Text to speech with no credits and no word limits

Many text-to-speech apps generate voices on a server. Every character you send costs them computing time, so they pass that cost on as credits, word limits or monthly hours. Those voices can be very good, and they can offer many languages. The catch is that heavy listeners hit the cap.

Leola uses a neural text-to-speech model that runs on your iPhone's chip. No cloud service bills anyone per word, so there's nothing to meter:

• No credits to buy and no word limits, on the free plan too.
• No account. No sign-up and no email to start listening.
• No cloud. Your text stays on your iPhone.
• Works offline once the voice model is downloaded.

• It uses your battery and storage. The work a server would do happens on your phone.
• Fewer languages. At launch: English, Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil).
• Fewer voices than a cloud service with a big catalog.
• It's a machine-generated voice, and it sounds like one at times. Leola says so, including in the files you download.

If you need dozens of languages or a cloned voice, a cloud service is the right tool. If you mostly want to get through your own reading every day without counting words, a voice on your phone fits.

Listening is free: one voice per language, articles, pasted text and notes, a queue of 3 items, a playlist and speeds from 0.75× to 2×. Leola Plus adds PDFs, audio downloads, every voice, no caps on your queue and playlists, and up to 3×. Plus is yearly, monthly or a one-time purchase, and it has a free trial.