Perlego - The best platform for more accessible and affordable books
Ever been a student? If so, you likely have overpaid for textbooks in the past. Perlego solved this problem by collaborating with over 650 publishers to provide users with access to over 200,000 academic and professional e-books.
When this "Spotify for textbooks" welcomed me to their headquarters in late 2018, they were provided with a full list of platform enhancements based on a thorough product evaluation.
How Does Perlego Function?
Perlego collaborates with publishers to provide customers with unrestricted digital access to nonfiction books for a membership price.
The organization collaborates with more than 3,000 publishing companies, including prominent academic publishers such as Wiley, Pearson, and Bloomsbury.
It is possible to download books for offline reading. The service is accessible on desktop computers and mobile devices. Additionally, Perlego provides a variety of study tools, which will be discussed in the next section.
How Many Books Does Perlego Contain?
The collection of Perlego has approximately 700,000 PDF textbooks, including materials in English, Italian, Spanish, and French. From aeronautics to biology, their collection includes over 950 themes and subtopics.
Features and Pricing of Perlego
Here is a list of all the features a Perlego membership includes:
- Access to nearly 700,000 textbooks without restriction: The library at Perlego comprises approximately 700,000 PDFs of textbooks, as well as several nonfiction bestsellers. With a membership to Perlego, you get unrestricted access to their extensive collection.
- Choose from over 950 subjects and subtopics: Perlego offers 24 core themes (including architecture, law, health, and psychology) and over 900 subtopics for more specialized research (such as agricultural law, forensics medicine, and animal psychology).
- Read wherever: Perlego enables online and offline reading via a smartphone, tablet, or computer. Additionally, you may customize your experience by modifying the text size, font, and illumination. Their mobile application is compatible with iOS and Android.
- Students may highlight and store notes, as well as search within books to discover specific material or passages fast.
- One-click referring: The one-click referencing tool facilitates research and essay writing by automatically producing citations for the book you are reading. Create citations in the format of your choice, then copy and paste them.
Pricing
Now for the most crucial information: how much does a Perlego membership cost? The platform provides one monthly and one annual plan:
- The monthly payment is $18
- The annual rate is $144 ($12 per month).
Is Perlego available for Free to Students?
Subscriptions to Perlego are not free and cost between $12 and $18 a month, depending on the plan. However, a 14-day free trial is available to see whether the service is worthwhile for you.
Is Perlego Valuable?
Given that the average cost of college textbooks is $1,240 per year, I would argue that a Perlego membership is well worth the expense since a yearly plan is around 11 percent of what you would spend otherwise.
Regarding their selection, I dug up some of my old college course outlines and searched for some of my old textbooks. They only offered one of the six classes I requested, but to be fair, I did some quite specialized International Relations courses years ago.
Over 700,000 textbooks are a large number, and they cover a vast array of themes and subtopics.
Find Out How Much You'll Save
Before signing up for a free trial, you may check Perlego's library to see whether they have your needed textbooks. Even if they only have one of your books, the monthly subscription could be well worth it, given that a single new textbook can cost anywhere from $80 to $400 or more.
Overall, I believe Perlego is a pretty great resource that I wish I had while I was in college, thus I would strongly advise current students to sign up for a free trial.