Shortform vs. Headway vs. Blinkist: Which is The Best in 2025?
This is the decision I faced back in 2022, when I wanted to start learning from the ideas of the best non-fiction books: “Should I go with Shortform, Headway or Blinkist?”
And, after days of research and testing, I ended up going with Shortform—which I’m still using to this date! The main reason I went with Shortform back in 2022 is that they offered more in-depth summaries.
Buuut. It’s now 2025. So, I think it is time for me to make a new research and find out which is the best book summary app overall this year. And this time I’m gonna document all my research here! So if you are in a similar situation like me, I guarantee this will save you a ton of research time.
Before the Research…
In order to make an accurate and complete comparison, I’ve signed up to Headway and Blinkist (I’m already a subscriber of Shortform) to experience everything for myself, rather than just comparing their marketing brochures.
Sadly, neither Blinkist nor Headway offers free trials on any of their subscription plans, so I had to pay right away to get access. Blinkist used to offer a free trial on the yearly subscription, but as of March 2025 they have removed it :(
Research Day #1: Book Summaries
After comparing a few summaries, it’s clear to me that the information in all these apps is extremely high-quality, and they all have a significant breadth of content (with 1,000+ book summaries).
So, my research here won’t be on these aspects, but rather on the depth and structure of the summaries (which I found to be the key differentiation between these apps).
To illustrate my research, I will take the bestselling book (and one of my all-time favorite books) Antifragile, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. And I will compare the summaries of this book.
Shortform Summary
Shortform summaries have a “1-Page Summary” — which is sort of like a quick overview of the whole book. And for the classics or bestsellers (such as Antifragile) they have a chapter-by-chapter breakdown — where they summarize each chapter of the book. But even the “1-Page Summary” is pretty deep — the audio typically ranges from 25 to 50 minutes. So I think Shortform’s content feels more like study guides than traditional book summaries — which is fantastic for gaining a deeper understanding of the book’s ideas!
They also frequently add clarifications and counterpoints to the summary…
They always have exercises across the summary…
And you can even download any summary as a PDF (so you can read without internet).
Here’s how Shortform’s summary of Antifragile appears on the mobile app…
Another useful feature is that you can make highlights on the summaries (and even write notes on your highlights), and these are automatically tagged (to the book source) and saved…
Headway Summary
In the case of Headway, a summary is a list of “key points”, which are sort of the key ideas of the book.
And they also have a list of “insights”, which are basically one-liners that kind of summarizes the key points themselves (exactly… the summary of the summary!).
So, for the book Antifragile, they have a list of 7 key points (with a conclusion at the end) and 8 insights.
Their app allows you to download any book summary so you can read offline (but the downloads stay within the app, so it’s different from Shortform’s feature to download as PDFs).
Similar to Shortform, you can also make highlights! And these are tagged and saved in your library. Although there’s no possibility to write notes :(
Headway is definitely a mobile-first app. As their desktop site is quite basic — there’s no summary index, it lacks features such as downloads and highlights, and you can’t even switch to dark mode! (if you’re as light-sensitive as I am, good luck reading at night 🫠 ).
Here’s how Headway’s summary of Antifragile looks on the desktop site…
Blinkist Summary
Blinkist summaries, which they call “blinks”, are structured very similarly to Headway. A summary is a list of “key ideas”, and they share a “final summary” at the end.
In the book Antifragile, they have 10 key ideas and the final summary at the end.
Similar to Headway, Blinkist also lets you download (in-app only) any book summary.
Here’s how Blinkist’s summary of Antifragile appears on the mobile app…
Like Shortform and Headway, you can create highlights on Blinkist. But (unlike Shortform) you can’t write notes…
🥁 And the Winner for the “Book Summaries” Category is…
Shortform is the clear winner for book summaries, since they go way beyond just offering a list of overall ideas (as Headway and Blinkist do).
Shortform has (1) Summary per Chapters, (2) Clarifications and Counterpoints, and (3) Exercises.
