How to listen to audiobooks free

This is the answer, and it is chronically underused. Libby connects to your public library and lends licensed audiobooks — current bestsellers, prize winners, the same productions the paid services sell — for nothing.

The catch is licensing. Your library buys a limited number of simultaneous loans, so popular titles carry waiting lists that can run to weeks, and the catalogue varies enormously between library systems. Loans expire and nothing is ever yours.

The way to use it well is to place holds on several books at once and treat whatever arrives as your next listen. Used that way it comfortably covers a book a month for most people, at zero cost. We rank it as one of the best audiobook services we have tested, and it earns us nothing.

Libby supports multiple cards in one app, and many library systems offer cards to anyone who lives, works or studies in the area — some offer non-resident cards for a modest annual fee.

Two or three cards meaningfully changes the experience, because a title with a twelve-week wait at one system is often available immediately at another.

Hoopla, offered by many of the same libraries, is worth checking alongside Libby. It typically has no waiting lists at all, in exchange for a monthly borrow limit and a smaller catalogue.

LibriVox offers volunteer-recorded readings of public-domain books — the classics, essentially anything published early enough to be out of copyright. It is genuinely free with no card required.

Quality varies a great deal, because the readers are volunteers rather than professionals. Some recordings are excellent; others are difficult to listen to for long. Sample before committing.

This is a supplement rather than a substitute. It cannot give you anything published recently.

Most paid services run a 30-day free trial you can use once. Audiobooks.com's is the most generous at 30 days with up to three titles on most offers; Audible, Everand, Kobo and Downpour each give you 30 days and a single credit.

Run end to end, the trials across several services add up to a few months of free listening, and on credit-based services the books you take during the trial are generally yours to keep even after cancelling.

Two practical warnings. Set a calendar reminder for the day before each trial ends, because every one of these renews automatically. And cancel through the account settings rather than by deleting the app.

Sites offering current bestsellers as free downloads are not licensed, and the files are a common vector for malware. If a brand-new release is available free outside a library, something is wrong.

'Free with ads' audiobook apps generally carry public-domain material rather than the catalogue they advertise on the front page.

The genuinely free options are the ones above: library apps, public-domain archives, and time-limited trials from the services themselves.