What Are The Best Free Audiobook Websites Recommended On Reddit?

Question

Which free audiobook sites, especially LibriVox or Project Gutenberg alternatives, are actually still active? The Reddit threads seem outdated, so hoping for recent updates from fellow listeners.

Tonya Henry · Answer

Most free audiobooks can be found through Reddit threads about audiobooks. Some popular sources of free public domain audiobooks are LibriVox, and the ‘Open Culture’ list of legally free audiobooks found on the Librivox website. However, for more modern audiobooks, the top source of free audiobooks are often your local library’s digital collection of audiobooks, available through apps such as Libby or Hoopla and requiring only a library card to access. As for collections of short stories of a certain style, there is a free promotion for the collection of Wet Dreams: The Ultimate Steamy Short Stories Collection offered as a free audiobook on some platforms. The stories in this collection are each quick, standalone romantic scenarios, and thus a nice change from longer novels.

Dylan · Answer

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks. I also look for free ones and recently found out about a Reddit community for audiobooks called r/audiobooks. There’s also a wealth of free audiobooks available at LibriVox, particularly for classics such as ‘Pride and Prejudice’ – often recorded by enthusiastic but inexperienced amateur narrators. You can also download free audiobooks from your local library through OverDrive and then sync them to your device. There are also lots of free audiobooks on Spotify’s audiobooks section, if you search for them by genre. There’s also a website called Authors Direct that sometimes gives out free samples and even full books by indie authors. On Reddit, follow the threads for limited time free audiobooks from Audible or Google Play.

Quincy · Answer

I’ve spent hours on the subway researching free audiobooks for commutes past 1am and here are the best I found. There’s the classic (and great) LibriVox – tons of public domain books all read by volunteers. Then there’s the very clean Loyal Books (formerly Books Should Be Free), with a great selection of classic books.

If I want more up-to-date audiobooks, the best place to search for them is Open Culture – it offers links to many free audiobooks that can be found online. There is also the audiobook section of Project Gutenberg – a big library of free e-books with an equally big collection of free audiobooks. If you are into podcasts as well, there is a lot of free content on Audible Stories, but a lot of people share links on Reddit to more unknown websites that offer free audiobooks, such as for example Audiobook Bay. Again, it is worth remembering to check the terms and conditions for the site before downloading any books, but there is definitely enough content to keep you entertained for months.

Rosa · Answer

Reddit recommends LibriVox for classic free audiobooks and Loyal Books for easy free downloads. OverDrive connects with your local library and Spotify has some hidden gems too. Make sure to come back to the original post for updates because often temporary codes for free audiobooks or other obscure free sites like Audiobook Treasury get posted. As always, stick to legal ways of getting your audiobooks to avoid trouble down the road.

Mason · Answer

The Audiobooks community on Reddit is full of gems for people looking for free audiobooks to listen to. For starters, I really enjoy LibriVox, particularly with a British narrator reading the classic Sherlock Holmes stories for free. There are also many more modern titles available for free through audiobook services such as Hoopla, which allows you to create an account using your library card number. Students can also benefit from the large selection of free, publicly streaming audiobooks, paired with free PDFs from Lit2Go, for classic novels that are included in their curriculum. Be sure to stick to the Reddit-approved sources for audiobooks such as Open Culture, which features a curated list of free audiobooks. There are also YouTube channels that upload full-length audiobooks to their channels for free, in which they make money from ads, such as GreenAudioBooks, which has a vast collection of nature-themed audiobooks.

Amy Rankin · Answer

I also really enjoy digging through a large thread to find deep cuts. Like, someone will bring up the BBC Sounds app, which has tons of radio drama adaptations of novels, and then someone else will say the “Myths and Legends” podcast is also pretty much just free audiobooks of folklore.

Wherein the boundaries of this question are necessarily blurred in the digital age of audio, i.e. audiobooks, radio dramatizations, and narrative non-fiction podcasts are all more or less free in various forms and the most enjoyable of free audio sources will probably be hybrid sources of said, and within the warm and geeky community of Reddit users at large, these elusive edge cases will be nevertheless discovered and profiled in comment threads of endless digression and fun, composing the actual body of interesting answer to a given question, quite beyond the bare answers listed here.

