text to speech google program

Best free text-to-speech software of 2024

Find the best free text-to-speech software for free text to voice conversion

• Best overall
• Best custom voice
• Best for beginners
• Best Microsoft extension
• Best website reader
• How to choose
• How we test

1. Best overall 2. Best custom voice 3. Best for beginners 4. Best Microsoft extension 5. Best website reader 6. FAQs 7. How to choose 8. How we test

In the digital era, the need for effective communication tools has led to a surge in the popularity of text-to-speech (TTS) software, and finding the best free text-to-speech software is essential for a variety of users, regardless of budget constraints. 

Text-to-speech software skillfully converts written text into spoken words using advanced technology, though often without grasping the context of the content. The best text-to-speech software not only accomplishes this task but also offers a selection of natural-sounding voices, catering to different preferences and project needs.

This technology is invaluable for creating accessible content, enhancing workplace productivity, adding voice-overs to videos, or simply assisting in proofreading by vocalizing written work. While many of today’s best free word processors , such as Google Docs, include basic TTS features that are accurate and continually improving, they may not meet all needs.

Stand-alone, app-based TTS tools, which should not be confused with the best speech-to-text apps , often have limitations compared to more comprehensive, free text-to-speech software. For instance, some might not allow the downloading of audio files, a feature crucial for creating content for platforms like YouTube and social media.

In our quest to identify the best free text-to-speech software, we have meticulously tested various options, assessing them based on user experience, performance, and output quality. Our guide aims to help you find the right text-to-speech tool, whatever your specific needs might be.

The best free text-to-speech software of 2024 in full:

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the entries on our best free text-to-speech software list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.

The best free text-to-speech software overall

1. Natural Reader

Our expert review:

Reasons to buy

Reasons to avoid.

Natural Reader offers one of the best free text-to-speech software experiences, thanks to an easy-going interface and stellar results. It even features online and desktop versions. 

You'll find plenty of user options and customizations. The first is to load documents into its library and have them read aloud from there. This is a neat way to manage multiple files, and the number of supported file types is impressive, including eBook formats. There's also OCR, which enables you to load up a photo or scan of text, and have it spoken to you.

The second option takes the form of a floating toolbar. In this mode, you can highlight text in any application and use the toolbar controls to start and customize text-to-speech. This means you can very easily use the feature in your web browser, word processor and a range of other programs. There's also a browser extension to convert web content to speech more easily.

The TTS tool is available free, with three additional upgrades with more advanced features for power-users and professionals.

Read our full Natural Reader review .

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The best free custom-voice text-to-speech software

2. Balabolka

There are a couple of ways to use Balabolka's top free text-to-speech software. You can either copy and paste text into the program, or you can open a number of supported file formats (including DOC, PDF, and HTML) in the program directly. 

In terms of output, you can use SAPI 4 complete with eight different voices to choose from, SAPI 5 with two, or the Microsoft Speech Platform. Whichever route you choose, you can adjust the speech, pitch and volume of playback to create a custom voice.

In addition to reading words aloud, this free text-to-speech software can also save narrations as audio files in a range of formats including MP3 and WAV. For lengthy documents, you can create bookmarks to make it easy to jump back to a specific location and there are excellent tools on hand to help you to customize the pronunciation of words to your liking.

With all these features to make life easier when reading text on a screen isn't an option, Balabolka is the best free text-to-speech software around.

For more help using Balabolka, see out guide on how to convert text to speech using this free software.

The best free text-to-speech software for beginners

3. Panopreter Basic

Panopreter Basic is the best free text-to-speech software if you’re looking for something simple, streamlined, no-frills, and hassle-free. 

It accepts plain and rich text files, web pages and Microsoft Word documents as input, and exports the resulting sound in both WAV and MP3 format (the two files are saved in the same location, with the same name).

The default settings work well for quick tasks, but spend a little time exploring Panopreter Basic's Settings menu and you'll find options to change the language, destination of saved audio files, and set custom interface colors. The software can even play a piece of music once it's finished reading – a nice touch you won't find in other free text-to-speech software.

If you need something more advanced, a premium version of Panopreter is available. This edition offers several additional features including toolbars for Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer , the ability to highlight the section of text currently being read, and extra voices.

The best free text-to-speech extension of Microsoft Word

4. WordTalk

Developed by the University of Edinburgh, WordTalk is a toolbar add-on for Word that brings customizable text-to-speech to Microsoft Word. It works with all editions of Word and is accessible via the toolbar or ribbon, depending on which version you're using.

