A mechanism is provided for consumption based digital content rental. Responsive to validating a request from a user to consume the digital content, one or more discrete units of a plurality of discrete units comprised by the digital content are made available to the user. A timer associated with a selected discrete unit is started that records an agreed-to consumption time for the selected discrete unit. The selected discrete unit is presented to the user and then a determination is made as to whether the tinier indicates that the agreed-to consumption time of the selected discrete unit has expired. When the agreed-to consumption time has expired, consumption of the selected discrete unit is ended white leaving each remaining discrete units in the plurality of discrete unit with its own agreed-to consumption time for the user to consume.