How Many Books Can a Kindle Hold? [8GB vs 32GB]

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When you are planning to buy a new Kindle, it is perhaps prudent to know the correct model to buy. One parameter to determine the selection of the Kindle model is the number of books that it can hold! But, how many books can a Kindle hold?

On average, a Kindle can hold about 250 to 300 Kindle books for every 1 GB of available disk space. This can vary based on the format of ebooks used. The “epub” file format usually takes less space and stores more books. Likewise, PDF format takes more space for the same book.

The above figure has had some really extensive research behind it! And in this article, I will share all the details with you so that you can make your purchase decision accordingly! 

When I was planning to buy a book for my spouse, I suffered this exact same problem of not being able to determine how many books I could save offline!

Since I couldn’t find a specific answer, I decided to spend several hours painstakingly capturing details of ebooks and audiobooks to come up with an answer that I know works!

So, in this article, I will share all the details with you so you don’t have to spend hours and hours doing exactly what I did! So, let’s get started, shall we?

Pro Tip:
If you don’t have time to read the article and just want to know which Kindle to buy, I’d advise purchasing the Kindle Paperwhite 8 GB if you primarily read books. If you also want to listen to audiobooks, then purchase the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition which comes with 32 GB of space.

What is the Average Size of a Kindle Book?

Before we can truly determine how many books can a Kindle hold, it is perhaps important to understand exactly how much space does a Kindle book take on average!

Generally speaking, the average size of a Kindle book can range from 2.7 MB to 4.5 MB. Kindle books typically contain about 300 to 500 pages. On average, a single page of a Kindle book is about 9 kb in size. However, this can vary based on the number of images and illustrations in the book.

You may be wondering – how can I say this with such precision? As I mentioned earlier, I carried out a detailed experiment to understand exactly what to expect!

Are you ready to geek out?

Here’s what I did – 

I captured the details of over 54 books from Amazon (Kindle Edition). This includes information such as the name of the book, number of pages, file size, and the link to the Amazon page (for cross-reference purposes). 

I only considered either “Best Sellers” or books that are labeled as “Editor’s Choice”. The reason behind this was to choose books that were established and replicate the behavior of a typical user (most people usually buy books that are doing well).

Here’s the complete compilation of the stats to determine the average size of Kindle books –

Please note – the above sheet is scrollable. I would encourage you to scroll down all the way in order to see the findings!

Here’s the conclusion based on the above experiment –

  1. A Kindle book on average contains about 432 pages
  2. The average file size of a Kindle book is about 3922 kb (about 4 MB)
  3. On average, a single page of a Kindle book is about 9 kb. This can vary significantly based on the number of images or illustrations used in the book. However, it does give you a ballpark to arrive at an approximate file size of a book simply based on the number of pages it contains!

Make a note of these stats as these will be used to calculate the exact number of books a Kindle can hold!

What is the Average Size of an Audiobook?

While most use a Kindle to read a book, some users also like to listen to the audiobook version of the book using Audible. But, audiobooks are much longer and take quite a lot more space than a book!

Generally speaking, the average size of an audiobook ranges from 280 MB to 350 MB per book. Most audiobooks take about 28 MB per hour of audio. Typically, the duration of an audiobook is about 10 to 12 hours on average.

While audiobooks provide great flexibility to the user, Amazon doesn’t provide the exact file size of each audiobook. Therefore, it becomes quite difficult to determine the exact number of audiobooks that a Kindle can hold!

By the way – if you don’t use audiobooks, you should really check them out! Audible is currently offering a FREE Trial for 1 month. Using audiobooks allows you to read more books even when you are walking, doing household work, or exercising!

However, I did figure out a workaround as I managed to get the details of the audiobooks in the public domain from Librivox.

I took data from about 30 well-known books in the audio format, and I captured the details including the name of the book, author, duration of the audiobook (in hours and minutes), the file size, and the link to the file (for cross-reference purposes).

Here’s the complete compilation of the stats to determine the average duration and size of an audiobook!

As you may notice, I’ve picked up audiobooks that are classics and are well-known. Furthermore, I’ve randomly picked up a mix of audiobooks; both small and big. 

Here’s the conclusion based on the above assessment – 

  1. On average, an audiobook typically ranges between 10 to 13 hours of audio.
  2. The file size of the audio is about 28.3 MB per hour of audio played. 

Now, granted that 30 books do not constitute a great data set. Some might consider it too small. Ideally, if I had more time, I too would have gone with a bigger database to analyze. 

Also ReadIs Kindle Still Worth Buying? A User’s Honest Review!

However, using these data points, I did a random sampling of over 10 audiobooks from my audible account. It turns out, that 28 MB per hour of audio is almost spot-on for most books I checked. The duration of the book did vary, but I still got an average of about 11 hours!

So, all-in-all, these data points do hold true! I’d encourage you to do a spot check for your files too and let me know in the comments if these work!

How Many Books Can a Kindle Hold?

So, coming back to the main question of this discussion. How many books can a Kindle contain?

Well, the answer to this question depends on multiple factors and it varies specifically on the model of Kindle you purchase. 

Kindle typically comes with models that provide two storage options

  1. 8 GB – such as the Kindle Paperwhite and the Basic Kindle
  2. 32 GB – such as the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition and the Kindle Oasis

Let’s take a look at the total books each storage variant can contain –

How Many Books Can an 8 GB Kindle Hold?

On average, an 8 GB Kindle variant can hold about 1500 to 1800 books. This can vary depending upon the number of images or illustrations in a book and the number of such books purchased. 

It is important to note that you only get about 6 GB of usable space on a typical 8 GB Kindle model.

It is also important to remember that an average Kindle book has a file size of about 4 MB. Thus, 1 GB of storage space on your Kindle can contain about 250 Kindle books (1 GB = 1024 MB. So, 1024/4 is approximately equal to 250 rounded off).

Furthermore, depending upon the type of books you usually read (or listen to) on your Kindle, the actual number of books that you can hold can vary.

I’ve summarized 3 different scenarios for the number of books a Kindle can hold when you are using an 8 GB variant!

As you can see from the above example, 3 scenarios emerge –

  • Scenario 1 – If you only read ebooks on your Kindle
  • Scenario 2 – you read primarily Kindle books, but also listen to some audiobooks
  • Scenario 3 – you prefer to use Kindle for books, audiobooks, as well as comics/magazines.

For scenario 1, an 8 GB Kindle (with 6 GB of usable space) can hold about 1500 books give or take.

Likewise, if you also prefer to listen to some audiobooks as you read your books, an 8 GB Kindle model can allow you to store about 700 books while allowing you access to about 10 audiobooks offline.

Finally, if you prefer to also leverage your Kindle Unlimited account and like to read comics and magazines on your Kindle, the number of Kindle books will be further limited. You can access about 200 ebooks, 15 audiobooks, and 15 comics/magazines (which is still quite a decent amount if you ask me!)

How Many Books Can a 32 GB Kindle Hold?

On average, a 32 GB Kindle variant can hold close to 7000 books! This can vary depending upon the number of images or illustrations in a book, the number of such books downloaded, and the format of books used. 

Like the 8 GB variant, you don’t get 100% space of the 32 GB model for use. In the 32 GB Kindle variant, you can only access about 27 GB of storage space.

As before, I’ve considered the 3 different scenarios for the number of books a Kindle can hold when you are using a 32 GB variant!