Tech brief

Kindle Unlimited Is Now Kindle+. Here's What Changed for Readers

By , Tech Cheat Codes Team

Published 6 min read

Illustration: an e-reader showing a page of text, with a pair of headphones resting beside it and a small plus sign badge in the corner of the screen.
On this page · 3 sections
  1. The details
  2. What to do now
  3. References

If a book on Amazon shows a little "Kindle+" badge where "Kindle Unlimited" used to be, nothing is wrong with your account. Amazon renamed the service.

What happened: On October 22, Amazon renamed Kindle Unlimited, its monthly e-book subscription, to Kindle+. The price in the U.S. stays at $11.99 a month plus taxes (price as of ; official source). Along with the new name, Amazon is putting more audiobooks into the subscription, including books read aloud by an AI voice instead of a person.

What this means for you: If you already pay for Kindle Unlimited, that same subscription now goes by Kindle+. Nothing on Amazon's Kindle+ pages asks existing members to sign up again. The main difference you'll notice is more titles you can listen to as well as read, and some of those will be computer-narrated.

The details

Kindle+ works the way Kindle Unlimited did. Same deal. You pay monthly and borrow from a catalog Amazon puts at "millions" of e-books, along with thousands of audiobooks, comics, manga and magazines. You can hold up to 20 titles at once, and because there are no due dates and no wait lists, a book you borrow stays on your device for as long as you keep paying, until you return it to make room for something else. You can read on any Kindle e-reader, or use the free Kindle app on a phone, tablet or computer.

The audiobook side is where the change is. Thousands of Kindle+ e-books come with a companion audiobook at no extra cost, which means you can switch between reading a book on your Kindle and listening to the same title on your phone while you drive or fold laundry. To spot those books, look for the headphone icon next to the Kindle+ logo on a book's page, or browse the Kindle+ store and filter by audiobooks.

Some of those new audiobooks come from Virtual Voice, Amazon's tool that lets self-published authors turn their e-books into AI-narrated audiobooks at no cost to the author. It's still an invite-only beta. When a self-published e-book is in Kindle+ and has a Virtual Voice audiobook, that audiobook is automatically included too. Authors who paid human narrators through Audible's ACX service can also opt in their audiobooks if they meet Amazon's requirements. For now, audiobooks in Kindle+ are offered in the U.S. only.

So you'll see two kinds of narration side by side. Some listeners won't care. Our read is that this is a good deal for listeners who just want to get through a self-published mystery series on a commute, and a letdown for people who choose audiobooks for the narrator. The reader-facing Kindle+ pages we checked don't explain how to tell an AI-narrated title from a human one before you borrow it.

Kindle+ is still separate from Prime. Prime doesn't include it. Prime members get one free book a month through Amazon First Reads, and they can browse what Amazon calls "a curated selection" of the Kindle+ catalog.

Two older rules also apply. First, since April 22, 2026, every magazine issue you borrow counts toward your 20-title limit, and new issues no longer arrive automatically. Before that, you could hold up to 50 magazine issues, and anything over 20 borrowed titles was returned automatically by July 30, 2026. If your Kindle+ list looks shorter than you remember, that rule may be why. Second, the catalog changes, and Amazon can pull a title from Kindle+ at any time, so a book you planned to read next month might not be there.

Kindle+ is available in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico and several European countries, among others. Amazon keeps the full list on its customer service site.

With the holidays coming, one more detail is useful. You can give Kindle+ as a gift in 6-, 12- or 24-month lengths, which is an easy present for a reader who already owns a Kindle and keeps asking what to read next, and it doesn't involve guessing which books they already have.

What to do now

If you're already a subscriber, you don't need to do anything. The monthly price hasn't changed, and the charge just carries the new name. To try the new audiobooks, look for the headphone icon on Kindle+ book pages in the Kindle Store.

If you're thinking about canceling because you mostly read in bursts, look at pausing first. Amazon lets you pause the monthly subscription for one month instead of canceling. The pause starts at the end of your billing cycle, and the subscription picks back up on its own afterward. You can't pause during a free trial or a promotional period. To cancel outright, go to the Cancel Kindle+ page in Amazon's help center, sign in to your Amazon account, and select Cancel membership.

If you do cancel, your membership stays active until your next billing date. After that, you lose access to everything you've borrowed through Kindle+, and Amazon doesn't refund fees you've already paid.

Android users who paid through Google Play are the exception. They cancel in Google Play. Open the Google Play Store app, tap Payments & Subscriptions, then Subscriptions, and manage Kindle+ from there.

A name change is also a good moment to check who's sharing your plan. Kindle+ members can share Kindle+ books with their Amazon Family members, so if someone in your home already pays for Kindle+, look at sharing before you pay for a second subscription.

Last, an email about a rename is easy bait. If you get a message telling you to "confirm" or "update" your Kindle+ payment through a link, skip the link. Open the Amazon app or type amazon.com yourself and check your subscription from your account.

References