Kindle Plus is the new name for Kindle Unlimited. Amazon quietly renamed its reading subscription this week and, along with the new name, expanded the service’s audiobook library with thousands of additional titles — including books narrated by artificial intelligence. The price stays at $11.99 a month, and everything subscribers already had still works. Here’s the full rundown of what it is, what changed, and whether it’s worth your money.
What Is Kindle Plus?
Kindle Plus is Amazon’s subscription service for borrowing digital books — the same service that, until this week, was called Kindle Unlimited. Amazon announced the rebrand to subscribers by email, per Engadget, and the new Kindle+ branding is now live across Amazon’s website and subscription landing pages.
It works exactly as the old service did at its core: subscribers get unlimited borrowing from a catalog of millions of ebooks, comics, manga, and magazines, and can read them on a Kindle device or through the free Kindle app on a phone, tablet, computer, or the web. What the “+” signals is audio: Kindle Plus puts audiobooks front and center for the first time, with a much bigger selection of listenable titles than the service ever offered before.
If you’re an existing Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you didn’t need to do anything. Amazon says reading history, bookmarks, notes, and saved titles all carry over directly.
Kindle Plus Price and Free Trial
Here’s the good news for the wallet: Kindle Plus costs $11.99 per month — the same price Kindle Unlimited moved to in 2025, and the same price it charges today. The rebrand and the audiobook expansion come at no extra cost to subscribers, Amazon spokesperson Josh Pflug told The Verge.
A 30-day free trial is available for new subscribers, the standard try-before-you-buy window Amazon has long offered. And as before, it’s entirely separate from Amazon Prime — you don’t need a Prime membership to subscribe, and Prime membership doesn’t include it.
Canadian subscribers are already seeing the new Kindle+ name, with pricing unchanged at $11.99 a month (in Canadian dollars) and the same 30-day free trial. There’s a catch for Canada, though — more on that below.
What’s Actually New: Audiobooks Take Center Stage
The one meaningful change is the audiobook library. Amazon says subscribers now get “thousands more audiobooks” on top of everything the service already had, and there are two routes those new titles arrive through:
- Virtual Voice — AI narration. Amazon’s free tool lets Kindle Direct Publishing authors generate audiobooks with AI-narrated “virtual voice” without hiring a human narrator. New titles enrolled in KDP Select automatically become eligible, and authors can add AI narration to books they’ve already published. Thousands of these AI-narrated titles are now part of the expanded catalog.
- ACX human-narrated audiobooks. Titles produced through Audible’s Audiobook Creation Exchange marketplace — traditionally narrated by people — are also being enrolled into the service, starting with US subscribers.
The companion-audio angle matters: for thousands of ebooks, subscribers can already switch between reading and listening and pick up where they left off. The expanded catalog makes that read-listen combo available across far more titles — Amazon’s pitch is that you can keep reading an ebook and then continue it with narration as you go about your day.
Authors enrolled in the program earn revenue based on pages read rather than downloads, ZDNet notes — the same model Kindle Unlimited has used for years.
What Hasn’t Changed in Kindle Plus
For all the new branding, most of the subscription works exactly as before:
- Borrowing limit: up to 20 digital books, audiobooks, or comics at a time, with no due dates. Return one, borrow another.
- Library scope: the same rotating catalog of millions of ebooks, plus magazines, comics, and manga.
- Your stuff carries over: reading history, bookmarks, notes, and saved titles all transfer automatically.
- Devices: works on Kindle e-readers — including Amazon’s redesigned lineup — and the Kindle app across iPhone, iPad, Android, and the web.
In other words, if you never touch the audiobook side, your experience is identical to the old Kindle Unlimited with a new logo.
Kindle Plus Availability: US Gets Audiobooks First
One wrinkle: the audiobook expansion is rolling out to US subscribers first. In Canada, the name change has arrived but the audiobook perks haven’t — Canadian subscribers pay the same $11.99 (CAD) without getting the new listenable titles yet, effectively paying the same for less, as iPhone in Canada pointed out. Amazon says audiobooks are coming to “more marketplaces,” but hasn’t named countries or shared a timeline.
It’s the latest Kindle perk to skip Canada at launch — a reminder to check your region’s feature list before subscribing for the audiobooks.
How to Get Kindle Plus
The rebrand is live now. Amazon has updated its subscription pages and promotional banners with the new name, and new subscribers can sign up through Amazon’s site or inside the Kindle app, with the 30-day free trial applied automatically. Existing Kindle Unlimited members were moved over automatically — no new signup, no new app, no new bill.
If you signed up for Kindle Unlimited years ago and forgot it was still billing you, you may now see “Kindle+” on your statement. Same charge, same service, new name.
Should You Subscribe to Kindle Plus?
The service makes the most sense for two kinds of people: heavy readers who were already on Kindle Unlimited — for whom it’s simply more value at the same price — and readers who want occasional audiobooks without paying for a separate Audible subscription. With thousands of new audiobooks, including free AI-narrated titles from indie authors, the gap between the service and a dedicated audiobook service just got narrower.
This is one of Amazon’s biggest reading-service moves in years — it follows Amazon’s AI hardware push with the Bee Frontier wearables, and it’s arguably a more consumer-friendly version of the AI-narration trend: real books, read to you, at no extra cost. If you read or listen to more than a book or two a month, the $11.99 is easy math. The 30-day free trial makes it a no-risk test drive — just remember the audiobook expansion is US-only for now if you’re subscribing from Canada.
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