Perlego Review: Meet the Platform That Makes Textbooks More Affordable and Accessible

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Dubbed the “Spotify for textbooks” by the Evening Standard, Perlego is a library subscription service that provides unlimited access to over 700,000 textbooks and nonfiction titles in PDF format.

The company was created in 2016 by two former college students, Gauthier Van Malderen and Matthew Davis, who were all too familiar with the exorbitant prices of textbooks, and wanted to make them more accessible for all, while also eliminating some of the demand for pirated books.

How Does Perlego Work?

Perlego partners with publishers to offer users unlimited access to digital versions of their nonfiction books for a subscription fee.

The company works with over 3,000 publishing houses who provide content, including major academic publishers like Wiley, Pearson, and Bloomsbury.

The service is available on both desktop and mobile devices, and it is also possible to download books for offline reading. In addition, Perlego offers various study tools, which we’ll discuss in the next section.

How Many Books Are in Perlego?

Perlego’s library contains over 700,000 textbook PDFs, including texts in English, Italian, Spanish, French, and German. Their selection covers over 950 topics and subtopics, from aeronautics to zoology.

In addition to traditional textbooks, Perlego also offers many best-selling nonfiction titles, like the ones featured below:

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Perlego Features and Pricing

Here’s a breakdown of all the features that come with a Perlego subscription:

  • Unlimited access to over 700,000 textbooks: Perlego’s library contains over 700,000 textbook PDFs, as well as some bestselling nonfiction titles. With a Perlego subscription, you can enjoy unlimited access to their vast library.
  • Over 950 topics and subtopics to choose from: Perlego has 24 main topics to choose from (including architecture, law, medicine, and psychology) and over 900 subtopics for more niche areas (such as agricultural law, forensics medicine, and animal psychology). See the complete list of subtopics here.
  • Read anywhere: Perlego allows you to read online or offline from your smartphone, tablet, or computer. You can also personalize your experience by adjusting the text size, font, and lighting. Their mobile app is available for iOS and Android.
  • Built-in study tools: Students can highlight and save notes, and also search within books to quickly find specific information or passages.
  • One-click referencing: The one-click referencing feature makes research and essays easier by instantly generating citations for the book you’re reading. Create citations in your desired style, then simply copy and paste.

Pricing

Now, the most important bit: how much will a Perlego subscription cost you? The platform offers two plans, one monthly and one annual:

Monthly plan: $18/month

Annual plan: $144/year ($12/month)

Is Perlego Free for Students?

Perlego subscriptions are not free, but cost between $12–$18 per month depending on which plan you choose. However, you can try a 14-day free trial to see if the service might be worth it for you.

Is Perlego Worth It?

Considering that the average cost of university textbooks is $1,240 per year, I’d say a Perlego subscription is absolutely worth the cost, since an annual plan is roughly 11% of what you’d pay otherwise.

As far as their selection goes, I busted out some of my old college syllabi and searched for some of my textbooks. They only had one out of the six I tried, but to be fair, I took some pretty niche courses for International Relations, and that was several years ago.

Over 700,000 textbooks is a lot, and they cover a very wide variety of topics and more niche subtopics.

See How Much You’ll Save

You can search Perlego’s library to see if they have your required textbooks before even signing up for a free trial, and even if they have just one of your books, the monthly fee could still be very much worth it, since you can expect to pay anywhere from $80 to $400 or more for a single new textbook.

Overall, I think Perlego is a very cool resource that I wish I had when I was in college, so I’d definitely recommend at least a free trial to current students.

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

 

If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:

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