Updated at: 28-02-2023 - By: Eden Wise

Overview

Need to find a place to get your hands on textbooks at a discount? For your convenience, World Scholarship Vault has compiled a list of the 50 best websites to buy cheap textbooks for college.

One of the most significant expenditures during university is the price of books. Most of a student’s budget goes toward buying textbooks and related college study materials. This article features the best 50 websites to find low-cost textbooks for college.

The majority of the websites selling discounted college textbooks here are among the most popular on the Internet. Before we get to the actual list, we’ll go over some tips for locating and purchasing low-cost digital textbooks for your college courses.

Top Cheap College Textbook Websites

Top cheap college textbook websites

Ebay

Place a bid or buy it now. Due to the large number of book sellers on eBay, you can find both new and used textbooks, including older editions if those will do. The thrill of an auction is yours for the taking if you decide to bid. Potentially lengthy shipping times and the time commitment involved in auctions are drawbacks. How much money you can save is up to the seller’s prices.

Abebooks

Abebooks

Both brand-new and previously owned textbooks can be purchased from this shop. You can even look for books that don’t cost you anything to ship. Promised cost savings range from 50 percent to 90 percent. If you’re new to online book searching, their explanation of what an ISBN is will come in handy.

Amazon

Surely you’ve heard of Amazon. Rent. Buy. Sell. is their slogan for their used and resold college textbooks. For many textbooks, they provide discounts of up to 90%! Some books can be read on a Kindle, and vice versa. If you sign up for Prime Student (which is 50% off regular Prime), you can get free two-day shipping on physical books.

Chegg

You can save up to 90% on textbooks when you buy them from Chegg, another well-known website. They have an extensive rental program and provide ebooks as well. You can also find an online tutor to help you out with your studies (for free up to 30 minutes, then 50 cents per minute after that, so you might want to check out the campus tutoring centers instead).

Allbookstores

Once more, this appears self-evident. To find you the best prices on new and used textbooks, Allbookstores checks thirty of the best online bookstores. Your used textbooks will fetch a good price here.

Dealoz

Dealoz

This page offers a price comparison of textbooks at over 200 different bookstores online. Both buying and renting books, as well as selling your own books, are options. You can find coupons at 97% off and the service is free of charge. Make use of the mobile app while out and about. Sign up now to receive $5 in DealOz Rewards and double the cash back when you make your first purchase.

Worth Books

The mission of Worth Books is to unite, educate, and motivate its readership to effect positive change in the world. Executives and business owners can expand their reputation and clientele by using the site to publish books that tell their stories from the boardroom to the bookstore. In order to help authors achieve their goals, Worth Books offers a variety of services, from ghostwriting to marketing and distribution.

eCampus

New and used books, as well as electronic books and textbook rental services, are just some of the options available to you through eCampus. Renting textbooks can cut your costs by as much as 90%. eCampus, an online bookstore, sells textbooks at a discount.

WinyaBooks

WinyaBooks allows students to buy, sell, and rent college textbooks, and was formerly known as Cheaper College Books and books2cash.

You can probably extrapolate the quality of the other sites offering discounts on college textbooks from the discussion of these few.

ValoreBooks

If you are looking to sell or buy used textbooks online, look no further than ValoreBooks.com. Our marketplace vendors offer cheap textbooks, and our online textbook buy back program pays students more for their used books.

Biblio

Over 50 million used, rare, out-of-print, signed, and first edition books and textbooks are available on Biblio from thousands of independent booksellers around the world. Author, title, keyword, and isbn number searches are all supported.

TextbookPriceComparison

This site scans a large number of online bookstores in order to find the lowest prices on textbooks. Affording a good education doesn’t have to be difficult.

Campus book rentals

Students who are hesitant to rent textbooks from other sources can benefit from using Campus Book Rentals. The website makes it simple to locate both the required book and its price. Over $113 million has been saved for students, as stated on their website. Not bad!

One unique aspect is that renters from Campus Book Rentals are encouraged to use their textbooks as if they were their very own, complete with underlining and other notes, despite the fact that many students worry about returning their books in pristine condition at the end of the semester. What goes around comes around; remember that. The books you rent probably also have notes or highlights from their previous owners.

Better world books

Better world books

Better World Books is a great bookstore for those who care about social justice to buy their books from. Better World Books is an eco-friendly business that rescues used books from landfills and donates them to literacy programs in the United States and around the world. This is in addition to their already low prices on used books.

Unique selling point: Better World Books’ Book for Book promise ensures that for every book bought through their website, another is given to a child in need. Books for Africa and Room to Read are just two of the many charities they work with.

Cengage

Despite its familiarity, you probably don’t want to go through the ordeal of remembering access codes and panicking emails to professors at 3 in the morning. Access to 14,000 digital textbooks, study guides, and test prep options through their brand new Cengage Unlimited eTextbook program is available for $69.99 per semester. That’s a lot cheaper than buying books individually, even used!

