Welcome to the battle of getAbstract vs Blinkist! Where a high-achiever book nerd who’s obsessed with time efficiency and getting the best for his money gives you a full breakdown of the two top book summary apps. But first…
Do you know why even billionaires don’t read as much as they say they do?
You won’t see any of them dedicate a full working day to reading even though they can. After all, they have money to last generations.
I’m not saying they’re lazy. They’re not. But think of what reading eight hours a day, every day will do to you. I imagine it would make your brain so numb that you might as well experience brain freeze after brain freeze just to taste ice cream that you can’t fully appreciate anymore.
Here’s another danger that many don’t even realize: People used to go broke from collecting books. And they don’t even read their collection. They literally just stayed on the bookshelves.
I don’t see that happening to you, but let’s face it. Reading entire books is not always the best use of your time because:
- Learning without doing is nothing but squandered potential.
- Time is money. If you could get the same with less, why wouldn’t you?
- Books are expensive.
That’s where book summary apps come in. They distill the message into a shorter and more digestible format so you get all the flavor while leaving out all the mind-numbing fluff.
I have two such apps because I’m a book nerd deep down. So get ready forrrr: getAbstract vs Blinkist.
By the way, if you want a full review of each app, here you go:
GetAbstract Review: Should You Get This Book Summary App?
Blinkist Review | Why it’s my new secret weapon to ultra-success.
getAbstract vs Blinkist Feature Summary
From my experience, the getAbstract app is built so you can share your reads with your colleagues. Blinkist doesn’t have sharing features as it focuses more on enhancing your personal reading experience.
getAbstract
If you’re a high performer who wants nothing more than a corner office, then getAbstract has tons of reading nuggets to help you achieve that. Here are its biggest features:
Create playlists
You know how people used to create mixtapes for a long drive? You can also do that with getAbstract, only with audio summaries. (Definitely not advocating reading and driving!)
With the app, you can compile summaries, press play, and start listening.
Explore channels
getAbstract already has channels built around topics you can access in the Explore Tab. But they also build specialized channels around relevant topics like the Black History Month and the COVID-19 pandemic.
I think of it as wanting to eat at this restaurant but don’t know what exactly I want. The summaries, of course, are the delicious meals on the menu that I can choose from.
Curate personal channels
If you feel that choosing from a non-specialized channel is like playing Where’s Waldo?, you may have to look hard before you find something you’re interested in.
That’s why it’s great that you can also create personal channels where you can share great reads with your colleagues.
And it’s totally up to you how you’ll choose summaries to include in your channel. No rules here. A manager can curate a list based on what they think will help their team, but it can just be your favorite summaries.
Blinkist
If you’re a normal person who lives for the love of books, consider Blinkist your new best friend. They have lots of fun topics that can help you win bragging rights on trivia night with your friends.
With their app, you can:
Highlight texts
You can’t expect me to remember everything even with 10-minute summaries because I’ve already used all my brain space to remember the names of all the Care Bears.(My kids quiz me.)
So I’m super grateful that I can highlight texts on the summaries, so I don’t lose the info I want to remember the most.
They also store all your highlights in one place, so you can read takeaways from different books all at once.
See your progress for each book
How far along are you… in the summary?
With Blinkist, you can see your progress for each book. It shows a green bar for completed books and a blue progress bar on those you haven’t finished yet.
You can also pick up exactly where you left off. There’s a dark blue banner at the bottom of the Library tab that will take you to the last summary you opened, so you can go back to it quickly even if you close the app or go saving new titles for a while.
Enjoy your library offline
You don’t even have to think about it. Everything you save to your library is automatically downloaded for you to read whenever you want even without the internet.
But if you don’t want to waste precious mobile data to do it, you can set it to only download when you’re connected to WiFi.
Which is easier to use getAbstract vs Blinkist?
Winner: Blinkist
If you’ve ever used Netflix on your phone, the browsing experience is pretty much the same for both apps. But I think Blinkist is a little better in terms of app features and convenience.
Reasons you’ll love getAbstract vs Blinkist
1 – Their tabs are more organized.
