Perlego: Books & Textbooks
+1 million academic titles
How much does Perlego: Books & Textbooks cost?
Prices are current as of 8 Sept 2026.
Perlego: Books & Textbooks has no in-app products on record in the United States.
10+ alternatives to Perlego: Books & Textbooks
| Perlego: Books & Textbooks |   BorrowBox |   Kobo Books & Audiobooks |   Everand: Audiobooks & Ebooks |   Book Tracker: Bookshelf & TBR |   eBook Search - download books |   Bookshelf: Book Tracker & List |   Bookshelf-Your virtual library |   Outread: Speed Reading |   Bionic Reading® |   Cantook by Aldiko | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating / 5 | 4.5 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 4.3 | 4.7 | 4.5 | 4.6 | 4.8 | 4.7 | 2.6 | 3.3 |
| Reviews | 5.7K | 264K | 242K | 55K | 26K | 13K | 8.8K | 8K | 2.7K | 423 | 178 |
| Released | 2019 | 2012 | 2009 | 2012 | 2019 | 2011 | 2019 | 2019 | 2014 | 2022 | 2021 |
| Monthly price | — | — | — | $11.99 | — | — | $6.99 | $2.99 | $7.99 | $2.95 | — |
| Annual price | — | — | — | — | — | — | $29.99 | $19.99 | $49.99 | $30.49 | — |
| One-time price | — | — | — | — | $9.99 | — | $9.99 | $59.99 | $119.99 | — | — |
The going rate for each plan in United States, in its own currency, shaded from the cheapest price on the row to the dearest. Plans fewer than four in ten of the priced apps sell are left out.
Perlego: Books & Textbooks reviews
4.5 out of 5, based on 5,670 reviews.
What people like
- Massive library saves money on textbooks
- Great for research and academic papers
- Easy to highlight and take notes
What they complain about
- App keeps crashing or showing black screens
- Scrolling feels buggy and loses your place
- Read aloud feature is missing or glitchy
Super useful
Perlego has been really useful for my A-level studies with so many available books.
Double Subscription!!
THEY OFFER YOU A LOW ANUAL RATE TO GET YOU….. AND THEN A HIGH MONTHLY RATE TO ACCESS EDUCATIONAL BOOKS !!!
Need update on live activities
Hello, i would like to give a suggestion; it will be really nice if you can activate the live activities feature (such as iphone’s timer) because i am reading in between my rest sessions at the gym. This update will be of a tremendous help; thanks for the great app!
Worked well until recently
This app worked great until recently. There is now trouble with the functions of the app like highlighting and taking notes which have made it frustrating.
PDF reader is somewhat lacking
Someone else has mentioned poor/no support for pinch zoom in PDF documents, which I agree with. The inability to switch between vertical scrolling and horizontal paging also seems odd. But worst of all, there currently seems to be no find-in-book functionality (that I can find). I see that exists on the web app, so presumably the possibility exists; I hope it can be rolled out to the app itself.
Great selection of books
lots of academic books and editorials variety
Disappointed
Too much potential and matching disappointment. 48 hours for response on trouble shooting issues not even to solve the problem but they had no problem collecting my money up front immediately.
Super Useful
Overall, love the app. Makes it easy to keep all my books in one place, find new and interesting titles, and take notes while I read. I do wish that there was an easier way to look up and possibly even save new words, however.
Confused
Hard to understand how to change the reading voice. It is so annoying
Not bad
It would be a lot better if the text to speech picked up where you left off.
Must have resource!!!
This app given you access to millions of books! As a graduate student I can access lots of great material for research papers. Many times my required texts are available in the app saving me money on text books. Many of the books have an audible version. 100% worth the subscription.
Impossible to cancel subscription
There website constantly crashes and there’s no option in the app to cancel it. Awful company
5 star content, 3 star UX
A phenomenal gathering of academic literature hampered only by an insufficient user experience for accessing and using it. While the copious quantity of books available can sustain one for a lifetime, the design of interface and interaction, particularly in searching and reading the content, are the primary obstacles to its perfection. The app developers may find inspiration in the UI/UX of O'Reilly's app. Kudos to its unmatched and peerless content selection though. Certainly the presentation will improve over time. Absolutely worth the subscription.