One unique aspect of renting from them is that you can determine the length of your lease. If you anticipate needing it for longer than a single academic year, this will be helpful.

Bigwords

BIGWORDS can also be used as a global textbook search engine, searching and comparing prices across all of the most popular online textbook retailers, from Chegg to Amazon. This site displays the lowest possible prices for everything from new copies to rentals to eBooks to access codes, with all additional fees, such as shipping, already factored in. In addition, they quickly and easily check for valid discount codes.

Unlike other sites, BIGWORDS searches for the best buyback prices on textbooks all year long.

Valore

Another great website to find low-cost textbooks for college is ValoreBooks. When you buy your textbooks from Valore online, you can get up to a 90% discount, as stated on their website. The company boasts on its website that its marketplace model can save students an average of $500 annually on textbook costs. The books you purchase from Valore are guaranteed for 30 days if they arrive damaged or you receive the wrong item. However, if the book is in good condition and you change your mind, you will not receive a refund. When you do a search for textbooks on Valore, the results page will show you the list prices of the textbooks as well as the savings you’ll receive if you purchase a used textbook, and those savings can be as high as 90% in many cases. Standard shipping from Valore costs $3.95, and expedited shipping costs $6.95; unfortunately, Valore does not offer free shipping. Valore accepts debit and credit cards from Visa, American Express, MasterCard, and Discover, but not gift cards or PayPal.

TextbookRush

TextbookRush was established in 2002, making it one of the longer-running online bookstores. Like at other low-cost textbook sites, you can look for the books you need by entering the ISBN, author, title, or keyword. Users of TextbookRush can buy, sell, or rent textbooks. TextbookRush advertises that customers can save up to 90% off list price when they purchase textbooks digitally. Plus, all orders over $35 ship for free, and there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, longer than the ones offered by the aforementioned discount textbook websites.

When you use TextbookRush, you can see exactly how much money you’ll save by purchasing a used textbook rather than paying the full retail price. When you buy used textbooks from TextbookRush, you can save a lot of money. Rush Rewards U, TextbookRush’s loyalty program, lets you rack up points toward free textbooks or other perks with every transaction. TextbookRush is one of the best places to find discounted textbooks for college thanks to all of these features.

DiscoverBooks

DiscoverBooks

DiscoverBooks is another reliable online bookstore for college textbooks, and it only charges $0.99 for shipping on each book you order if your total is under $9. All major credit cards, debit cards, and PayPal are accepted as payment methods on DiscoverBooks. When compared to the other sites on our list that sell discounted textbooks, DiscoverBooks typically has the lowest prices. DiscoverBooks doesn’t just sell textbooks at low prices; they also sell best-selling fiction, non-fiction, and books on arts and crafts. When you purchase multiple textbooks from DiscoverBooks, you can save money. They also have a buyback program for when you’re done with your textbooks and want to sell them back for cash. Even better, orders over $9 qualify for free U.S. shipping, which is significantly less than what you’ll find at most other discount textbook websites.

BookScouter

Like BlueRocketBooks, BookScouter compiles and compares sites where you can buy textbooks online for a low price. Users of BookScouter can buy, sell, and rent textbooks for use in higher education. BookScouter is a great resource for finding low-cost college textbooks because it searches over 25 different booksellers to find you the best price. This means that you can often get an entire page’s worth of results when you search for your textbook. BookScouter gives customers the option to buy pre-owned books, brand-new books, or digital textbooks.

BookScouter will highlight the most affordable bookstore in the top right corner of the search results page when you’re looking for a textbook. Using their service to purchase textbooks online is said to result in savings of up to 70 percent. As an aggregator, when you click on the textbook you want to purchase, you will be redirected to a different site where you can finish the transaction. BookScouter isn’t the direct seller or supplier of textbooks, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s one of the best places to buy college textbooks cheaply online, just like other textbook aggregators.

FAQs

What does it mean to rent an e-textbook?

If you choose to rent an e-textbook, you will have access to it electronically for a specified time frame. You can read an e-book on your smartphone, laptop, iPad, tablet, or any other reading device.

Can I write or highlight in rental textbooks?

If you rent a book online, the company probably won’t care if you underline a few sentences or make a few marginal notes.

Conclusion

Buying textbooks is a significant contributor to the high total cost of being a college student. Unfortunately, financial aid and loans rarely cover this. Avoid the college bookstore at all costs if you’re on a tight budget; prices there, even for used books, are exorbitant. Online bookstores often feature sales of used textbooks from students and small bookstores. And you can do your book shopping at any hour of the day or night without ever having to leave your apartment or dorm room when you shop online. You won’t have to worry about making a special trip to the campus bookstore; instead, your books will be delivered to you within a few days. If you are short on time, you can choose to have them shipped overnight or expedited. In a nutshell, online shopping is beneficial because it helps you save time and money and provides security.