Review Insights · App Store
Blinkist: Book Summaries Daily
Blinks Labs · 151,443 ratings · ★ 4.8
4.8
★★★★★
151,443 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 19 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"subscription"
10 negative reviews mention this · 53% of all complaints
★★★★★ "No options to cancel. When I chose to cancel my 7 days subscription, the page did not work. It only shows sad emoji and no where to cancel the subscription. I clicked on the emoji and it’s just keep spinning. The help support page is also not working. Don’t use …" - Jess41567
2
"year"
6 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Don’t waste your money. $139 a year for AI book summaries from people I have never heard of. This app is a total ripoff. If you think you will get smarter from reading cliff’s notes for 5 minutes every morning think again!" - Janetters
3
"book"
5 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Don’t waste your money. $139 a year for AI book summaries from people I have never heard of. This app is a total ripoff. If you think you will get smarter from reading cliff’s notes for 5 minutes every morning think again!" - Janetters
4
"blinkist"
5 negative reviews mention this · 26% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Charged for Premium on a "Basic" account - Refund refused. I am extremely disappointed with Blinkist’s predatory renewal practices and lack of accountability. I was recently charged for an annual Premium renewal despite the fact that my account dashboard explicitly listed my status as "Basic" (the …" - B927739$&
5
"work"
4 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Expensive jank. Way too expensive to be this difficult to pause, fast forward, and rewind. Constantly loses my place, constantly plays with no audio, constantly just doesn’t work for no reason" - Farkyfark
6
"cancel"
4 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Caution. Cancelling is difficult. The process is not obvious and there are no auto-renewal reminders and no refunds. Cancellation requests are met with sales tactics." - FR6❤️
7
"reading"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Don’t waste your money. $139 a year for AI book summaries from people I have never heard of. This app is a total ripoff. If you think you will get smarter from reading cliff’s notes for 5 minutes every morning think again!" - Janetters
8
"every"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Don’t waste your money. $139 a year for AI book summaries from people I have never heard of. This app is a total ripoff. If you think you will get smarter from reading cliff’s notes for 5 minutes every morning think again!" - Janetters
9
"difficult"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Caution. Cancelling is difficult. The process is not obvious and there are no auto-renewal reminders and no refunds. Cancellation requests are met with sales tactics." - FR6❤️
10
"auto"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Caution. Cancelling is difficult. The process is not obvious and there are no auto-renewal reminders and no refunds. Cancellation requests are met with sales tactics." - FR6❤️
11
"audio"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Expensive jank. Way too expensive to be this difficult to pause, fast forward, and rewind. Constantly loses my place, constantly plays with no audio, constantly just doesn’t work for no reason" - Farkyfark
12
"doesn"
3 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Expensive jank. Way too expensive to be this difficult to pause, fast forward, and rewind. Constantly loses my place, constantly plays with no audio, constantly just doesn’t work for no reason" - Farkyfark
📋 All 19 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Don’t waste your money
$139 a year for AI book summaries from people I have never heard of. This app is a total ripoff. If you think you will get smarter from reading cliff’s notes for 5 minutes every morning think again!
Caution
Cancelling is difficult. The process is not obvious and there are no auto-renewal reminders and no refunds. Cancellation requests are met with sales tactics.
Expensive jank
Way too expensive to be this difficult to pause, fast forward, and rewind. Constantly loses my place, constantly plays with no audio, constantly just doesn’t work for no reason
No options to cancel
When I chose to cancel my 7 days subscription, the page did not work. It only shows sad emoji and no where to cancel the subscription. I clicked on the emoji and it’s just keep spinning. The help support page is also not working. Don’t use this app.
Pro vs Premium
The first thing that greets me in this app is two expensive subscriptions with the exact same description. Why do I have to go online and search for what the difference is? No thanks.
Charged for Premium on a "Basic" account - Refund refused
I am extremely disappointed with Blinkist’s predatory renewal practices and lack of accountability. I was recently charged for an annual Premium renewal despite the fact that my account dashboard explicitly listed my status as "Basic" (the free tier).
Because the UI showed I was a Basic user, there was no "Cancel Subscription" option available to me. I had no way to stop a renewal that the system claimed didn't exist. I haven't used the app in months and would have canceled long ago if the interface had accurately reflected my status.
When I contacted support, they refused a refund, citing that I am "not a new customer." This is a completely irrelevant excuse. This isn't about a change of heart; it’s about a technical discrepancy on their platform that made it impossible for a user to manage their subscription.
