Where to Find Cheap University Textbooks in the UK (and the Order to Try Them In)
Your uni library, second-hand sites and student codes can cut textbook costs to almost nothing. Here's the order to try them in, plus the resale trick that changes what every book really costs.
Every guide to cheap textbooks hands you the same shopping list: eBay, World of Books, charity shops, the library. The list is fine. The problem is the order, because the difference between paying £150 for a term's books and paying almost nothing usually comes down to what you check before you spend, not where you shop.
So this guide works differently. It runs in the order that saves the most money, starting with the books you should never buy at all, and it judges every option on net cost, which is what you pay minus what you get back when you sell. A £40 book you resell for £28 is cheaper than a £15 book nobody wants. Once that clicks, the whole textbook problem changes shape.
For context on what's normal, Save the Student's National Student Money Survey puts average spend on course materials at £20 a month. Over a three year degree that's north of £500, and most of it is avoidable. Prices and offers in this guide were checked on 28 July 2026.
How to get free textbooks through your university library
This is the step every "cheap textbooks" list skips, and it's worth more than all the discount codes put together.
Most UK universities now licence core texts as ebooks you already pay for through your fees. Open your module's online reading list (usually run on a system like Talis Aspire or Leganto, linked from your VLE) and look for two things. First, the tags: "essential" means you'll actually use it, while "recommended" and "further reading" are, more often than not, books you will never open. Second, the ebook link: if a title shows as available online through the library, a platform like Kortext or BibliU, or the library's databases, that's the textbook sorted for free. Kortext's student pages explain how the uni-provided version works, including offline downloads, so you're not gambling on campus wifi.
Two more free routes before you spend anything. Your library will hold physical copies of core texts, often in a short loan collection during term, and can usually get anything else through an inter-library loan. And your lecturer knows exactly which chapters the module actually uses, so ask. It's common for a £50 "essential" text to boil down to a handful of key chapters, and most university libraries can legally supply a scanned chapter on request under their copyright licence.
When is the best time to buy university textbooks?
Here's the pattern nobody mentions. Every September, thousands of freshers buy their full reading list in week one, second-hand prices jump with the demand, and by November the seminar room consensus is that half those books were never needed.
Waiting is the tactic. Go to your first week of lectures with nothing but the free options above, see which books you reach for repeatedly, then buy just those. You'll buy fewer books, and you'll buy them after the September rush rather than during it.
If you want to plan further ahead, the used market is at its friendliest in early summer, when finalists clear their shelves and listings pile up. June to July is the buyer's window, September is the seller's. Which is also your cue for the other end of the trade, but we'll get to selling in a minute.
How to calculate the net cost of a textbook
Before comparing shops, change the question from "what does it cost?" to "what will it have cost me by the time I sell it on?". Here's an illustrative example for a £45 core text, using typical second-hand markdowns:
- New at full price: £45, sell it on for around £15 next summer. Net cost £30.
- Good used copy: £25, sell for the same £15. Net cost £10.
- Previous edition: £8, worth a couple of pounds after. Net cost £6.
- Borrowed or read via your uni's ebook licence: £0.
Same book, four prices. And there's a trick that makes this practical rather than theoretical: before buying any expensive book, check its resale value first. Buyback sites like We Buy Books give you an instant offer when you type in the ISBN, with free postage and payment the day after your books arrive. Checking the offer before you buy tells you the book's resale floor, so you know whether that £40 hardback is really a £40 decision or a £12 one. Current editions of core texts hold value; niche paperbacks and superseded editions don't.
Where to buy cheap second-hand textbooks in the UK
Once you know which books you genuinely need, second-hand is where the reliable savings are.
Students one year above you. The cheapest stock in the country is sitting in the flat upstairs. Check for a course or society Facebook group, SU book sale or department notice board, and if there isn't one, a message to your course rep asking last year's cohort usually shakes loose half a reading list. No postage, and you can check the edition in person.
World of Books. The UK's biggest second-hand bookseller is strong on academic titles, and the multibuy deals matter here: at the time of writing there's 50% off when you buy three or more pre-loved books, plus regular money-off codes on our World of Books discount codes page. Stack a multibuy with a used price and you're into charity shop territory with a returns policy.
eBay. Best for exact editions, because sellers list the ISBN and photos. Filter to "used" and check completed listings to see what a fair price actually is. eBay also runs regular promo codes on second-hand items, so glance at the current eBay discount codes before checkout, because a code on top of an already-used price is a quiet double discount.