I love how getAbstract feels like it was designed for me. Sometimes, I want to see the app’s recommendations based on what I read and the content quality. But sometimes, I want to go on my own and find stuff for myself.
And there’s a separate tab for each. What getAbstract puts in two tabs, Blinkist crams into one.
So Blinkist kind of comes off as me trying to fit into the pants I had as a teenager. It probably won’t work. And even if it did, it’s going to look weird.
2 – Only download the summaries you want.
Most of the time, I’m someplace where I can easily download summaries.
So to me, it doesn’t make sense to have stuff automatically downloaded as Blinkist does. I get that it can be convenient, but I don’t live down a nuclear bunker where they probably ration internet data.
But when I do need to download particular summaries, getAbstract lets me do just that with a tap on the screen.
3 – It’s available in more languages.
getAbstract supports seven languages: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, German, and Russian.
So if you want to “accidentally” put your playlists on loudspeakers for your boss to know that you understand Spanish, then you can. Blinkist is only available in two.
Reasons you’ll love Blinkist vs getAbstract
1 – It has more sorting options.
When you’re randomly saving books, it’s not easy to look for those titles later on. That’s why I found it super useful that I can search by most recently added or opened, by reading progress, and alphabetically.
2 – It has more app features to improve your reading experience.
Blinkist knows how people read, and they incorporate features in the app to make the experience better. The app almost feels like a cross between Kindle and getAbstract, making it the ultimate reading app.
3 – It’s compatible with more devices.
Apart from your phone and PC, you can also connect with Kindle and Evernote. You can export the written summaries to your Kindle so you can read on an app you’re already comfortable with.
And remember how you can highlight passages? You can sync them all to your Evernote notebook and be able to search through them.
Summary Collection Comparison
Collection Size – getAbstract vs Blinkist
Winner: getAbstract
With a library of over 20,000+ summaries and growing daily, getAbstract gives you more to choose from. They’re adding more summaries at a faster rate than you can read them, so there are always new titles to discover.
Meanwhile, Blinkist’s library is way smaller at only 4,000. In 2018, they had around 3,000 titles. So at this rate, they’re making one new summary per day.
Topics – getAbstract vs Blinkist
Winner: It depends on what you’re looking for
getAbstract vs Blinkist? Not really a competition in this arena because again, it depends.
If you’re looking for fun topics like Creativity, Parenting, and Philosophy, then you’ll like Blinkist more. It’s a great option for normal people who don’t live and breathe to kill it in the corporate world.
For personal and professional development, you’ll get more from getAbstract. They have a huge collection of titles on topics like corporate communication, marketing, and corporate finance.
But they also have literary classics in case you want to take a break from being a type-A high performer.
Types of summaries available
Here, it’s no competition between getAbstract vs Blinkist because both let you consume summaries in these two formats:
1 – Text
Winner: getAbstract
getAbstract text summaries are way more organized and more readable than Blinkist. They divide each summary into different parts:
- Book rating set by getAbstract
- Recommendation on who will likely benefit from reading
- Takeaways
- A full summary
- Author’s biography
- Link to the actual book
- Comments from other users
It’s structured in a way that I don’t have to go through blocks after blocks of text…which really, is just a little better than reading the book instead.
Blinkist just has their summaries in paragraphs. But its redeeming factor for me is I can highlight texts, so going back to the summaries feel a little more personalized.
2 – Audio
Winner: Blinkist
The audio quality is pretty much the same for both. But Blinkist wins because they have an audio recording for every summary in their collection.
Meanwhile, getAbstract only has it for around 50% of their summaries.
They do have a way larger library, but it’s kind of frustrating sometimes that I can’t include some summaries in my playlist because they’re not available on audio.
Blinkist vs getAbstract Subscription Plans and my Recommendations
getAbstract Subscription Plans
getAbstract is pricier than Blinkist. But they offer students huge discounts, while journalists get everything on the house.
Starter
$99/year or free for students
If your goal is personal development, this may be the plan for you. Just don’t expect much help for your career.
