The fastest way to find beta readers is to ask people who already read your genre: your newsletter or social followers, a genre Facebook group or Discord, the Goodreads Beta Reader Group (29,750 members) or r/BetaReaders, and to offer a read back in exchange. Critique sites like Scribophile and Critique Circle get you feedback chapter by chapter for "points" you earn by critiquing others; paid services like Hidden Gems Books recruit readers for you and send back a questionnaire. Aim for three to five readers who finish, not twenty who stop at chapter four.
Everything below was checked on 10 November 2026 on each site's own pages, with the arithmetic for a 90,000-word novel done for you.
Where to find beta readers: free, swap and paid, side by side
| Where | What it costs | What you get | The rule that trips people up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own readers (newsletter, ARC team, followers) | Free | People who already like your books | Friends and family praise; BookBub's March 2026 survey of authors found free routes bring more sign-ups but lower completion than paid ones |
| Goodreads Beta Reader Group | Free, or the reader's fee in the paid folders | Swaps and volunteer readers by genre | The free section is for free offers only; "Anybody caught using AI and passing it off as their own work will be removed" |
| r/BetaReaders | Free, usually a swap | Whole-manuscript readers | Its rules wiki lists AI-generated writing as not allowed, and treats work already posted publicly as published |
| Scribophile | Free to join; 5 karma per work posted | Line-level critiques, a chapter at a time | Works over about 4,000 words should be split; a work leaves the spotlight after 3 long critiques |
| Critique Circle | Free membership; 3 credits per submission (its FAQ) | Critiques from the queue, a story or chapter at a time | You start with 2 credits, so you critique before you submit |
| BetaBooks | Free for 1 book and 3 readers; $14.99 a month (20 readers per book, Reader Directory); Pro $34.99 a month | Software to send the book and collect feedback; the directory to find readers | BetaBooks Free has no Reader Directory: you recruit the readers yourself |
| Hidden Gems Books beta program | Priced by calculator; $20 non-refundable deposit | Recruited genre readers and a spreadsheet of their answers | 2-reader minimum, charged on at least 20,000 words, 10 questions included, 10 reading days by default |
Checked November 2026: Critique Circle's FAQ pages sit behind a sign-in; its figures here (3 credits to submit, 0.5 credit for a 150-word critique, 1 for 300 words, at most 2 for 900 words) are as its FAQ states them in search results that day. Scribophile doesn't publish how much karma a critique earns, only that longer critiques and critiques of spotlight works earn more.
What a 90,000-word novel costs on a critique site
Critique sites are built for chapters, so a novel has to go up in pieces, and each piece costs points.
| A 90,000-word novel | Scribophile | Critique Circle |
|---|---|---|
| Pieces at the site's size | 23 works of about 4,000 words | 23 chapters, if you keep them at the same size |
| Points to post the whole book | 115 karma (23 × 5) | 69 credits (23 × 3) |
| Critiques you write to earn that | Not published | 35 long critiques (900+ words) to 69 short ones (300+ words) |
| What one round gives each chapter | About 3 long critiques before it leaves the spotlight | Whoever picks it from the queue |
Source: KudoNovel's arithmetic from Scribophile's karma, getting started and life cycle pages and Critique Circle's FAQ figures, 10 November 2026.
The catch is in the last row. A chapter read by whoever is in the queue that week is critiqued by people who didn't read chapter three. You get sharp notes on sentences and very little on whether the middle sags or the twist lands. For that you need a beta reader in the old sense: one person who reads the whole book in order. Use critique sites for your opening chapters, and swap or pay for whole-book readers.
How many beta readers you need
Three to five who finish. Hidden Gems calls 3–5 "ideal for most authors"; Scribophile's guide suggests starting with 3 to 12 and working in rounds, revising between them, and allowing four to six weeks. Three gives you a tiebreaker: one reader confused by the timeline is a taste; two is a problem.
Send a second round after you revise, to new readers. The first group can't unread the old ending.
How to get beta readers for your book: the recruiting post
Readers say yes to a post they can judge in ten seconds. Put these in it, in this order:
- Genre, length and heat: "Cozy mystery, 82,000 words, no on-page violence."
