Looking for a Speechify alternative? An honest comparison

Speechify reads text aloud on your phone, in the browser and on your computer, and keeps your library in sync through an account. It has a large catalog of voices and languages, a free tier and a premium subscription. Like most cloud text-to-speech services, it generates much of its audio on its servers, which is how it can offer so many voices.

Speechify is probably still the right choice if:

• You read on several devices and want one library synced between your computer and your phone.
• You need many languages or a specific voice from a big catalog.
• You live in the browser and use its extension every day.

Leola is a text-to-speech app for iPhone, built like a music player. The voice model runs on the phone itself, so the tradeoffs are different:

• No cloud, no account, no credits. Your text never leaves your iPhone.
• No word limits, on the free plan too.
• Works in airplane mode once the voice model has been downloaded.
• A queue and playlists, lock screen controls, a sleep timer, and it remembers the sentence where you stopped in every document.

The other side: Leola is iPhone only, it has fewer voices than a big cloud catalog, and at launch it reads English, Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil). The voice is machine-generated, and it sounds like one at times. We explain why on-device voices need no credits in text to speech with no credits.

• Where the voice is generated: Speechify, largely in the cloud. Leola, on your iPhone.
• Account: Speechify uses one to sync your library. Leola needs none.
• Devices: Speechify, phone, browser and computer. Leola, iPhone.
• Voices and languages: Speechify, a large catalog. Leola, English, Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil) at launch.
• Offline: Leola plays everything in your library offline, after a one-time download.
• Price: Speechify, a free tier and a premium subscription. Leola, free listening; Leola Plus (yearly, monthly or a one-time purchase) adds PDFs, audio downloads, every voice and speeds up to 3×.

1. 1

   Gather the files you listen to most

   Put the PDFs and documents you care about in the Files app on your iPhone.

2. 2

   Import or paste them

   In Leola, tap Add › Import a PDF (Leola Plus) or paste the text. Leola skips page numbers and footnotes: see how to read a PDF aloud on iPhone.

3. 3

   Share articles from Safari

   Open an article, tap Share, then Leola. The text is saved in your library, ready to play.

4. 4

   Line them up

   Add them to the queue or a playlist, like songs, and press play.