The toolbar itself is certainly not the most attractive you'll ever see, appearing to have been designed by a child. Nor are all of the buttons' functions very clear, but thankfully there's a help file on hand to help.

There's no getting away from the fact that WordTalk is fairly basic, but it does support SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 voices, and these can be tweaked to your liking. The ability to just read aloud individual words, sentences or paragraphs is a particularly nice touch. You also have the option of saving narrations, and there are a number of keyboard shortcuts that allow for quick and easy access to frequently used options.

The best free text-to-speech software for websites

5. Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader

Despite its basic looks, Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader has more to offer than you might first think. You can open numerous file formats directly in the program, or just copy and paste text.

Alternatively, as long as you have the program running and the relevant option enables, Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader can read aloud any text you copy to the clipboard – great if you want to convert words from websites to speech – as well as dialog boxes that pop up. One of the best free text-to-speech software right now, this can also convert text files to WAV format.

Unfortunately the selection of voices is limited, and the only settings you can customize are volume and speed unless you burrow deep into settings to fiddle with pronunciations. Additional voices are available for an additional fee which seems rather steep, holding it back from a higher place in our list.

The best free text-to-speech software: FAQs

What are the limitations of free tts software.

As you might expect, some free versions of TTS software do come with certain limitations. These include the amount of choices you get for the different amount of voices in some case. For instance, Zabaware gives you two for free, but you have to pay if you want more. 

However, the best free software on this list come with all the bells and whistles that will be more than enough for the average user.

What is SAPI?

SAPI stands for Speech Application Programming Interface. It was developed by Microsoft to generate synthetic speech to allow computer programs to read aloud text. First used in its own applications such as Office, it is also employed by third party TTS software such as those featured in this list. 

In the context of TTS software, there are more SAPI 4 voices to choose from, whereas SAPI 5 voices are generally of a higher quality. 

Should I output files to MP3 or WAV?

Many free TTS programs give you the option to download an audio file of the speech to save and transfer to different devices.

MP3 is the most common audio format, and compatible with pretty much any modern device capable of playing back audio. The WAV format is also highly compatible too.

The main difference between the two is quality. WAV files are uncompressed, meaning fidelity is preserved as best as possible, at the cost of being considerably larger in size than MP3 files, which do compress.

Ultimately, however, MP3 files with a bit rate of 256 kbps and above should more than suffice, and you'll struggle to tell the difference when it comes to speech audio between them and WAV files.

How to choose the best free text-to-speech software

When selecting the best free text-to-speech software is best for you depends on a range of factors (not to mention personal preference).

Despite how simple the concept of text-to-speech is, there are many different features and aspects to such apps to take into consideration. These include how many voice options and customizations are present, how and where they operate in your setup, what formats they are able to read aloud from and what formats the audio can be saved as.

With free versions, naturally you'll want to take into account how many advanced features you get without paying, and whether any sacrifices are made to performance or usability. 

Always try to keep in mind what is fair and reasonable for free services - and as we've shown with our number one choice, you can get plenty of features for free, so if other options seem bare in comparison, then you'll know you can do better.

How we test the best free text-to-speech software

Our testing process for the best free text-to-speech software is thorough, examining all of their respective features and trying to throw every conceivable syllable at them to see how they perform.

We also want to test the accessibility features of these tools to see how they work for every kind of user out there. We have highlighted, for instance, whether certain software offer dyslexic-friendly fonts, such as the number two on our list, Natural Reader.

We also bear in mind that these are free versions, so where possible we compare and contrast their feature sets with paid-for rivals.

Finally, we look at how well TTS tools meet the needs of their intended users - whether it's designed for personal use or professional deployment. 

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Daryl had been freelancing for 3 years before joining TechRadar, now reporting on everything software-related. In his spare time he's written a book, 'The Making of Tomb Raider', alongside podcasting and usually found playing games old and new on his PC and MacBook Pro. If you have a story about an updated app, one that's about to launch, or just anything Software-related, drop him a line.

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Text-to-Speech Software

Find the best Text-to-Speech Software

Popular comparisons, buyers guide, filter products, company size.

