Speechify

What it does

Speechify is a consumer-focused text-to-speech app built around listening to existing content rather than producing new voiceover. Its browser extension and mobile/desktop apps can read web pages, PDFs, ebooks, and Google Docs aloud, with OCR support for scanning physical text and adjustable listening speeds aimed at students and professionals who prefer audio to reading.

While Speechify also offers Studio and API products for creating voiceover content, these are secondary to its core reading-app experience, which is what most users associate with the brand. That focus makes it a poor substitute for a video-voiceover or developer-API tool, but a strong choice specifically for turning text you’d otherwise read into audio you can listen to.

Ideal users

• Students and professionals who want to listen to articles, PDFs, or ebooks instead of reading them
• People with dyslexia or other reading differences who benefit from high-quality read-aloud tools
• Anyone who wants a browser extension or mobile app for hands-free, on-the-go listening

Who should avoid it

• You're producing voiceover for videos, podcasts, or e-learning content — Murf AI or ElevenLabs are built for content production, not personal reading
• You need a developer API or voice-agent infrastructure — Cartesia is the better fit

Key features

• Browser extension and mobile/desktop apps that read web pages, Google Docs, PDFs, and ebooks aloud
• OCR scanning to convert photos of physical text into speech
• Listening speeds up to several times normal pace
• AI-generated summaries and a voice assistant for interacting with documents
• Separate Speechify Studio product for creating voiceover/podcast content, and a Speechify API for developers

Pricing

Free — $139/year (Premium, billed annually) or $29/month

Free plan includes a small set of standard voices and capped listening speed. Premium is $29/month billed monthly, or roughly $139/year (about $11.58/month) billed annually, and unlocks 1,000+ voices, 60+ languages, faster listening speeds, OCR, and offline listening. Speechify Studio (voiceover creation) is priced separately, with a free tier (600 credits/month), Studio Starter at $19/month (7,200 credits, voice cloning, commercial usage rights), and Studio Creator at $49/month (28,800 credits); credits are spent at 1/second for voiceover, 3/second for dubbing, and 30/second for avatars. The Speechify API is pay-as-you-go and volume-tiered — text-to-speech runs from about $10 per 1M characters at low volume down to about $6 per 1M characters at the highest self-serve tier, with a free allotment of 50,000 characters and 60 voice-agent minutes per month, and Enterprise volume discounts available. Speechify does not publish a specific education discount for Studio or the API; confirm any education pricing directly with Speechify sales.

Typical workflows

• A student uploads a textbook PDF or lecture notes and listens to it at several times normal speed while commuting.
• A professional forwards long articles or reports to Speechify and listens during a workout instead of reading at a desk.
• Someone with dyslexia uses Speechify's OCR feature to scan a printed page and have it read aloud immediately.

Integrations

• Browser extension (Chrome, Edge)
• Google Docs integration
• iOS, Android, and desktop apps

Privacy & security notes

Speechify's privacy policy does not set a fixed retention period for uploaded documents or PDFs — it keeps personal data only as long as reasonably necessary for legitimate business purposes or legal obligations, and deleting your account removes associated content. The policy notes that user content may be used to "improve our algorithms," per its Terms of Service, but does not give a detailed, specific disclosure of how listening or usage data is used in AI model training, or an opt-out for that use — worth confirming directly with Speechify if that matters for your use case.