(1) Their Summary per Chapter is great because it preserves the original structure of the book, which makes the summary closer to the actual book experience. And this also makes Shortform summaries much richer than the others — which means that it will give you a deeper understanding of the ideas of the book.
(2) Their Clarifications and Counterpoints are a useful addition because authors might be biased or ignore the nuances of a specific issue (or simply make mistakes). It fosters a scientific approach on the summaries (the Scientific Methodology is based on a culture of criticism and testability) and it follows perfectly on one of my all-time favorite quotes: “One should not read like a dog obeying its master, but like an eagle hunting its prey.” - Dee Hock (founder of Visa)
(3) Their Exercises across the summary are also a great way to reflect on these ideas and see how they can apply to your own life context.
All three apps let you download their summaries (Shortform in PDF, while Headway and Blinkist in the app itself). Personally, I appreciate this feature because I frequently lose internet connection on my routinely commutes, and I can’t think of something worse than staring at the phone for minutes while the app is trying to load the content 😂.
Finally, all three apps allow you to make highlights on the book summaries. But only Shortform goes beyond that — by also offering the capability to write notes on your highlights.
I’ve actually talked to the team at Shortform and they agreed to give us a 20% discount on the Annual Subscription by signing up with this link!
Research Day #2: Beyond Book Summaries
Shortform, Headway and Blinkist all offer more than just book summaries.
Let’s explore the additional services they provide and see how they compare to each other.
Shortform (Beyond Book Summaries)
Collections → A Collection is a curated list of book summaries that help you improve at a particular skill, or make you more knowledgable on a topic.
Master Guides → These are compilations of ideas from several books to give a comprehensive guide (with differing viewpoints) on a single subject for a deeper understanding.
Articles → Articles on the latest trends and news, which you can also filter by topic.
Podcasts → Here you can find a list of Podcasts, and for each Podcast they have summaries of the episodes. This is a recent feature and it’s still under development. In the pictures below I selected Acquired — one of my all-time favorite podcasts!
Shortform AI → It’s a browser extension that summarizes everything on the internet, from articles and emails to YouTube videos, at a click of a button.
Headway (Beyond Book Summaries)
Collections and Challenges → Similar to Shortform, Headway also offers curated lists of book summaries, either to improve a specific skill or to get better at a particular area. And they also have Challenges — to track your progress on different areas (available only on the mobile app).
Headway's Collections (desktop view)
Blinkist (Beyond Book Summaries)
Guides → These are like mini-courses to help you improve at a particular skill. It’s all audio-based and honestly… it’s really cool!
Collections → Similar to Shortform and Headway, Blinkist also offers curated lists of book summaries.
Shortcasts → Playing with the word Podcasts, Blinkist created Shortcasts — which are logically the summaries of Podcast’s episodes. Although I was not able to find this feature on the desktop version, I did find it easily on the mobile app…
Blinkist AI → Similar to Shortform AI, Blinkist AI is a tool that lets you paste any web link and then generates a summary using AI. The difference with Shortform is that this is not a browser extension, but a tool within Blinkist (in both the desktop version and mobile app).
Live Events → This is the newest feature from Blinkist, and it’s only available on the desktop version.
I think live events are a great complement to the learning experience, but this feature is exclusive to the monthly subscription plan — which is now at a steep price of €59.99 (or $63) per month! (To put it in perspective, this plan used to cost €12.99 ($13.65) per month in August 2024, before the live events feature was introduced.)
Blinkist’s Live Events Honestly, I don’t think these live events justify that 460% price spike, especially when I see that there are only 6 live events scheduled for March 2025 (out of which I’m only mildly interested in half of them) and there are better and cheaper alternatives such as Skillshare, MasterClass, Khan Academy, Coursera, and even YouTube Premium (you can learn from interesting lectures without annoying ads). These platforms offer a much wider selection and have more domain-knowledgeable teachers (e.g./ Aaron Sorkin teaches Screenwriting and Story-telling on MasterClass).