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Showing 1 - 20 of 63 products

Our AI technology takes images of faces and turns them into high-quality, photorealistic videos. At the click of a button, it can combine images with audio or text to give them expression and speech. Reduce the cost and hassle of... Read more about D-ID

2.3 ( 6 reviews )

Wellsaid is an AI-powered text-to-speech solution that can create voiceovers for any digital content. Wellsaid converts text to high-quality voices, which can be added to apps and products using a robust API. Teams can also custom... Read more about WellSaid

4.4 ( 14 reviews )

Avatar is an on-premise and cloud-based text-to-speech video-making and editing platform designed to help educational and corporate professionals create presentations, marketing, e-learning, onboarding, training, and product demo ... Read more about Avatar

No reviews yet

Blakify is a software service that harnesses A.I. and Machine Learning technology from Google's TTS, Amazon Polly, and Microsoft Azure to give customers a full text-to-speech experience Blakify has over 400 voices and is continu... Read more about Blakify

4.4 ( 10 reviews )

Descript is a powerful all-in-one multimedia editor that makes editing as easy as a word doc. Record, edit, mix, collaborate, and master your audio and video with Descript. ... Read more about Descript

4.8 ( 166 reviews )

Google Cloud Text-to-Speech

Cloud Text-to-Speech is a Google-powered Text-to-Speech API that can convert text into natural-sounding speech. Using the same TTS technology as Google Translate, Cloud Text-to-Speech provides high-quality voices that are designed... Read more about Google Cloud Text-to-Speech

4.7 ( 12 reviews )

Murf Studio

Murf enables organizations to manage voiceover projects using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. The platform offers a collection of realistic AI voices in multiple languages. The application automatically converts scripts i... Read more about Murf Studio

4.5 ( 4 reviews )

Synthesia is an AI video creation app that makes it easy to create professional videos without any expensive hardware or editing skills. With Synthesia, you can create videos with just an idea and a script. Type it in, and watc... Read more about Synthesia

4.7 ( 124 reviews )

ReadSpeaker

ReadSpeaker is a cloud-based API that converts text input into high-quality natural-sounding audio. Developers can integrate the ReadSpeaker API into their websites and applications to make it possible for people with visual impai... Read more about ReadSpeaker

3.8 ( 4 reviews )

Ginger is a proofreading software that enables educational institutions and businesses to identify and correct errors and improve articles, blogs, classified and a variety of other content. The platform includes a grammar checking... Read more about Ginger

4.0 ( 85 reviews )

Listen2It automatically generates an audio version of text content in seconds. Choosing from 600+ lifelike text to speech voices in 75 different languages, users can give their brand a unique voice. It also offers a pre-built audi... Read more about Listen2It

5.0 ( 4 reviews )

Voiceley is an automated software turning any text into a natural lifelike voice-over in just a few clicks. Voiceley can accommodate any business and is perfect for creating voiceovers for video sales letters, educational videos, ... Read more about Voiceley

5.0 ( 1 reviews )

Instead of paying voice actors to narrate text, video presentation, or even your next Audiobook, Talkifier can do all this in a matter of seconds. Use Talkifier to turn your blog posts into audio so your visitors can listen on th... Read more about Talkifier

LOVO is an AI-based voice generator that helps creators, marketers, educators, and other professionals transform texts into speeches and clone voices. The software provides an end-to-end solution for generating human-like speech a... Read more about LOVO

4.5 ( 57 reviews )

Trinity Audio

Trinity Audio is an enterprise-grade audio streaming and podcast platform that caters to media companies, broadcasters, and audio creators. The platform offers an array of features for managing an audio streaming service. It provi... Read more about Trinity Audio

4.5 ( 2 reviews )

TTSAI Pro is an AI-enabled text-to-speech software solution. It can be used in various use cases and serves multiple industries, such as e-learning, contact centers, and content creators that want to convert text into natural-soun... Read more about TTSAI Pro

Voicely 2.0

Voicely 2.0 is a cloud-based text-to-speech software that produces human sounding voice-over from text. Voicely 2.0 allows users to change the Voice Type, Pitch, and speed as well as add professional background music to give more... Read more about Voicely 2.0

4.6 ( 14 reviews )

Synthesys Studio

Elevate your content creation with Synthesys AI Studio. This all-in-one platform empowers users to generate high-quality audio and video content effortlessly. No longer limited by technical expertise or language barriers, Synthesy... Read more about Synthesys Studio

4.5 ( 21 reviews )

Fliki is a Text to Speech & Text to Video converter that helps you create audio and video content using AI voices in less than a minute. With Fliki you can convert your blog articles or any text-based content into video, podcasts... Read more about Fliki