Horrible experience in PDFs
Horrible experience in PDFs
Great Idea - Needs Refining Urgently
Perlego is a brilliant idea. Having a vast array of often very expensive books at your fingertips for a reasonable fee is superb. The app however is not. It appears they are just hosting the web version on the app and so it’s very slow. The assistive reader is a priceless feature allowing one to really ‘lock in’ - I use it all the time to shut out distractions. Again, however, it is woefully glitchy and sometimes doesn’t load. Once the app is improved, 5 stars it will be.
Just what was needed
Thankful to have the app
Worst App for the money
Just not worth the money and the product is of zero value. Never again.
Needs some UI updates
The app is great but the UX experience is not so good. Can’t add bookshelves on the app. On desktop mobile the add bookshelf button is obscured by the chat button. You can’t quickly remove books by swiping which would be an intuitive thing to do. If you have more than several books in your library it quickly becomes a mess and titles are hard to find. The reader icons are also not very intuitive and I keep tapping on the wrong ones. Otherwise a great service.
Unable to login/login screen is messed up
The app will not allow me to see what I am typing into the email field, and is telling me my password is incorrect even though I checked five times, even changed the original password to try again
Poor Academic Functionality
There is no ability to export notes, and the note taking features feel clunky, especially when using a stylus. Great for casual readers.
Amazing customer service
Great idea, great company, great app, & great customer service !!
Not worth it
Very slow and not worth the money
It’s a great website that could be even better!
Overall speaking, I love this website! It makes reading academic literature more affordable and accessible for people like me. Here are a few things that can be improved: 1. the app on ipad isn’t great to use. it feels difficult to navigate. As much as I want to spend more time reading on my phone or tablet when I am on the road, I avoid doing so. 2. please add more books, both the new ones and the old ones!! 3. by any chance that you could make scrolling smoother? 4. some updates need to be made. For example, the career page of Perlego is still shown as “2022 Perlego’s Career Page.” It’s now 2025!
Amazing but beta quality
A full troubleshooting of typical first draft issues would make this app worthy of the amazing game changer the website is. Predominantly I’m seeing issues of inadequate margins to account for the audio play screen or the hole punch camera on my phone. What is apparent is that the design of this app wasn’t adequately tested on multiple phones.
Mostly good
The app scrolling lacks a lot. If you turn your phone sideways, you will lose your place. Also, sometimes the scrolling just doesn't want to work. Another thing that is kind of odd is hot hot my phone gets while reading in the app. No other apps make my phone so hot. Finally, islt is so easy to lose your spot when using the audio book feature. I am not sure why, but it often will repeat sections, maybe this is because my phone orientation changes, and the aforementioned problem regarding losing your place happens. Perlego is great, but the app needs work.
Wonderful!
College Level Texts Not College Level Prices!
So buggy
Constant error messages when just searching
Love the product. Footnotes need work.
I LOVE Perlego. This is a serious blessing and a great way to make academic works accessible to everyone ethically. The biggest missing feature in my view is the ability to quickly access a single footnote and then return to your place in the book. Almost every other ereader I interact with has a way to do this so I would love if Perlego would do the same.
Scrolling?
They get everything right except the most basic thing for a mobile reader…the page scrolling. Why in the world is there no on-screen intuitive motion for turning the page of a book? You can’t drag your thumb from left to right or right to left. And the continuous up and down scroll also doesn’t work either. It only allows you to scroll the current page. The only option I see that works to get to the next page is to try to click the very tiny arrow button at the bottom - and I have small fingers. I’m honestly so shocked LOL what in the world?
Perlego is great!
The app is terrible though. Stick with the browser version.
The Great Controversy
I purchased a subscription to the app, so I could read this book. So far so good.
Please fix the app
Desktop website on my laptop is great, but the iPad app doesn’t work well at all. I can’t access the table of contents or anything on the toolbar when attempting to read a book. The iPhone app won’t even let me login. Please fix it because your subscription is not worth the cost if the apps don’t work.