Although they boast 20,000+ summaries on their app, you’ll only access around 5,000. But honestly, that’s still a lot.
At 10 minutes per summary, it will take you nearly 35 days of no sleeping, no eating, and no doing anything but consuming summaries to get through their Starter plan collection.
I assume you don’t want to quit sleep or your job. And with the number of available titles growing every day, you’ll never run out of summaries to read.
Pro (Recommended for business people)
$299/year or $99/year for students
The Starter plan is good, but this is some next-level stuff. Under the Pro plan, you’ll unlock all the app features and the entire 20,000+ collection.
Let’s do the math. If only 5,000 books are for personal development, then you have the rest (more than 15,000 titles) are for professional development – the type of content that can get your career to the next level.
Sure, it’s more expensive than the first one but isn’t your career worth it?
And $300 to learn how to shoot yourself to the top of the corporate ladder is an easy decision to make for business people.
Enterprise
Custom quote available at request
Just like with most subscriptions for companies, you won’t know how much it costs until you inquire. They design the plan according to the specific needs of an organization.
This includes everything in the pro plan as well as pretty neat features like company-customized channels.
Blinkist Plans
Blinkist is cheaper, but they don’t offer discounts to anyone.
Basic
And by basic, they mean basic. You can only read one random summary per day, and that’s it. So no, I don’t recommend this at all UNLESS you just want to see what the summaries look like. On the plus side, it’s free.
Premium (Recommended for anyone)
$99.99/year
With the premium version, you get everything that Blinkist has to offer. And this is their only paid subscription, so you don’t get bummed that you have to pay more to access more stuff.
My only advice, don’t pay monthly unless you’re into burning money because it doubles the cost of the subscription.
Which offers the best value for money? It’s a tie!
Let’s be honest. You have a life. You’re not going to spend all your free time going through the summaries.
So even though getAbstract has a way more expansive library, the clear winner BASED ON PRICE POINT ALONE is Blinkist. They have more fun topics like history and parenting. Even if they don’t offer massive discounts if you get the annual plan (which they do!), their monthly subscription is still way lower.
But getAbstract can still be worth it if you want to:
· Improve your career with stuff you learn from books.
· Dedicate more time to reading summaries.
· Spend more cash to fast-track your way to raises and promotions.
So really, it’s not just about how much it costs. You have to consider why you’re getting a book summary app in the first place. A $300 yearly investment doesn’t sound so bad if you get even just a $1,000 raise because of what you learned in getAbstract.
So even assuming that you negotiate like a nervous teenage boy asking a girl out on a date, you’re already getting more than 200% ROI. I’m sure you’ve grown a lot since then, so I’m sure you can do better than a small raise, further increasing potential value for money.
TL;DR getAbstract vs Blinkist: My Verdict
Reading is important and the battle of getAbstract vs Blinkist is a tough one. I have both getAbstract Pro and Blinkist Premium because I’m a hybrid of business-y and fun… or so I would like to think. Based on my experience using the app, I can honestly say what’s better depends on what’s important to you.
Here are a few suggestions on choosing::
Best for normal people who just like more content – Blinkist
Blinkist doesn’t get too serious or business-y to the point of boring the normie in me. Sometimes, I want to read stuff just because, you know?
That’s why I think this app is better if you want more access to more fun topics like biography and religion. It’s way cheaper too, which is an argument you shouldn’t ever use to justify buying gas station sushi.
Best for business people – getAbstract
If you’re really into work and management, then getAbstract is for you.
They have topics centered around business and doing business stuff better, so it’s a great option to help supercharge your team’s skills and maximize their effectiveness. They have the enterprise plan for this.
Orrrr you can fly solo and get the Pro plan to up your chances of landing that promotion.
Best as a gift – Blinkist
Not all people will appreciate business stuff, and the holiday season isn’t the best time to force them.
If you have a choice between the two apps, Blinkist is definitely the better option because it has something for everyone and it’s more affordable.
And because you can literally buy an account in less than a minute, you can panic buy subscriptions for your colleagues less than an hour before a Christmas party.
