Speechify alternatives
Reads documents, PDFs and articles aloud in natural voices.
4 of its 5 core features can be rebuilt with AI. Here is one, working, below.
- They makeRevenue estimate on Sensor Tower
- $2M a month
- You pay
- $140 a year
- AI can rebuild
- 4 of 5 core features
Try it
Visual demo only. Copy the prompt below to get the app.
Build it yourself
Real files on your machine, a real database, and it is yours. This one carries the interface as well — the layout, the colours and the shape of the real app, read off its own screens.
Each opens with the prompt loaded and waiting — nothing is sent until you press enter. It is copied at the same time, in case the app is not installed.
Build me a local read-aloud app I own, to replace Speechify. - A web app I run on my own machine: a single Node process serving one page, library in a SQLite file next to it. - Ingest text, Markdown, EPUB, and PDF. Extract clean reading text from PDFs with pdfjs, and strip headers, footers and page numbers. - Ingest a URL by fetching it and extracting the article body with Readability. - Play with the browser's built-in speech engine by default, free and offline, with word-level highlighting. - Optional better voices: if a TTS API key is present in .env, synthesise audio per paragraph, cache the files on disk keyed by text hash, and never pay for the same paragraph twice. - Store playback position per item and resume exactly. - A queue with speed control and a sleep timer. - One command to export any item as an audio file so I can put it on a phone. - Runs on localhost only. No accounts, no telemetry. - Skip: a mobile app, background playback, and cloned voices. - Include a README with setup, the optional key, and what the paid voices cost per hour of audio. ## Look and feel Speechify's own — bright blue on white, very large readable type, a prominent play control, the current word highlighted in a solid block. Generous spacing, clear hierarchy, big tap targets, phone-readable type, system font. Keep the text dark enough to read at a glance: the softness of a palette belongs to the shapes and the fills, never to the words. Nothing I need to read — dates, numbers, labels — in pale grey on white.
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Feature by feature
Every feature, whether AI can rebuild it, and what you would be signing up to keep running if you did. The paid app does that last column for you, and that is most of what the money buys.
| Feature | Core | AI can rebuild | You'd maintain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read any text aloudEvery browser has had a free speech engine built in for over a decade. It costs nothing and works with no internet. | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| Speed control up to 4x | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| Highlight each word as it is read | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| Import documents, PDFs and web pages | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| Natural, human-sounding voicesThis is what the money buys. Your browser's free voice is perfectly clear and slightly robotic; the paid ones are pleasant enough to listen to for an hour. | Yes | Partly | Costs money per minute |
| Remember where you stopped | No | Yes | Nothing |
| Listen with the screen offBackground audio on a phone needs a real installed app. | No | No | Not possible on the web |
| Celebrity and cloned voices | No | No | Licensed, not buildable |
What you give up
- voices pleasant enough to listen to for an hour
- listening with your phone in your pocket and the screen off
- the mobile app and its offline library
- the celebrity voices, which are licensed
Why people still pay
The browser has read text aloud free for a decade, and almost nobody knows. What Speechify sells is a voice you do not mind hearing, and an app that keeps playing when your screen locks.
Or use one somebody already built
Free and open source. No prompt, no building, no subscription.
- Your browser
- Chrome, Safari and Edge all ship a speech engine that any web page can use for free, offline. The demo above is using it right now. (web)
- Piper
- Fast neural text to speech that runs on your own machine, including a Raspberry Pi. The voices are genuinely good. (windows, macos, linux)
Other apps people are freeing
Questions
- Can AI really replace Speechify?
- 4 of its 5 core features, yes. The demo above is what one prompt produced. What it cannot do is on this page too.
- What does Speechify cost?
- About $140 a year on the Premium plan. A handful of basic voices at normal speed. Natural voices and speed control are Premium.
- Is there a free alternative to Speechify?
- Yes: Your browser, Piper. They are listed below, and they are somebody else's finished work rather than yours.