Nevertheless, you can always skip this feature if you go for Blinkist’s yearly subscription (we will explore the category of Price on the 5th day of Research!).
🥁 And the Winner for the Category “Beyond Book Summaries” is…
We have seen that all these three apps offer curated lists of book summaries to help us improve at a specific skill or just become more knowledgeable at a topic. And they all do a pretty good job at this.
But only Shortform and Blinkist offer more than just curated lists, so we can already take Headway out of the race here.
Both Shortform and Blinkist offer Collections, Guides (which Shortform calls Master Guides), Podcasts (which Blinkist calls Shortcasts), and an AI tool to summarize everything on the internet.
So, where do they differ?
As I mentioned before, Shortform AI is a browser extension, whereas Blinkist AI is an internal tool. Which is better? I’m not sure — both have their pros. A browser extension is great because you can work directly on the original content. And an internal tool is also nice because you can save everything neatly into one single place. But personally I don’t really use these AI tools at all. I prefer to just go directly to Chat-GPT and work with the content from there.
Shortform goes a bit beyond Blinkist by also offering Articles. Personally, I like to read Shortform’s news Articles because each article is based on a variety of sources (just like a research paper), thus it’s significantly less biased than an article from any news outlet.
Exclusive to the Monthly Subscription, Blinkist offers Live Events. But this comes at a big price jump and I don’t think is competitive with alternative platforms.
So, who’s the winner in this category?!
I think it’s a tie! Both Shortform and Blinkist offer a wide variety of high-quality services beyond book summaries. But if I had to pick only one app (based purely on this category) I would go with Shortform because of its extra-service: Articles.
And I would definitely avoid Blinkist’s monthly subscription with the added Live Events service. I would much rather go with Shortform and then, if I’m also interested in an educational streaming (and interactive) platform, sign up for MasterClass or Skillshare.
Research Day #3: User Interface
Desktop Interface
Shortform and Blinkist have a great desktop interface. They are very intuitive, easy to navigate, and as feature-rich as their mobile apps.
Headway’s desktop interface is also nice, but it’s not as feature-rich as their mobile app. As I mentioned earlier, you can’t make downloads or highlights, it doesn’t have Challenges, and there’s no possibility to switch to dark mode :(
Mobile Interface
Shortform, Headway and Blinkist have beautiful and intuitive mobile apps.
🥁 And the Winner for the Best User Interface is…
I will give the same winner spot to both Shortform and Blinkist, since they both have a flawless User Interface for both desktop (with their website) and mobile (with their phone app).
But of course, if you are only gonna use the mobile app, then Headway is also right up there!
Research Day #4: Audio Version
Shortform, Headway and Blinkist all offer an audio version with their book summaries.
But… Which sounds the best?
In this area of research, you will also be the judge! Because I’ve recorded an audio sample of the summary of Antifragile (all samples were recorded at 1x speed).
Shortform Audio
Headway Audio
Blinkist Audio
And if you were wondering… You can listen to the book summaries even when the phone screen is off! (on all three apps).
🥁 And the Winner for the best Audio Version is…
I don’t know about you, but my favorite audio was from Blinkist. It just sounds the most natural and I liked the narrator style. Shortform’s audio was also pretty good. But in the case of Headway, I didn’t like the audio.
Personally, I don’t really care about this feature because when I want to listen to something I typically listen to podcasts — and nowadays there are so many good ones! My three favorite ones (in 2024 and 2025): Acquired, Founders, and Philosophize This!
Research Day #5: Price
Shortform Pricing
It was very straightforward to find the pricing. They have a direct section on their website.
How much does Shortform cost?
Monthly Subscription for $24 per month.
Yearly Subscription for $197 per year (equivalent to $16.42 per month).
Both subscription plans offer a 5-day free trial.
Headway Pricing
They don’t tell you the pricing right away. They first make you fill out a 5 - 10 min questionnaire, then they ask for your email, and only then they show you the prices.
