Hello and happy Saturday. I lied. I’m not going to tell you which platform is better because I use and enjoy both. I have conducted an informal analysis on both and would like to share my findings with you, just for fun, but also because you might find this information useful when selecting a platform to consume digital media on.

App “friendliness”/Accessibility

Let me start by saying that KU doesn’t have an app. You have Kindle, and as of recently, it shows you books in your wishlist that you can access via KU. It also doesn’t show every book that meets these criteria because the list has 25 items. Yes, I counted them.

Everand isn’t perfect, either. Since it isn’t liked to my Amazon wishlist (because why would it be?) I have to manually look at each title separately and add it to my saved books on the app.

Now, if we get past that, both apps work pretty similarly: you choose a book, in some cases an audiobook, and you consume it. I have the Kindle app on my phone, my Kindle Fire and my iPad, and the Everand app on my phone and my iPad.

Price

I got a one-month free trial from Kindle Unlimited and a two-month free trial from Everand. KU costs $11.99 plus tax a month, and from what I could gather you have to pay monthly. I could be wrong, and I’d actually love to be because yearly subscriptions tend to be cheaper. Everand is $9.99 a month, and I could’ve sworn they offered yearly subscriptions, but maybe they no longer do. Either way, Everand is cheaper than KU.

Title availability

There is some overlap in terms of the available titles on each platform, and it also happens that some books are available on Everand that aren’t on KU and vice versa. I feel that it’s pretty balanced, and even though I think it would be wasteful for me to subscribe to both services at the same time, I do enjoy alternating between them because they complement each other.

User experience

Like I sad at the beginning of this post, I use and enjoy both services; however, I think that in terms of user experience KU is better. I told you already that the book search is easier on KU because it links to my Amazon wishlist, so I can access the books directly in the Kindle app. Even when I couldn’t do it, I could go to my wishlist, select and borrow the book I wanted, and that was it.

There’s another plus side to Kindle Unlimited, and it’s that in my experience, it is truly unlimited. Let me explain: after you’ve consumed a certain number of books on Everand, many titles become unavailable. Coincidentally (not) they become available again the next month, so after you’ve renewed your subscription. As far as I know, whether you read one or one hundred books in a month, books remain available on Kindle Unlimited. Yes, there is a limit on the number of books you can borrow at a time, but it’s like 20 books, and also, you can continue borrowing more after those have been returned.

Which service do you prefer and why?