When and How to Pause Your Audible Membership

Part 1. What Does Pause Membership Mean on Audible

Pause membership is a subscription management option on Audible, which can put off the membership expiration date up to 90 days. During the pause, Audible will not charge subscription fees from members and limit access to some membership benefits. If you pause the Premium Plus membership, you can keep all your remaining credits, member discounts, and sales to buy audiobooks. However, all members cannot access resources under the Plus Catalog during the pause.

Part 2. Audible Pause VS Cancel Membership: How to Choose

To help you figure out the difference between Audible pause membership and cancel membership, we have made a comparison form below to display the affected membership benefits of the two options.

When to Pause Audible Membership

According to the form, you can keep your unused credits if you pause your Audible membership. If you have many unused credits in your account and don't want to use them quickly, you'd better pause your membership. Below, we list some situations more suitable for paused Audible membership for your reference.

• You have many unfinished audiobooks to play and need to free up your storage.
• You have plenty of credits close to expiration and want to use them as soon as possible before new credits come.
• You are busy in the next three months and can hardly play Audible books.

When to Cancel Audible Membership

You will lose all membership benefits once you cancel your Audible subscription unless you restart a new subscription. If you are in the situation below, consider canceling your Audible membership.

• You are busy in the near future and unsure when you will have time to play audiobooks again.
• You are not eligible to pause Audible membership and predict less playing frequency of Audible in the future.
• You have bought many audiobooks, but most of them still haven't been played yet.
• You want to play audiobooks on Audible alternatives like Libby and the AudFree Audio Converter.

View also: How to Cancel Audible Subscription on Phone/Computer

Part 3. How to Pause Your Audible Membership

According to the rules of Audible, you can only pause your Audible membership at its website. The Audible app and Amazon website are unable to operate the Audible membership pause. Besides, you cannot pause your membership if you subscribe to Audible through Google Play or Apple App Store. So, if you made a subscription from the Audible website directly, you could do the following to pause the membership for up to 90 days.

Step 1. Visit the Audible website on your browser and log into your account.

Step 2. Hit your profile at the top right and click Account Details on the drop-down menu.

Step 3. Click Pause Membership under the Membership details section.

Step 4. Click Continue to pause your membership.

If you can't find the Pause membership button, you can also ask Audible customer service for help.

Step 1. Visit the Audible Contact us page.

Step 2. Select Membership under the Choose a topic section.

Step 3. Pick Pause My Membership at the input box.

Step 4. Click Chat to communicate directly with Audible customer service.

Notice: Once you pause your membership, you cannot access any audiobooks under Plus Catalog for free, except for the books you bought with credits or money. So, you'd better keep the book you want to play during membership pauses. Move on to the next part to learn how to keep your books before you pause your Audible membership.

Part 4. How to Keep Your Books When Audible Membership Pauses

If you still want to play certain audiobooks during the Audible membership pause, you should download audiobooks from Audible before you complete the membership pausing process. However, you still cannot play them directly during the pause. This is because all the files you download from Audible are in AA/AAX formats, which cannot be recognized if your Audible membership is inactive or by other audio players.

In this case, you need the help of AudFree Audio Converter to convert AA/AAX formats to MP3 and other plain formats to remove the DRM protection in original Audible audiobooks and solve format compatibility problems. Besides, it offers powerful built-in tools to split Audible audiobooks into chapters, keep and edit ID3 tags, increase or decrease audio volumes, and more featured functions. After converting, you can keep your Audible audiobooks forever and play on any device without Audible.

In this part, I will show you how to use the AudFree Audio Converter to keep your Audible audiobooks. Before the tutorials, you need to download audiobooks from Audible and find where are Audible books stored.

Step 1. Import Audible Audio Files

To import your downloaded Audible audio files, click the second Add button at the bottom right of the main interface and navigate to the local folder with Audible downloads.

Notice: If your Audible downloads are on Android, you need to transfer the files to the computer via a USB cable or SD Card. If you use Audible on the iPhone, add Audible books to iTunes and then sync them to iTunes on your computers. After syncing, you can click the first Add button at the bottom right to import audiobooks from iTunes.

Step 2. Define Output Format and Quality

Navigate the Audio icon at the bottom right and click to open the Format Setting window. Here, you can select six output formats, including MP3, M4A, AAC, FLAC, WAV, and M4B, or customize your preferred output quality with codec, channel, sample rate, and bit rate.

Step 3. Export Audible Books to Play Forever

Hit the big Convert button at the bottom right to start the conversion at a faster speed of 30X. You can find your converted files by clicking the Folder icon at the bottom central.

Part 5. FAQs on Pausing Audible Membership

Q1: Can I pause my Audible membership?

A1: Yes, Audible allows subscribers who pay directly from Audible to hold their membership for a long time, 90 days every 12 months. During the pause, Premium Plus members can buy audiobooks with remaining credits or a membership discount. In contrast, the Plus members lost all their membership benefits as free users.

Q2: How long can you pause Audible membership?

A2: You can pause your Audible membership for up to a period of 90 days at once. Within 90 days, you can reactivate your membership at any time.

Q3: How often can you pause Audible membership?

A3: For every 12 months of Audible subscription, you can obtain one chance to pause your Audible membership. For example, if you pause your membership on 1st June and resume it on 1st August, you can only take your next pause after 1st August of next year.

Q4: Why can't I pause my Audible membership?

A4: In fact, Audible set some limits for pausing membership. If you can't pause your Audible membership, you can check whether you are in the following situation.

❌You subscripe Audible membership through Google Play or Apple App Store.

❌You have paused Audible membership once within a year.

❌Your Audible membership is a free trial.

❌You subscribe to a paid Audible membership within 30 days.

Q5: How to resume Audible membership?

A5: Once you are ready to enjoy Audible benefits again, you can reactivate your account at the Audible website, the same as how you pause your membership.

Operation path: Audible > Your Profile > Account details > Membership details > Resume membership

Part 6. Conclusion

Hope you have figured out the Audible membership pause feature and its differences with cancel membership. If you want a temporary break before playing all the books you bought from Audible, you can choose to pause your Audible membership. If you predict you have no time to play audiobooks in over 3 months, you can cancel your membership to save some money. However, if you want to play Audible audiobooks in some of your spare time, you can download the audiobooks you want to play with the assistance of AudFree Audio Downloader.