How many people can share an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription?

Best answer: Amazon Kindle Unlimited is linked to one Prime membership. Only the primary user can borrow free ebooks; however, that user can freely share borrowed e-books with other Amazon Household members. 

What is Amazon Kindle Unlimited?

Amazon Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service that grants you access to over three million ebooks, as well as thousands of magazines and audiobooks, all for around $10 per month. You can read or listen to this content on Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets or e-ink tablets, as well as any device with a Kindle app.

I've been a subscriber for several years and have found many of my favorite books and titles on the service. For example, both the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series are available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and reading them via subscription is way cheaper than purchasing the titles individually. 

Amazon often runs promotions where you can sign up for multiple months of Kindle Unlimited at a time (two, six, or even 12) for a discounted rate per month. If you're an avid reader, it's a great deal.

Once you're subscribed, you can borrow up to 20 eligible Kindle Unlimited titles at a time, as well as any number of magazines that don't count against your limit. You can browse the dedicated Kindle Unlimited library (opens in new tab), or you'll see eligible books with the Kindle Unlimited badge in standard search results. If you've run out of space, you can just return some titles and re-borrow them later.

How many people can share an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscription?

Technically, a Kindle Unlimited subscription is strictly associated with one Amazon Prime account. You can share your Amazon login with a friend to access your books on their Kindle, but it's against Amazon's terms and conditions, could lead to syncing issues, and would give that person access to your main Amazon account.

So in most cases, your Prime account can support one "family," with one primary adult user, up to four "teens" with monitored access, and children who can access purchased or borrowed content on their Amazon Fire Kids tablets but can't buy anything themselves. The primary login can be shared by two parents or spouses safely, as borrowed Kindle e-books can be read on more than one Kindle simultaneously.

However, you can link one more Prime account to your Amazon Household, so that person has access to their own separate purchases and saved payment info but also gets access to the primary account's content and Prime benefits, including Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Music Unlimited. 

This is a great way for, say, a student leaving for college to keep Prime benefits from their parents but establish their own separate purchases and payment info. Unfortunately, you cannot add two or more separate accounts to a Prime Household.

How to share Amazon Kindle Unlimited ebook access

We have a guide on how to create an Amazon Household you can follow. The quick summary is that you must go to this Manage Your Household (opens in new tab) page, add an adult or teen, and have that person log in to their account to link the two. Then, on that same page, you must Manage Your Family Library and confirm whether you want to share all ebooks, audiobooks, and games by default or have to share them individually.

Even if you enable automatic sharing, the primary Kindle Unlimited user must initiate all borrows. So teen or linked adult accounts will only be able to access Unlimited e-books if they ask the main user to borrow and share them first.

Once the primary user borrows a Kindle Unlimited book on the main account, the secondary user should see it in their library. Otherwise, they can go to the Digital Content page (opens in new tab), search for the ebook in question, and send it to their linked Kindle device.

So that's how different people can access one Kindle Unlimited account! If one person borrowing for everyone sounds like too much work, multiple users can subscribe to Unlimited; otherwise, you'll just have to take advantage of the many ways to get low-cost (or free) e-books and content on your Kindle e-readers.