If you’re something of a bookworm, then there’s a good chance that you already make your way through plenty of books in the space of a week already, but wouldn’t it be great if you could get through more?
Or what if you’re a student that has left reading a book that you’re meant to be studying a little too late, what happens then?
Well thankfully, there are some great book summary applications out there, which allow you to find out everything you need to know about a book, without having to spend any time reading it!
Two of the most popular of these book summary applications are getAbstract and Blinkist, which can provide you with excellent book summaries in audio format so that you can listen in and learn everything you need to know about a book in under 15 minutes!
But if you want to use one of these applications, then which one is going to be the best one to go for? They both seem similar, but is one better than the other?
So, if you want to know whether from getAbstract vs Blinkist is the best option for you, read through our in-depth comparison guide to find out more about there online tools!
GetAbstract
Overview
Founded in 1999, getAbstract is easily one of the oldest book summary providers around, which is why they have such a good reputation at providing excellent and insightful summaries in minutes, for books that would otherwise take hours to read!
The library held by getAbstract is vast, and they don’t just provide summaries to books, as they also provide summaries for a variety of other content too, including reports, informative articles, and videos, such as TED talks!
So, in a world where it feels like we have a recommendation for books shoved in front of us every hour, it can be hard to try and keep up with all of the books that people are reading and talking about, so using an app like getAbstract is a fantastic way to keep up.
Or you can use it to help learn about things you didn’t know previously!
Library
As previously mentioned, the getAbstract library is huge, and whilst the amount of summaries you’ll be able to read depends on the subscription plan you opt for, there’s a lot to choose from!
Including books on: Leadership, careers, innovation, marketing, technology, professional development, life management, strategy, politics, science, and much more!
Key Features
It’s important for a summary app like this to be stacked with features, and getAbstract doesn’t disappoint, not only are you provided with a summary of the book you want to know more about but you’re also provided with a whole host of information around the book, which helps you to understand more about what you’ve listened to!
- Review: The first section of the book summary will provide you with a small review of the book itself, which will allow you to gather some idea as to what the book is about, as well as the overall quality of the book too.
- Key Takeaways: The summary will also give you some of the key takeaways to be had from the book, which is great if you’re looking for a certain book to read, but are generally unsure whether or not it’s going to be worth reading. It’s also a great feature to have if you’re just looking to recap the events of a book you’ve read previously, without having to spend hours doing it.
- Summary: Of course, the main feature of this app is to provide you with detailed summaries of the books you want to read. Each summary will make use of various headings, boldfacing, and quotes in order to make the summary easier to read for people who are looking to absorb information quickly. The summaries don’t tend to be too long, which is helpful for cutting out any filler, and ensures that you’re provided with the most important information.
- Author Section: After the summary will also be a small section written about the author of the book, which allows you to learn a little more about the person who wrote the book.
- Recommendation: Once you reach the end of the summary, you’ll be given multiple recommendations for new books to discover that might interest you based on what you just read!
These are just a few of the key features, but some of the additional features of getAbstract include the ability to edit your display, text-to-speech for summaries without audio, being able to like, rate, and comment on summaries, as well as the ability to download a summary in order to read it later!
Who Is It For?
As you might be able to tell from the sort of topics and genres available in getAbstract’s library, their content tends to be targeting the professionals, or people involved with a business, who like to keep up to date with a variety of topics and who is constantly striving to improve their knowledge, so for someone who wants to try and learn a little bit about everything, using getAbstract is certainly an excellent choice.
Pricing
If you want to know if getAbstract is for you, then you can try out the app using their offer of a 3-day trial, which grants you full access to the app, so you can check out some of the summaries from a variety of topics, to see if the app is going to be worth your time and money.
So, if you want to go for the cheapest option, then you can pay for getAbstract’s starter plan, which costs $99 annually, and provides you with access to 5,000 summaries for you to listen to.
Some features are missing when compared to the premium plans, such as playlist-making, and offline access, but this is still a good option!
The Pro Plan costs $299 a year, and whilst this might seem like a drastic increase in price, you get access to over 20,000 summaries as well as full access to all of the genres and topics you want to explore.
So if you want access to all of the premium features, as well as access to summaries that are going to help your personal and professional life grow and blossom, it’s certainly a smart investment.
There’s also the enterprise plan for businesses looking to provide their employees with a learning platform and has features such as a dedicated company portal, and even curated company channels!
The price of this plan is flexible, and is dependent on the size of your company!
It’s also worth noting that there is a student discount available for the starter and pro plans, so as long as you have a valid Student ID, you can get a small discount on the cost of these plans.
Summary
Overall, getAbstract is a fantastic platform for learning for a professional who is looking to improve themselves with a range of summaries from a whole variety of different topics and genres.
This might be a little pricey for students even with the student discount, but it’s perfect for the professional, young or old!
Blinkist
Overview
Blinkist was founded in 2012, so is a much newer company than getAbstract, and provides users with 15-minute audio summaries of non-fiction books.