- The two comparison titles a reader of it would have read.
- A two-line pitch.
- What you want: "whole book, in four weeks, a short form after each act."
- What you give back: a swap of equal length, or the fee.
- Content notes, and whether AI tools were used in drafting. Two of the communities in the table above remove AI-written work, so say it up front.
Put together, it reads like this (the book is made up):
[Swap] [82k] [Cozy mystery] The Lighthouse Ledger. For readers of Richard Osman and Elly Griffiths. A retired harbourmaster finds her late husband's logbook has a week missing, the week a trawler went down. Looking for 3 readers for the whole book in four weeks, with a five-question form after each act. I'll read up to 90k back in any adult genre. No on-page violence or sex; one death off the page. Drafted with AI help and revised by hand.
The beta reader feedback form (copy it)
Readers who get no questions send "loved it!" Readers who get twenty stop answering. Hidden Gems includes ten questions in its base price, which is about right. Ask these after each act, not at the end:
- Where did you put the book down, and why? (page or chapter)
- Who did you want to win at this point, and who did you stop caring about?
- Was there a moment you had to flip back to check who someone was?
- What did you think would happen next? (one line)
- Anything you didn't believe?
And once, at the end:
- Would you read the next book? Yes, no, maybe.
- Which scene do you still remember?
- Was the ending earned, or did it come out of nowhere?
A beta reader who stops reading is data: three readers who stall in the same chapter have found your problem.
What a beta reader is, and how it differs from an editor or an ARC reader
A beta reader reads your unpublished draft the way a buyer would and tells you where the story loses them, for free, as a swap, or for a fee. Hidden Gems' FAQ puts it plainly: "Beta readers aren't editors." An editor fixes the book; a developmental editor tells you why the middle sags. ARC readers get the finished book before launch to post reviews. They come after the beta round, when it's too late to move a chapter.
Can AI be a beta reader?
Partly. A model can check a chapter against your notes for continuity, and we showed how in the AI plot hole finder guide. What it can't tell you is where a person got bored, because it doesn't get bored. Use AI for the mechanical pass before readers see the book, so their attention goes on the story instead of on a character whose eyes changed colour.
When a beta reader goes quiet, and keeping the manuscript safe
Agree a date before you send anything, then check in once at the halfway point. Scribophile's guide says to move on if you've heard nothing after eight weeks; a swap partner who hasn't started by then won't. Ask for whatever they've read so far: half a book of notes still shows you where they stalled.
Vet a stranger the cheap way: swap a chapter first and see what comes back. Send a file with your name and "draft, not for sharing" in the header, keep a dated copy of what you sent and to whom, and for a paid service read its terms on who sees the file. Hidden Gems, for one, sends answers back labelled with anonymous reader IDs.
Where each option falls short
- Critique sites read in fragments, and points take time to earn. Scribophile's work locks 30 days after it leaves the spotlight unless you spend another 5 karma.
- BetaBooks organises readers; it doesn't write the feedback. On BetaBooks Free you also recruit the readers yourself.
- Paid services cost more as the book gets longer and the questions more numerous (Hidden Gems publishes a calculator, not a price list), and the readers are strangers to your series.
- Swaps cost you a book's worth of reading time, and a swap partner is not always your target reader.
Get the draft ready in KudoNovel before anyone reads it
Every note a reader spends on a changed eye colour is a note not spent on the story. In KudoNovel you write a chapter paragraph by paragraph, and the story bible (characters, places, items, events) and a running summary of the whole book keep up as you go, so the inspector's name, the victim's age and the day of the week hold from the first chapter to the last. After a Balanced or Novel Expand, the Edit pass reads the draft sentence by sentence and fixes what's illogical, repeated or contradicts the bible.
Then export the book as EPUB 3 or PDF for your readers, or publish chapters to Community Books, where readers read free, comment and give kudos, and pull a chapter back any time. One note: r/BetaReaders treats publicly posted work as published, so keep that draft private if you plan to post there. It's a browser app; you start with one free credit, then buy a pack when you need more. If you're coming from another tool, import the manuscript and its story bible. When the round is done, self-publishing on Amazon KDP or publishing it free online is the next step; KDP's AI disclosure rules apply there too.