4.8 ( 257 reviews )

Cleartouch Cloud Contact Center Platform

ClearTouch is a cloud-hosted contact center platform provider that enhances the customer experience of organizations across financial services and insurance, healthcare, BPOs, ARM/Collections, eCommerce, and automotive, among othe... Read more about Cleartouch Cloud Contact Center Platform

4.6 ( 36 reviews )

A majority of us have come into contact with computer-generated voices at some point. Voice assistants such as Alexa, Cortana, Siri, or Google Home have the capability to read texts aloud, allowing the user to continue to engage in other physical activities such as walking, driving, cooking, and so on. Apart from personal use, this technology, known as text-to-speech, has become increasingly useful in almost all kinds of industries, such as education, healthcare, automotive, and consumer goods.

Text-to-speech software helps boost productivity by enabling text to be converted into speech sounds. For example: With a text-to-speech app on your computer, it will read new messages aloud along with the sender’s name. This will save you the time it takes to stop and read incoming messages, allowing you to multitask with other physical activities.

While there are many text-to-speech software available in the market, some software applications (such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Outlook, and Word) along with Android and iOS devices have built-in text-to-speech features with limited functionalities.

This buyers guide explains what text-to-speech software is as well as what you should look for to fit your business or personal needs.

Here’s what we'll cover:

What is text-to-speech software?

Common features of text-to-speech software, what type of buyer are you, benefits of text-to-speech software, key considerations when purchasing text-to-speech software, market trend to understand.

Text-to-speech (TTS) software is a speech synthesizer software that converts text into artificial speech. It is a natural language modeling process that reads digital text aloud to assist people with disabilities or for other uses.

TTS software allows users to see text and hear it read aloud simultaneously. This gives a wider population easy access to digital content.

Voice editor in Murf Studio Software ( Source )

Before purchasing a text-to-speech solution, you should assess what kind of a buyer you are. Most buyers fall into two categories:

For businesses: Buyers in this category belong to different industries which can include customer service, sales and marketing, learning and development, telecommunications, and banking. Whether they publish interactive voice ads and e-learning modules, or serve customers across different countries, text-to-speech software can help optimize customer experiences. These buyers should look for a fully featured software that offers advanced features such as speech recognition, transcripts/chat history, chatbots and collaboration tools, and word prediction capabilities. These features will then provide more personalized experiences with customized messages, better navigation details, and interactive learning sessions.

For personal use: Buyers in this category are people who are looking for convenience or have disabilities. People are spending more time on digital content, and text-to-speech software can help these buyers convert digital content into a multimedia experience by allowing them to listen to news, blogs, or eBooks on the go. A text-to-speech solution with basic features such as multi-language, multi-voice, and content library capabilities should prove beneficial for such buyers. Free text-to-speech software products are suitable for individual or personal use.

Accessibility: Text-to-speech software can assist people with learning and visual disabilities to access and understand digital content easily. For businesses, providing the option to hear anything on your website can make it easier for your customers to digest content when they are juggling multiple tasks or are on the go.

Improved productivity: E-learning professionals and the HR department can prepare learning and onboarding modules for their employees and new hires using TTS software. This will enable them to engage their employees better which improves productivity. Your employees can learn materials or onboard themselves with the help of voice commands anywhere and anytime without actual human assistance.

Improved user experience: Using computerized or automated speech can help sales and marketing teams to offer personalized services, such as voice assistance and product demonstrations. A TTS tool makes telephonic calls more interactive, and you can reach customers in multiple languages across different countries. This helps enhance the user experience with your brand.

Business needs: Whether you are an individual looking for convenience or running your business over the internet, first look for a free text-to-speech service that is compatible with your device (both desktop and mobile) and social media platforms. You’ll also want to look for a tool with all basic features such as text highlighting, multi-language support, and audio file creation. This will enable you to upload files to different social media platforms and customize voices according to your audience. But if you are a midsize or large company, then you will usually want software that offers some advanced features such as privacy control, unlimited storage, content library, and monetization rights capabilities. This will help you enhance your customers’ experience, improve sales processes, or create learning modules and podcasts You can also opt for a subscription-based text-to-speech platform.

