I love books, but I rarely finish them these days. My attention span is losing out to 300-page nonfiction doorstoppers. So, to keep learning, I snack on book summary apps and websites. They distil the key ideas in minutes.
Littler Books is one of the simpler and smaller players. Instead of sprawling libraries, it focuses on hand-picked summaries in areas like productivity, creativity, and leadership. The selection totals around 180+ books, and it seems to be a work in progress.
The site is completely free, but you can support it with a small subscription. Bonus features include a “If You Just Remember One Thing” section, summary downloads in various formats (PDF, eBook, DOCx), and more.
StoryShots is one of the most versatile options I’ve tried. It offers detailed summaries in text, audio, video, and even infographic formats. Some titles also come with mind maps, which are great if you’re a visual learner. Personally, I like to listen to the audio summaries while doing chores. Then, follow up with the mindmap, which helps me recall what I read.
One million plus summaries should supply learning insights for a few lifetimes. StoryShots also carries a generous bounty of free titles. You get a 14-day trial, after that, choose a lifetime or a monthly plan. The premium upgrades unlock offline reading and extra features like 100 AI credits for extra-library access.
Download: StoryShots for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
Idea and Digest is a Substack newsletter rather than an app, but it deserves a mention. Every week, it sends carefully distilled insights from books, articles, and other sources straight to your email.
What I like most is the natural vibe — it doesn’t feel automated. The recommendations often nudge me toward books I might not have picked up otherwise.
Best Book Bits takes a community-driven approach. It offers free written summaries of self-help, business, and motivational titles, plus an author’s podcast if you prefer to listen.
The site isn’t the slickest, but the depth is impressive. Some summaries run longer than others, which can feel closer to a study guide than a quick skim. I once used it to refresh myself on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People before an event, and it worked like an instant warm-up.
SoBrief is a mobile and web app that aims to cut straight to the point in 10 minutes. The app’s design is minimal and distraction-free, which matches its purpose.
I’ve tested SoBrief as the free account is limited to three summaries a month. You can unlock audio summaries and PDF/ePub downloads of nearly 74,000 books with a subscription.
Download: SoBrief for Android (as a Progressive Web App) | iOS (Free, with subscriptions)
DeepStash is more of an idea repository than a pure book summary app. Users (and the app itself) break down books, articles, and podcasts into short, “card-like” insights.
It’s lighter than diving into a full book, but still scratches the itch to learn something new. The app also lets you save and categorize insights, which makes it feel like a personal knowledge base you can revisit.
Download: DeepStash for Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
BeFreed is one of the best alternatives to Blinkist. It leans into artificial intelligence to generate key takeaways from almost 10000 books. I trialed it with a few popular nonfiction titles and was surprised at how crisp the AI summaries were.
What makes BeFreed stand out is its interactivity. You can glance at quick summaries, take deep dives, use flash cards, or listen to a short podcast. These are fun ways to reinforce the lessons instead of just skimming bullet points.
Download: BeFreed for iOS (Free trial, in-app purchases available)
This book summary site started as a personal project by Niklas Göke, who wrote summaries of the books he read to help himself remember them. Today, the site has more than 1,300 titles, all available for free.
I subscribe to its newsletter. Each week, I get a short summary with three key lessons from a book in my inbox that’s easy to skim anytime in the day. The summaries are comprehensive and supported by audio, PDF, and video (there’s a YouTube channel too).
Thanks to our attention-addled times, there are a variety of ways to grab book summaries from the web. A good old-fashioned web search with “[book name] + book summary” works well. Then, you can always search for book summaries on YouTube. AI chatbots like ChatGPT are ahead of the curve. In fact, I use ChatGPT to create mini-workbooks from my own book summaries.
Do these services replace the joy of sinking into a full book? Not quite. But they’ve made me less anxious about the stack of unfinished titles on my reading list. Summaries help me decide whether a book is worth my time, revisit ideas I’ve already read, or use learning against doomscrolling in small pockets of the day. You can use these sites and apps to nix the guilt of unfinished books and learn a few life lessons, too.