Charity shops near campus. Shops within a mile of a university absorb graduate bookshelves every summer, so July to September is prime hunting. Oxfam's specialist book branches are the ones worth a detour.
How to get discounts on new university textbooks
Sometimes only new will do: a brand new edition, a workbook you'll write in, or a text you'll keep for your career. Even then, don't pay the cover price.
Buy direct from the academic publisher. This is the option most students never think of, and it's often the biggest percentage saving on new copies. Routledge, one of the biggest social science and humanities publishers, runs student discounts on textbooks and ebooks, and there's an exclusive student code on our Routledge discount codes page at the time of writing.
Waterstones, with the right discount. Students get a choice here, and it's an either/or: the Plus Student card adds 5% off every purchase on top of the stamp scheme, while a UNiDAYS code gets 10% off online but can't be combined with Plus Student. For a big textbook order, run both numbers. Our guide to Waterstones Plus explains how the stamps work, and it's worth checking current Waterstones discount codes before any order over £25.
Amazon, ideally on a Prime Student account. Prime Student includes 10% off thousands of textbooks alongside the free delivery, and the membership itself is free for the first six months and half price after. The trial and the latest offers are usually listed among our Amazon discount codes. Used copies sold through Amazon are also worth a look while you're there, because they sit on the same product page as the new price.
Are textbook subscription platforms worth it? (Perlego, Kortext & OpenStax)
If your subject leans on standard first-year material, there may be a completely free, completely legal textbook covering it. OpenStax publishes peer-reviewed textbooks you can read online or download at no cost, and it's strongest in maths, sciences, economics, psychology and business. They won't match a UK module reading list line for line, but as a second explanation of a topic you're stuck on, free is unbeatable.
Perlego is the subscription option, a Netflix-style library of over a million academic and professional titles. It sells two plans, Essential and Complete, billed monthly, semesterly or yearly, with the longer plans meaningfully cheaper; check the current rates on Perlego's pricing page against your reading list before committing. The honest maths: a subscription beats buying only if several of your actual set texts are in its library, so search for them on the free trial before you pay anything.
You'll notice we haven't listed the pirate ebook sites that some student guides quietly point to. Setting aside that the downloads are often outdated scans with missing pages, they rip off the academics whose royalties fund the next edition, and university plagiarism software isn't the only thing that logs where your PDFs come from. With this many legal routes to a free or nearly free copy, it's a bad trade.
Can you use older editions of university textbooks?
Usually yes, and this is where some of the steepest discounts live, because the used market treats superseded editions as nearly worthless even when the content barely changed.
Do a two-minute check before buying one. Compare the contents pages of the old and new editions (publishers show these online), and ask your lecturer or check the module handbook to see whether the edition is specified for a reason. Chapter numbering sometimes shifts between editions, which matters when a seminar sheet says "read chapter 7".
When shouldn't you chance it? Anything where the content itself dates: law and tax, where legislation moves yearly, clinical subjects, and anything examined against the latest referencing or regulatory standards. One more trap in the bargain bins: international editions. They're legal to buy, and often dramatically cheaper, but page numbers and end-of-chapter questions can differ from the UK printing, which gets annoying the first time your tutor sets "questions 3 to 9 on page 214".
How and when to sell used textbooks for maximum profit
This is the step that turns everything above into a system, because selling well is what makes buying nearly free.
Timing first: sell in late August and September, when the next cohort is buying and prices peak. Selling in June, when every other finalist is flooding the market, is how you get offered pennies.
Where to sell depends on effort. Buyback sites like We Buy Books are the fast lane: scan, post for free, get paid. eBay and Vinted usually fetch more for current editions of core texts if you can be bothered with listings and postage. And keep an eye on trade-in offers from the big second-hand sellers; World of Books, for instance, has been running a student bonus on book trade-ins, listed on the same World of Books page as its buying codes.
One last habit worth building: keep your textbooks clean. No highlighter, notes on paper instead of margins, and the resale value that makes the net cost maths work stays intact. The students who treat their reading list as stock they're holding for a year, not stuff they own, are the ones who get through a degree spending less on books than everyone else spends in a term.
Textbooks are only one line of the student budget, of course. Our student discounts hub rounds up what else your student status gets you, and our guide to saving on university essentials covers the rest of the kit list.
Prices and offers checked on 28 July 2026.
