If you price-match at Kobo, the extra 10 percent you used to get on top of the difference is gone. The Kobo Price Match Guarantee now credits only the gap between what you paid and what an authorized competitor charges. The change showed up in emails to customers on September 18, 2026. Kobo’s help page, which we read on September 19, 2026, no longer mentions any additional percentage.
The change in Kobo’s words
Kobo’s emails to customers said it had updated the policy to remove the additional 10 percent discount previously offered on top of the competitor’s price. The guarantee will now only match the verified competitor’s price. Kobo issued no press release.
Kobo’s current help page agrees. It says that if you buy an eBook and then find the same book or audiobook cheaper on a competitor’s website, you can ask Kobo to credit the difference, excluding taxes. No extra percentage appears anywhere in the text.
The page carries no effective date and no revision note, so we don’t know the exact day the wording changed on Kobo’s site. All we can confirm is the current text, and the bonus isn’t in it.
What the guarantee gives you now
Apart from the bonus, the process works as before. You buy from Kobo, find the identical title cheaper elsewhere and submit a request, and Kobo issues account credit for the difference. It’s store credit, so nothing goes back to your card.
Kobo publishes these conditions:
- You must have bought the eBook from Kobo within 7 days of submitting the request.
- The competitor’s title must be identical, including the same ISBN.
- The competitor’s price must be in the same currency as your original purchase.
- The competitor must be an authorized eBook retailer located in the same country as you.
- The lower price must not come from an advertising error, a misprint, a combination promotion such as a gift with purchase, an after-sale rebate, a preferred-customer rebate or a similar discount.
- Credits are not redeemable for cash, and there is a limit of one credit per item.
- Kobo verifies and issues credits within 3 business days of an authorized request, and only to the account holder who made the purchase.
Kobo lists the guarantee as available in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and in parts of Europe: Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Readers elsewhere have no price match to lose.
The arithmetic, and the part Kobo does not spell out
Say you paid 14.99 for an eBook, then found the same ISBN for 11.99 at an authorized competitor in your country, in the same currency. The credit is now worked out like this:
credit = Kobo price minus competitor price
That gives 3.00 in account credit, excluding taxes. Under the old policy you also received a further 10 percent. Kobo’s public pages never set out what that 10 percent applied to, so it is unclear whether it was 10 percent of the difference, which would have been 0.30, or 10 percent of the competitor’s price, which would have been 1.20. The gap between those two readings is large, and no current Kobo page resolves it.
Either way, every successful match from now on returns less than the same match did a month ago.
Why the tax line matters more than it looks
Kobo’s page says the credit excludes taxes. In markets that add tax at checkout, the amount you were charged includes tax and the credit you get back doesn’t.
So a match moves you closer to having bought at the lower price, but rarely all the way. The old 10 percent used to close part of that remaining gap. Without it, you cover the whole shortfall. If price matching was a routine habit for you, you’ll notice the difference over a year of buying.
Hardware and pre-orders
Kobo’s price match page says nothing about matching prices on eReaders or accessories. The published terms describe eBooks and audiobooks, so treat hardware as outside the scheme and shop for it on price and timing. If you’re weighing a device, our specification page for the Kobo Clara BW sets out the hardware side of that decision.
Kobo covers pre-orders under a separate Pre-order Price Guarantee. You can only request a price match for a pre-ordered title within 7 days following the book’s official on-sale date. The window runs from the release date, not from the day you placed the pre-order, which trips people up.
Buying habits after the change
Checking a competitor after every purchase used to earn a small reward, because even a tiny price gap returned the difference plus a bonus. Now the credit equals the gap exactly, minus tax, so the effort only pays off on titles where the difference is real money.
Checking prices before you buy is still worth doing, since a lower competitor price is worth more as a purchase decision than as a credit request. Keep the 7-day clock in mind too, because the guarantee expires and Kobo doesn’t remind you.
