my role as Head of SEO at CitizenShipper and co-founder of TaleBot at Intale AI, I’m dedicated to sharing genuine, useful product insights and tips.
At BizStack, I aim to cut through the digital noise to provide clear, actionable advice.
And more than all else, I’m a father to a (always) little girl and a husband.
Contact me at [email protected] for assistance.
Co Authors :
Ana is a content writer at BizStack and ensures our content meets and goes beyond our readers’ expectations.