Copy & paste
So far I haven’t been able to copy text from the books I’m reading to paste it into what I’m writing as quotation. Please make this possible!
App does not have a Read Aloud option
I bought the subscription almost exclusively for the Read Aloud AI option, but unfortunately the app doesn’t have that. The actual webpage does though if I use it in my browser.
Can’t remember place in a book
As an app this leaves a lot to be desired, including in its search features. An annoying and very basic limitation is the complete inability to remember where your previous place in a book. Every other reading app, eg Everand (formerly Scribd) and Kindle manage to do this across multiple devices, whereas Perlego seems incapable on a single device.
Most Used App ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’ve never written an App Store review in my life. Legitimately, when Amazon and the local library don’t have a book I want, Perlego comes through! I’ve saved so much money. Being able to create reading lists is awesome, but the highlight and notes feature is 🤌🏽 I can copy and paste right into my Notion Knowledge Hub template and keep track of what I’m learning and what purpose it serves.
Read aloud
The app doesn’t support read aloud.
Page numbers.
GIVE ME PAGE NUMBERS OR GIVE ME DEATH!!!! For real though, would be a 5 star app. Oh, and add the nice color text to the mobile version. It is a really helpful reading tool.
Please add Read Aloud to the App
I would change my review to 5 stars immediately
Black screen
Started using this app yesterday, and it worked perfectly. Come today, the app immediately becomes a black screen. I like that we get a great selection of books, but if I can’t read them wheneverI want, there’s no point in using this app
Read it for me Perlego!
Perlego just added a read out loud tool to its mobile app. So practical! I am getting lots more done because it keeps me in pace. Love it!
Can’t even read anything because it’s so buggy
This is the clunkiest, most garbage reader. Save your time and money and just get creative finding pdfs of texts you need. I don’t think the positive reviews are even real so be wary
Great selection of academic texts, but buggy interface..
Perlego is a lifesaver if you don't have access to a good academic library. And perhaps even more convenient than one if you do. But the interface leaves a bit to be desired: the scrolling is somewhat buggy, for instance, where the top and bottom margins may stretch; the viewing options are rather limited in many cases; there's no copy or citation option for referencing, etc. So while there's room for improvement, I'm nevertheless very glad it exists!
The font is ridiculously small
I need readers view. I need inverted colors. I cant read any of it. I am on a trial right now and there’s no way i’d feel comfortable paying.
Needs more options
Should give the option to scroll vertically. Should give the option to read by two pages at a time Fix these minor issues and the app would be a lot more pleasant to utilize.
Great app
Amazing source of knowledge.
Poor performance
Poor performance
If it had a dictionary would be perfect
The app is really good however would be good if you had the dark mode option for the dashboard and a dictionary, or the look up function enabled, it would be a 5 stars.
Read aloud?
Is there no way for the app to read the chapter to me? I’d love to play my textbooks while driving or going for a walk.
Room for improvement
Beware that to scroll by page you have to toggle from the bottom center.
Perlego: Books & Textbooks FAQ
- Is Perlego: Books & Textbooks free?
- Yes. The app is free, in all 174 countries it sells in, and it sells nothing inside it.
- Does Perlego: Books & Textbooks have a free trial?
- No. None of its offers (US) come with a free trial.
- What are the best alternatives to Perlego: Books & Textbooks?
- BorrowBox (4.8 from 264,282 reviews), Kobo Books & Audiobooks (4.5 from 241,863 reviews) and Everand: Audiobooks & Ebooks (4.3 from 55,083 reviews, premium from $11.99).
Perlego: Books & Textbooks download
Last updated 1 month ago.
Perlego: Books & Textbooks sells in 174 countries. It was released 7 years and 8 months ago, on 7 Feb 2019. It holds a 4.5 rating from 5,670 reviews.
Supports 5 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish.
How much does Perlego: Books & Textbooks make?
Third-party estimates for the last 30 days, worldwide — not the store's own figures, which Apple publishes for nobody.