I really didn’t like that I had to first invest so much time to find out the prices! But I went through the process and bought the monthly plan.
How much does Headway cost?
Monthly Subscription for $34.46 (or €32.84) per month. They give you a 61% discount on your first subscription payment (if you pay it in less than 10 mins).
Quarterly Subscription for $62.93 (or €59.97) per quarter — equivalent to $20.98 (or €19.99) per month. They give you a 70% discount on your first subscription payment (if you pay it in less than 10 mins).
Yearly Subscription for $136.17 (or €129.77) per year — equivalent to $11.34 (or €10.81) per month. They give you a 61% discount on your first subscription payment (if you pay it in less than 10 mins).
None of the subscription plans offer a free trial.
Blinkist Pricing
The experience here was the same as with Headway. If you want to know the cost, you first have to fill out a 5 - 10 min questionnaire and enter your personal data. So, I did just that and finally got to the meat.
How much does Blinkist cost?
Monthly Subscription goes for $62.95 (or €59.99) per month. It includes live events and Blinkist AI.
Yearly PRO Subscription goes for $146.88 (or €139.98) per year — equivalent to $12.23 (or €11.66) per month. It includes Blinkist AI (but not live events).
Yearly PREMIUM Subscription goes for $83.93 (or €79.99) per year — equivalent to $6.99 (or €6.66) per month. It doesn’t include Blinkist AI or live events.
And for any subscription plan, they give you a 20% discount on your first payment (if you pay it in less than 20 mins).
They used to offer a 7-day free trial for the yearly subscription, but as of March 2025 they have removed it — which I think is a shame since no single payment goes for less than $50.
🥁 And the Winner for the Price Category is…
In this comparison, Blinkist offers the cheapest yearly subscription, while Shortform offers the cheapest monthly subscription.
But if we adjust the price to the value proposition of each service — which I think is the correct way to compare it — then the results are different. Below I share with you my conclusion on which is the best book summary app in 2025 (the app with the highest Value Proposition / Cost Ratio).
Conclusion: Who is The Best in 2025?
It seems to me that Shortform and Blinkist are significantly better than Headway — for the simple reason that Headway offers less than the others, for a similar or even more expensive price. Headway’s desktop interface lacks many important features (such as highlights and downloads), their summaries are quite basic, and they don't offer anything that Shortform or Blinkist aren't already offering.
So, is Headway worth it? Based on my 5-day research, it is not. At least not when we have better options such as Shortform or Blinkist.
Therefore, the real contest is: Shortform vs. Blinkist.
But… Which is better?
Well, if we focus on the core offering of these apps — which is the book summaries — Shortform is definitely the winner. Because Blinkist only offers an overall summary of the book (displayed as a list of “key ideas”), but Shortform goes way beyond that… It not only offers an overall summary, but also makes a summary for each chapter of the book (for classics or bestsellers), adds clarifications and counterpoints, contains exercises across the summary, and even lets you download the summary as a PDF.
Here’s a final list of all features:
In conclusion, Shortform is the Premium book summary app in the market. It offers much more in-depth summaries, and many extra valuable services. So, if you are serious about learning from the best non-fiction books, I would go with Shortform!
I talked to the team at Shortform and they agreed to give us a 20% discount on the Annual Subscription by signing up with this link!
Key Takeaways - Shortform vs. Headway vs. Blinkist
Since I’m making a comparison of book summary apps, I thought it would be appropriate that I also add a summary of this article 😂.
So, here’s a condensed review for each book summary app:
Shortform Review (Key Takeaways)
Shortform has two Subscription Plans:
The Monthly Subscription goes for $24 per month.
The Yearly Subscription costs $197 per year (equivalent to $16.42 per month).
For both of these plans, you can use a 5-day free trial.
It’s available on desktop (as a web) and also on the phone (as a mobile app). Both interfaces are exceptional and intuitive to use.
