How to cancel Kindle Unlimited

Amazon’s biggest focus is naturally on shopping, but it’s really eager to sell you on subscriptions too. Aside from Prime, there are services like Music Unlimited, Prime Video, and, of course, Kindle Unlimited. The last will probably seem like an obvious add-on if you’ve just bought a Kindle e-reader — it grants you a world of reading options each month for the price of a single paperback from the convenience store.

Even if you can afford the ongoing cost of an Unlimited subscription, though, you might find that your original reading ambitions were too high, or that you don’t like Amazon’s selection — not everyone is into thrillers or romance novels, which seem to be the mainstay. Here’s how to get out of a Kindle Unlimited subscription as fast as possible, and what happens when you cancel.

How to cancel Kindle Unlimited

A few quick clicks and you’re free

The cancelation process is straightforward, mercifully — Amazon isn’t going to fight you on the way out, unlike your cable or internet provider. It will offer you an alternative, though, as you’ll see in a second. Follow these steps whenever you’re ready to proceed:

1. Go to Amazon.com’s Your Memberships & Subscriptions page in a web browser. Sign into your account if you’re not already logged in. If you want to return to that page later but don’t have the link handy, you can just mouse over Account & Lists, then select Memberships & Subscriptions (see above).
2. Under your Membership settings, click Cancel Kindle Unlimited Membership.
3. You may be given the option of pausing your subscription for a month. If you take that, your subscription will stop temporarily after the current billing cycle is over.
4. If you’re sure you want to cancel for good, click Cancel Membership.

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What happens when you cancel Kindle Unlimited?

No literary apocalypse, anyway

Once you’ve decided to cancel, you’ll still have access to everything in your Kindle Unlimited account until the current billing cycle is over, by which Amazon means the next time a payment is due. Once that date passes by, however, you’ll lose access to every title you checked out, regardless of how far you were into reading something. Don’t be too trigger-happy with the cancelation button, in other words. You can of course subscribe again later as if you were a new customer, and your progress may re-sync if you’re lucky.

Note that if you choose to pause instead, you can resume your subscription at any time before your paused month is up by going to Kindle Unlimited Central in your web browser. If you don’t resume early, your subscription will kick in again at the start of the next cycle, so make sure your credit card or bank account is ready.

Be aware that you can’t pause if you’re using Kindle Unlimited with a free trial — or any other form of promotion. So if you earned the service as a bonus with another product, you’ve got a finite amount of time to use it at zero cost.