Buying Safari Online (O'Reilly) Membership via ACM

Our company dropped the O’Reilly Safari Online subscription. To keep learning freely, I needed a personal workaround.

The official price is steep: “Safari Books Online costs $39 per month or $399 per year.” If you can afford it, great; if not, read on.

One alternative is to join ACM for $25/year and use that to access Safari. That’s the route I took.

Register for ACM

• Sign up here: https://services.acm.org/public/qj/proflevel/proflevel_control.cfm?level=3&country=China&form_type=Professional&promo=LEVEL
• Choose the lowest tier ($25 ≈ 164.51 RMB).
• Pay via PayPal.
• After payment you’ll be prompted to finish registration. Complete the forms and save the generated username/password.
• Check membership status at https://myacm.acm.org.
• ACM emails renewal reminders annually; renew manually for the same $25 rate.

Log in to Safari Online

• Enter your ACM email (with the @acm.org suffix). Safari redirects to ACM’s login page.
• Use the same username without the @acm.org suffix; the password is unchanged.
• Works across iOS, iPad, and the web.

Notes

• O’Reilly doesn’t limit device count, so multiple people can share the same account (though sharing may violate terms—use judgment).

Reference

• https://learning.acm.org/faq/oreilly-faqs

Final Thoughts

• For $25 a year you gain full access to O’Reilly’s library—not bad.
• I’ve moved away from paper books; they’re bulky and hard to manage. Kindle + O’Reilly cover my needs across languages and topics.