It’s the only app that…
For the classics or bestsellers, they offer a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the book — where they summarize each chapter. This makes it more like a study guide than a traditional book summary! And for all their book summaries (not just classics or bestsellers) they offer a “1-Page Summary” — which is also pretty deep, the audio duration typically ranges from 25 to 50 minutes.
Adds Clarifications and Counterpoints across the summary. The benefit here is that it gives you a wider perspective on the ideas of the book, and it mitigates potential errors or biases from the book author.
Contains Exercises across the summary. Which is very helpful because it makes you reflect on how you can apply the ideas of the book to your own life.
Lets you highlight and make notes anywhere on the summaries.
Lets you download the summary as a PDF. This is great to read in places with poor internet connection.
Creates Articles on the latest news and trends. I really like these because each article is based off many sources (like a research paper), which makes it way less biased than an article from any news outlet.
Offers an AI browser extension that summarizes everything on the internet, from articles and emails to YouTube videos, at a click of a button.
They offer summaries on Podcast Episodes.
They have Master Guides, which are compilations of ideas from several books to give a comprehensive guide (with differing viewpoints) on a single subject for a deeper understanding.
There is an audio version for all the book summaries. The audio sounds pretty good.
They have curated lists of book summaries to help you improve at a specific skill or learn about a topic.
Based on my 5-day research, this is the best book summary app in 2025!
I talked to the team at Shortform and they agreed to give us a 20% discount on the Annual Subscription by signing up with this link!
Headway App Review (Key Takeaways)
Headway has three Subscription Plans:
The Monthly Subscription goes for $34.46 per month.
The Quarterly Subscription costs $62.93 per quarter (equivalent to $20.98 per month).
The Yearly Subscription goes for $136.17 per year (equivalent to $11.34 per month).
They don’t offer free trials.
Their mobile app is beautiful and easy to use. But their desktop site is pretty basic — no summary index, no downloads, no highlighting, no Challenges, and not even a dark mode switch :(
A book summary consists of a list of “key points”— which gives you the key ideas of the book. The information is high-quality.
There is an audio version for all the book summaries. But when I tested this feature, it didn’t sound good.
They offer a simple highlighting feature (without note-taking).
You can download any book summary to read offline (the downloads are saved in the app).
They have curated lists of book summaries to help you improve at a specific skill or learn about a topic.
Blinkist Review (Key Takeaways)
Blinkist has three Subscription Plans:
The Monthly (PLATINUM) Subscription goes for $62.95 per month. It includes live events and Blinkist AI.
The Yearly (PRO) Subscription goes for $146.88 per year — equivalent to $12.23 per month. It includes Blinkist AI (but not live events).
The Yearly (PREMIUM) Subscription costs $83.93 per year — equivalent to $6.99 per month. It doesn’t include Blinkist AI or live events.
They don’t offer free trials.
It’s available on desktop (as a web) and also on the phone (as a mobile app). Both interfaces are outstanding and intuitive to use.
A book summary consists of a list of “key ideas”— which gives you the key ideas of the book. The information is high-quality.
They offer a simple highlighting feature (without note-taking).
They offer Guides, which are compilations of ideas from several books to give a comprehensive guide (with differing viewpoints) on a single subject for a deeper understanding.
There is an audio version for all the book summaries. The audio sounded incredibly!
You can download any book summary to read offline (the downloads are saved in the app).
They have curated lists of book summaries to help you improve at a specific skill or learn about a topic.
On their Platinum and Pro subscriptions, they offer an AI tool that summarizes everything on the internet and saves it in the app.
Exclusive to the Platinum subscription, they offer live events (Blinkist is the only book summary app that offers this extra service — although it comes at a big price jump and there are only a few live events every month).
They offer summaries on Podcast Episodes.
Thank you so much for such a great post. I really hate starting all those quizes just tonfind out that you always have to pay for everything and even have little to none knowledge of what you will be getting. Therefore thank you for your detailed research! 🙌🏻 🙌🏻 🙌🏻
Wow what a detailed article, this is great! I just use Littler Books now but I used to have Blinkist (didn't know about shortform) and found it too expensive.