Does Listening to an Audiobook Count as Reading?

Short answer: yes. If you listened to the whole book, you read it. You took in the same story, the same argument and the same words, and the research says you probably understood it about as well as someone holding the print copy.

There is one honest caveat. For dense, difficult material, the page still has an edge, mostly because it's easier to slow down and go back. That's a reason to pick the right format for the right book, not a reason to feel like an audiobook doesn't count.

I build an audiobook app, so I'm not neutral on this. Here's what the studies actually found, and where the difference shows up.

What the research says

The best single answer comes from a 2022 meta-analysis by Virginia Clinton-Lisell in the Review of Educational Research. It pooled 46 studies, with more than 4,600 participants, that compared reading with listening to the same text. Overall, comprehension was not reliably different between the two.

The details are worth knowing:

• When readers could set their own pace, reading came out slightly ahead of listening.
• Reading also did better on inferential questions, the kind where you have to connect ideas the text doesn't spell out.
• For plain recall of what happened, the gap was small.

A smaller experiment points the same way. In a 2016 study in SAGE Open, Beth Rogowsky, Barbara Calhoun and Paula Tallal gave adults a chapter of a non-fiction book as an audiobook, as e-text, or as both at once. They found no significant difference in comprehension, either straight away or two weeks later. One limit: the readers used e-text on a screen, not a paper book.

What happens in your brain

A 2019 study in the Journal of Neuroscience by Fatma Deniz and colleagues at UC Berkeley scanned people while they listened to stories and then read the same stories. The maps of where meaning was processed across the brain were almost identical in both cases. The authors concluded that the brain represents the meaning of language the same way whether it arrives through the ears or the eyes.

That doesn't mean listening and reading are the same activity from start to finish. Your eyes decode letters and your ears decode sounds. But once the words are recognised, the work of understanding them looks the same.

Where reading still has an edge

The psychologist Daniel Willingham, who has written about this question for years, puts it simply: the same mental process comprehends sentences whether you heard them or read them, but difficult texts need extra strategies, and print makes those strategies easier to use.

In practice that means:

• Going back. On the page you glance up a paragraph without thinking. With audio you have to rewind and guess how far.
• Your own pace. You can slow down for a tricky sentence and speed through an easy one. A narrator keeps a steady pace.
• Mind-wandering. It's easy to drift off while audio keeps playing, and you may not notice for a few minutes.

So a thriller or a memoir is a great listen. A textbook chapter you'll be tested on is probably better on paper, or with the text in front of you.

Where listening has an edge

Audio has real advantages that a print-versus-audio score doesn't capture:

• A good narrator interprets the text. Tone, accents and timing can make dialogue, sarcasm and poetry easier to follow, especially in classics with old-fashioned language.
• You can read more. Commutes, chores and walks become reading time. A book you finish in audio beats a book that sits on your nightstand.
• It removes a barrier. For many readers with dyslexia or low vision, listening is the difference between reading the book and not reading it at all.

Is listening to an audiobook cheating?

No. The idea comes from treating reading as a test of decoding print, rather than as taking in a book. Unless a teacher specifically wants you to practise reading print, the book you listened to is a book you've read. Willingham's own advice to audiobook listeners was not to feel ashamed.

For school, follow your teacher's guidance, since some assignments are about reading skill itself. For your own reading goals and your Goodreads shelf, count it.

Can you get the best of both?

Yes, by reading and listening at the same time. The evidence here is more modest than the hype: a 2023 meta-analysis by Clinton-Lisell found only a small overall benefit for reading while listening compared with reading alone, and the benefit appeared mainly when the pace was set for the reader rather than self-paced. The same review noted that struggling readers might benefit, but there are too few studies to say for sure.

Where it clearly helps is with the practical weaknesses of audio. If the words are on screen, you can see where you are after your mind wanders, and you can catch a name you didn't quite hear. If you'd like to try it, there's a full guide to immersive reading.

That's what I built HushBook for. It transcribes an audiobook file you can legally import, such as an MP3 or M4B from LibriVox, on your phone, then highlights each word as the narrator reads it. The transcript comes from speech recognition, so unusual names can come out wrong, and HushBook can't import protected Audible downloads. If your books are on Audible and Kindle, Audible's own Read & Listen is the place to start.

The verdict

Listening to an audiobook counts as reading. For most books, you'll understand and remember it about as well as if you'd read the print. For hard, dense material, use print or follow the text while you listen so you can slow down and go back. Either way, the best format is the one that gets you to the last page.

Sources and further reading

• Clinton-Lisell (2022), Review of Educational Research: reading and listening comprehension meta-analysis
• Clinton-Lisell (2023), Educational Research: Theory and Practice: reading while listening vs reading only (full text, ERIC)
• Rogowsky, Calhoun and Tallal (2016), SAGE Open: Does Modality Matter?
• Deniz et al. (2019), Journal of Neuroscience: listening vs reading in the brain (open access)
• UC Berkeley News: a map of the brain can tell what you're reading
• WPR: No, listening to audiobooks isn't cheating, professor says