Amosa · Answer

The standard lists of the best free audiobooks are somewhat lacking for fans of genre fiction. Although many classic works of literature are now in the public domain, for fans of mystery, science fiction, and horror, works published in the mid-20th century are not included. Most library apps provide access to free audiobooks, but websites that offer free audiobooks are also available, with some pockets of gems.

The best way to search for specific genre work is to ask within your community of interest. Reddit threads for sites like r/printSF or r/horrorlit can offer more insight into the vast archives of public domain work than any general free audiobook site, like the front page of LibriVox. I might suggest searching for a collection within the Internet Archive rather than a general "best free audiobook" list. Your mileage may vary depending on your interests.

So always search for resources within your specific interest community. These resource lists are often specific to a single genre and therefore include far more relevant material than the ‘best of’ type lists that are aimed at everyone in general.

Mechelle · Answer

My two cents on this post after following it for years: First, everyone is always recommending Libby for audiobooks. But yes, getting a decent library card can be difficult for people in rural areas or in counties with lousy digital collections. The listed websites are therefore so much more valuable.

These websites host some of the high-quality, professionally-read public domain works. I can vouch for Lit2Go, ThoughtAudio, and Books Should Be Free, as I have found full readings of works by authors such as Joseph Conrad and Willa Cather on these sites. While the sites I mentioned are ad-supported, the ads are generally not obtrusive. This makes them among my favorite no-strings-attached websites for audiobooks, apart from the ones mentioned on Reddit in answer to the question.

A note about YouTube – there are a ton of YouTube channels dedicated to the preservation of classic literature. While it can be difficult to search for a specific work on the site, adding the words “audiobook full” to the title of a work tends to return a full-length audiobook of that work for free. YouTube isn’t a website for audiobooks per se, but rather a free and accessible medium for searching out and listening to classic literature, and so it’s worth mentioning in the context of this question.

Jane A Onyango · Answer

Of course, the best comments are the ones where people find specific gems within larger sites. For example, I can always find fantastic, dramatic, full-cast audiobook productions of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ or ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ on LibriVox, produced by certain groups, with many voice actors and tons of sound effects, making them rival paid productions. Finding those types of audiobooks on Reddit can be a real treat.

For library apps, the typical tip is to use, say, Libby, but then recommend that users check if their library has partnered with Hoopla to allow for simultaneous loans. Or, suggest that users research libraries that offer free non-resident cards for a fee that is less than that of an Audible subscription. In short, the best recommendation for use of a library app includes the most fine-grained details of use.

Therefore, long, informative posts that thoroughly explain each audiobook option and all of their various features and quirks, as well as especially clever work-arounds and hacks that users have discovered along the way are far more valuable than a simple list of websites. Those posts can transform a simple question about audiobooks into a masterclass on how to get them for free.

henry sullivan · Answer

A long time ago in internet years, I also spent way too long trying to find this type of information on Reddit. In general the bigger book subs recommend the same thing for public domain classics: LibriVox. The quality can vary greatly depending on the volunteer who read it for you. However it is all free, so you can’t go wrong there. Project Gutenberg has an enormous library of texts, but the audio is usually linked to sites like LibriVox and others. For more modern works (post 1928) things tend to get a little murkier and involve using the library.

OverDrive, via its Libby app, seems to be the most consistently-recommended means of obtaining e-book and audiobook content, with most users accessing it via their local library. Many large urban libraries now allow you to sign up for a library card online, and Reddit has a wealth of information on out-of-state Library cards, including the Brooklyn Public Library's (for a small annual fee).

As for the websites, the ‘best’ website is purely subjective, often depending on whether someone wants to listen to classics or more contemporary work while having access to a library. For persistent, free audio books without using a library (and therefore Free), there’s Loyal Books and their interface for the vast LibriVox free library of public domain audio books (and others) as well as Lit2Go, a free audio and e-texts library for students from the University of South Florida.

As with most things on the internet, the most upvoted advice is to use your local library via the Libby app for the newest releases and bestsellers, and then supplement with these dedicated free websites for the deeper cuts and older books.

What Are The Best Free Audiobook Websites Recommended On Reddit?

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