Charging a user while showing them a "Basic" status is misleading at best and a technical bug at worst. Blinkist would rather keep a one-year fee from a non-user than fix a clear error in their system.
Advice to others: Do not trust the account status shown in the app. Check your bank statements and original sign-up emails, because Blinkist’s UI might tell you you’re on the free plan while they’re preparing to charge you for Premium.
Because the UI showed I was a Basic user, there was no "Cancel Subscription" option available to me. I had no way to stop a renewal that the system claimed didn't exist. I haven't used the app in months and would have canceled long ago if the interface had accurately reflected my status.
When I contacted support, they refused a refund, citing that I am "not a new customer." This is a completely irrelevant excuse. This isn't about a change of heart; it’s about a technical discrepancy on their platform that made it impossible for a user to manage their subscription.
Charging a user while showing them a "Basic" status is misleading at best and a technical bug at worst. Blinkist would rather keep a one-year fee from a non-user than fix a clear error in their system.
Advice to others: Do not trust the account status shown in the app. Check your bank statements and original sign-up emails, because Blinkist’s UI might tell you you’re on the free plan while they’re preparing to charge you for Premium.
Capitalism at its finest
So the app itself I do really enjoy. I love how they summarize books in an easy to read outline that covers all the hot topics so that you can maximize absorption when there’s so much knowledge we want to or feel pressured to take in. Super helpful I especially like the shorts, quick overviews of a range of topics so you can discover new topics and delve deeper if you would like to. I do see an actual benefit for this app HOWEVER, the pricing is absolutely outrageous.
I would have to like take out a loan to be able to pay for this and you can only pay upfront for a year, which is just stupid. I’m sorry.
When we’re out here taking out loans to fill our tanks they have the audacity to come in and charge $80 for something you might not even use. When I can go to the library read the whole book for free and have access to their free resources
Just another greedy company lining their pockets by duping the American public by overvaluation of their product and knowing that auto charge, they will never return.
Predatory practices at its finest. New apps sometimes avoid this, but they all inevitably go to the dark side.
Sad because it could have been a very fun and useful app
I would have to like take out a loan to be able to pay for this and you can only pay upfront for a year, which is just stupid. I’m sorry.
When we’re out here taking out loans to fill our tanks they have the audacity to come in and charge $80 for something you might not even use. When I can go to the library read the whole book for free and have access to their free resources
Just another greedy company lining their pockets by duping the American public by overvaluation of their product and knowing that auto charge, they will never return.
Predatory practices at its finest. New apps sometimes avoid this, but they all inevitably go to the dark side.
Sad because it could have been a very fun and useful app
Ai narration is boring
I didn’t realize Blinkist was switching to using AI, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten a year subscription. I used to be able to stay engaged with Blinkist for hours, but with a monotone robot I have to struggle to pay attention. Probably won’t subscribe next year.
Absolute scam, no refund after cancellation
I canceled my Blinkist subscription immediately after realizing it wasn’t for me, but they still charged me for the full next year and refused any refund. Customer service gave me the runaround with scripted nonsense about their “policy” while keeping my money.
This is straight-up deceptive billing. I will be reporting Blinkist to every consumer protection agency, the FTC, BBB, my state’s attorney general, and my credit card company for unauthorized charges. If you’re thinking about subscribing, don’t waste your time or money - they make it easy to sign up and nearly impossible to get a fair refund when you cancel.
Stay away!
This is straight-up deceptive billing. I will be reporting Blinkist to every consumer protection agency, the FTC, BBB, my state’s attorney general, and my credit card company for unauthorized charges. If you’re thinking about subscribing, don’t waste your time or money - they make it easy to sign up and nearly impossible to get a fair refund when you cancel.
Stay away!
Garbage update
Update : yep still sucks
You can’t do a book justice in 7.5 minutes. Features don’t work and snippets at times do not even play. Not worth a dime.
You can’t do a book justice in 7.5 minutes. Features don’t work and snippets at times do not even play. Not worth a dime.
From great idea to complete c***
How can you take a fantastic idea and plan and completely destroy in pursuit of profit? Ask Blinkist. I loved the concept, used the app daily and ended up with a subscription. And then they switched to AI reading it 🙉🙈🙊. Unbearable. What a shame. Would it have been so terrible to focus on quality instead of profit?
