If you listen regularly to audiobooks and want to pay the least for the pleasure, you’ll have to spend time checking prices on Audible and the Google Play Store every time you want to listen to a book.

If you consistently listen to more than two audiobooks a month, go with Audible for the first two and either use a rolled-over credit or compare prices for purchasing the additional books. As always, the cost-benefit disappears when you hit the rollover limit. The average book price for the monthly platinum subscription is a few cents less than $11.50 and two full price audiobooks from the Google Play Store could easily cost four times as much. If you listen to two books each month, Audible looks even more attractive. If you listen to books steadily, but take a little longer than a month to finish a book, Audible is still the best option until you hit the rollover limit. If you listen to one book a month every month, Audible’s $14.95 Gold plan is likely to be cheaper than buying the audiobook from Google, although this will depend on both the price of the book and whether either service has it on sale. Of course, the unused credits roll over with Audible, but sooner or later you’re going to hit the rollover limit at which point you’ll be paying for nothing. With Google, you pay nothing if you don’t listen to a book, while you pay the subscription fee whether you listen to a book or not with Audible.

If you listen to less than one audiobook per month, Google’s audiobooks are the cheaper option.

In general, however, Audible is the cheaper of the two options. It depends on how many audiobooks you listen to each month, the regular purchase price of the books, and whether or not the books are on sale. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to the question of whether Google audiobooks or Amazon’s Audible is the cheapest way to listen to audiobooks.

Audiobooks cost