Due to how new it is, Blinkist’s selection pales slightly in comparison to getAbstract, as it only has around 5,500 books available in its library, however, the library is growing month by month, and there are still more than enough book summaries to enjoy, so you shouldn’t have a problem finding something you want to listen to!
So, if you’re an avid non-fiction fan, and feel like there’s currently too much out there for you to catch up on, then investing in Blinkist is an excellent way to learn about loads of new topics by only spending 15 minutes listening in!
Library
As previously mentioned, the library on Blinkist is a little slimmer than it is on getAbstract, but that doesn’t mean that it lacks in choice though, so with over 5,500 summaries for you to access on a wide range of topics, including psychology, entrepreneurship, history, nutrition & health, communication, marketing, investments, religion, parenting, and more, then you can be sure that Blinkist still has a library worth exploring!
Key Features
Blinkist as an app is incredibly minimalistic, with a basic interface and an incredibly concise tone, the entire app is centered around getting you to the summaries with minimal distractions along the way, so you won’t find any advanced sidebars or a load of buttons to help you filter through, which might disappoint some people, but it actually makes the app incredibly easy to navigate.
So, with this minimalism in mind, let’s take a look at some (all) of the features of the app!
- Reading Summaries: When you see a book you want to read in the library, clicking on it will provide you with a brief overview, and you’ll also be prompted with the option to read the summary yourself or listen to the audio of the summary.
Each summary provides you with a table of contents, which allows you to flick between sections, as well as the ability to increase or decrease the font size, and the option of changing the display from light mode (black writing on white background) to dark mode (white writing on black background), which is handy for those read in low lighting conditions.
There’s also a simple button that allows you to engage audio mode, so if you’re finding that the summary is too tiresome to read, you can have someone read it for you instead!
- Listening To A Summary: If you want to listen to a summary instead of reading it, you can click the ‘Listen’ option from the pop-up menu when you select a book, and from there you can listen to the summary one blink (page) at a time until you’ve finished the summary, and if you select the autoplay option found at the bottom of your screen, the app will automatically begin to play books from your library all in a row. There’s also an offline mode if you want to listen to the summaries without any internet connection too.
Using the audio player is super easy, and you can easily skip forwards and backward in 15-second intervals if there’s something you want to recap or skip entirely, and the important takeaways from each blink is shown in the middle of the screen as the audio plays.
Overall, it’s clear to see that the app wants you to spend as little time as possible messing around with toolbars and the app interface, and spend more time reading and listening to all of the available summaries that interest you.
This minimalism will either suit you perfectly, especially if you’re easily distracted, or it might feel slightly too bare, especially in comparison to getAbstract.
So, for more comprehensive summaries, easy navigation, and a seamless audio experience, Blinkist is certainly the app to go for as far as book summary apps are concerned!
Who Is It For?
When you consider the sort of topics and genres available for listening on Blinkist, although there are still sections dedicated to things such as marketing and business, you can tell that Blinkist is designed prominently for the everyday person, as opposed to just being for professionals and people interested in self-development, so if you’re someone who simply just wants to know more about a variety of non-fiction topics, or you have a topic that you want to learn more about, but don’t want to commit to reading any books without knowing whether or not they’ll be worth your time, then Blinkist is an excellent app to choose.
Pricing
Unlike getAbstract, Blinkist actually has a free plan, so there’s no need to pay in order to create an account, however, you don’t get much at all with a free account, as you can only access one summary a day, which is picked entirely at random.
When it comes to paid plans, Blinkist provides you with two options, a monthly plan, and an annual plan.
The monthly plan costs $12.99 a month, and provides you with unlimited access to all of the content available in their library, including the audio versions of each summary.
In addition to this, you also get access to shortcasts, which are short versions of podcasts, the ability to download summaries and read them offline, highlighting, which allows you to highlight text that you think is worth noting, as well as being able to send summaries to your kindle to read on there instead!
However, if you decide to pay the subscription fee annually, it actually works out much cheaper, as you are rewarded with a 50% discount for paying the fee for the year, as opposed to monthly.
This means that rather than paying $12.99 a month, this subscription essentially works out at $6.67 a month instead, which means that if you use the app after 6 months, you’re essentially saving money paying this way!
So, if you’re able to pay the upfront fee for the year, and believe that you’re going to use the app extensively, then it’s definitely worth doing!
Summary
Overall, Blinkist is a much more minimalist app that drives its users directly to its content with no distractions along the way, and although the amount of content available is much less than that of getAbstract, it still has a wide variety of summaries on various topics to get its users engaged, so for the average person looking for an easy way to educate themselves on interesting topics, then this is a great way of doing so!
Comparison
If you want a comparison between the two apps, then here’s a quick guide to some of the key differences between the two!
- Blinkist’s library has a much broader selection, but getAbstract’s content is also much more niche. So if you’re looking for something specific, you might not find it on Blinkist.
- getAbstract’s summaries are more concise and shorter than Blinkist’s summaries, which means you might miss out on key information.
- getAbstract provides you with curated recommendations for new book summaries based upon books you have previously read, whereas Blinkist doesn’t, so it’s up to you to find new content.
- getAbstract is much more expensive than Blinkist, so might not be as friendly to younger people.