Lacks many books
Almost every title on my preferred book list was not yet available to listen on the blinklist app so that was very disappointing. Lacking a lot of faith based titles. After listening to many of the “blinks” (15 min book audio clips) available on the app, I don’t feel that I got many good takeaways other than about the millionaire 5 AM morning routine to maximize your daily routine productivity. This was definitely not worth what I paid for the subscription. I’m greatly unsatisfied with the value of this app and would not recommend.
Predatory Practices
They auto-renewed my subscription with zero advance notice. No reminder email or message before charging my card. When I disputed it, their answer delivered by bot was “don’t care.” Reputable services (Netflix, Spotify, NYT) warn you before they bill. Blinkist doesn’t. Turn off auto-renew immediately if you subscribe, or skip it
Scam
Terrible customer service. I was charged despite not authorizing the purchase and when I immediately requested a refund despite never using the service it was denied. Total scam.
Do not buy
It simply doesn’t work. I reached out to support; address doesn’t exist. I’m out $100 for nothing. Do not buy.
Attempted False Bulling - What Can Consumers Do?
Writing this late Feb ‘26. Months ago I pre-cancelled subscription due to end late July. This week AmEx blocked two $174.99 charges from Blinkest. I’m grateful they caught it, but there does not seem to be a way for me to contact Blinkest.
Extremely buggy
I’ve gotten a lot out of the books I’ve listened to so far. However, this experience is ridiculously buggy. Scrolling is very weird/unreliable. I can pause, scroll the text, then resume and it ends up playing from some other completely different part of the book. Also, sometimes a book won’t highlight the text as it’s read. I can’t seem to just start it reading from where I want it to. Would it be so difficult to add a Play option when selecting a word to have it start playing from there?
This has made for an extremely frustrating experience with the app, almost to the point where I’m going to start looking for alternatives. It’s completely unintuitive how to play, follow along with the text, and hope you don’t do something that will make it start playing somewhere else in the text than you intend.
I’ve also seen chunks of text out of order in a book, coming before where the audio actually starts reading it.
Highlighting is a mess. I’ll select a certain range of text, choose Highlight, and it will move the boundaries of the highlight, leaving off letters at the end and adding more at the beginning. If I tap on a saved highlight, it will open the book but not actually scroll to the highlight.
You can mark a book as finished, yet it will still show up as In Progress if you have ever gone back and looked at something in it again. Marking it as complete does nothing to resolve this.
It would also be nice to have an option to change the reading voice. It bothers me when some sound too expressive, or I’m constantly getting one gender voice when I prefer the other.
This has made for an extremely frustrating experience with the app, almost to the point where I’m going to start looking for alternatives. It’s completely unintuitive how to play, follow along with the text, and hope you don’t do something that will make it start playing somewhere else in the text than you intend.
I’ve also seen chunks of text out of order in a book, coming before where the audio actually starts reading it.
Highlighting is a mess. I’ll select a certain range of text, choose Highlight, and it will move the boundaries of the highlight, leaving off letters at the end and adding more at the beginning. If I tap on a saved highlight, it will open the book but not actually scroll to the highlight.
You can mark a book as finished, yet it will still show up as In Progress if you have ever gone back and looked at something in it again. Marking it as complete does nothing to resolve this.
It would also be nice to have an option to change the reading voice. It bothers me when some sound too expressive, or I’m constantly getting one gender voice when I prefer the other.
Had to Move On
Sadly, after years of being a paid subscriber and enjoying it, I had to move on. They have recently started something that is so annoying … these pop-up dark ads that force you to link to an external website and then have to flip back to the the app to keep using it! For a paying subscriber!
I sent them a letter of complaint and I got an AI generated response telling me how to cancel my subscription. Gotta love the honesty!
Well, I can take a hint. Not responding to my objection at all and instead just telling me how to cancel.
So I just did.
I sent them a letter of complaint and I got an AI generated response telling me how to cancel my subscription. Gotta love the honesty!
Well, I can take a hint. Not responding to my objection at all and instead just telling me how to cancel.
So I just did.
Misleading
I specifically looked for an app that wasn’t subscription based and after I set up my interests it asks you to subscribe for $99 or $139 per year. They don’t list the Subscriptions in the App Store like many other apps.
Sentiment summary
97%
Positive (4-5★)
2%
Neutral (3★)
2%
Negative (1-2★)