Neural text-to-speech (NTTS) services enhance user experience: Voice assistant technology, such as text-to-speech software, has helped people enhance their literacy and reading skills. Businesses are benefiting from the technology by providing a better user experience, increasing web presence, and saving time and money. Software providers are upgrading their solutions by using machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to generate speech from text with highly expressive human-like voices. Known as neural text-to-speech, the technology has a self learning capability that learns from human speech. This will help businesses make interactions with chatbots and virtual assistants more natural and engaging, making it difficult for customers to distinguish between a robot and a human agent.

Note: The application mentioned in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader

2.9K ratings

Read aloud the current web-page article with one click, using text to speech (TTS). Supports 40+ languages.

Read Aloud uses text-to-speech (TTS) technology to convert webpage text to audio. It works on a variety of websites, including news sites, blogs, fan fiction, publications, textbooks, school and class websites, and online university course materials. Read Aloud allows you to select from a variety of text-to-speech voices, including those provided natively by the browser, as well as by text-to-speech cloud service providers such as Google Wavenet, Amazon Polly, IBM Watson, and Microsoft. Some of the cloud-based voices may require additional in-app purchase to enable. Read Aloud can read PDF, Google Docs, Google Play books, Amazon Kindle, and EPUB (via the excellent EPUBReader extension from epubread.com). Read Aloud is intended for users who prefer to listen to content instead of reading, those with dyslexia or other learning disabilities, and children learning to read. To use Read Aloud, navigate to the web page you want to read, then click the Read Aloud icon on the Chrome menu. In addition, the shortcut keys ALT-P, ALT-O, ALT-Comma, and ALT-Period can be used to Play/Pause, Stop, Rewind, and Forward. You may also select the text you want to read before activating the extension. Right clicking on the selected text will provide you with yet another option to activate Read Aloud via the context menu. To change the voice, reading speed, pitch, or enable text highlighting, go to the Options page either by right clicking on the Read Aloud icon and choose Options, or by clicking the Gear button on the extension popup (you'll need to stop playback to see the Gear button). Read Aloud is an open-source project. If you wish to contribute bug fixes or translations, please visit the GitHub page at https://github.com/ken107/read-aloud.

4.2 out of 5 2.9K ratings Google doesn't verify reviews. Learn more about results and reviews.

J W Apr 11, 2024

it's much better than google's screen reader, but could add an option to set read or omit punctuations.

VII YANG (VII) Apr 10, 2024

that is so good, thanks

Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader handles the following:

This developer declares that your data is.

• Not being sold to third parties, outside of the approved use cases
• Not being used or transferred for purposes that are unrelated to the item's core functionality
• Not being used or transferred to determine creditworthiness or for lending purposes

Pericles: Text to Speech Screen Reader

Speech synthesis redesigned. Listen to emails, documents & websites.

Speak Any Text

Select any text you want to read and just listen to it!

Page Reader

A completely free extension to read highlighted text via Text To Speech.

TTS Ebook Reader

Supports Kindle,Google Play,Scribd,Overdrive and Gutenberg, powered by Google TTS (Text to Speech), turns ebooks into audible books

Speechify Text to Speech Voice Reader

Read aloud any Google Doc, PDF, webpage, or book with text to speech (TTS). Natural sounding voices in 30+ languages & 130 voices.

TTS Text To Speech - Voice Reader Online

AI-powered text-to-speech tool. Voice over for books and PDF files. ChatGPT summarizer for anything.

NaturalReader - AI Text to Speech

Read aloud any text with realistic AI voices, compatible with webpages, kindle Ebooks, Google Docs, PDF, Emails, and more.

Readme - Text to Speech

Readme - Text to Speech can read aloud text from any websites, eBooks and documents. Simply select and speak (TTS).

Talking Web

Select the text and let Talking Web read it for you.

Talkie: text-to-speech, many languages!

Fast, easy, high-quality text to speech in over 40 languages. Read out loud from websites, PDF, email. Speak text with TTS.

Select and Speak - Text to Speech

Select and Speak uses iSpeech’s human-quality text-to-speech (TTS) to read any selected text in the browser. It includes many…

Text to Speech

Text to Speech Hewizo removes ads and reads articles in over 30+ languages using state of the art AI text to speech engine TTS

#1 Text To Speech (TTS) Reader Online

Proudly serving millions of users since 2015

Type or upload any text, file, website & book for listening online, proofreading, reading-along or generating professional mp3 voice-overs.

I need to >

Play Text Out Loud

Reads out loud plain text, files, e-books and websites. Remembers text & caret position, so you can come back to listening later, unlimited length, recording and more.

Create Humanlike Voiceovers

Murf is a text-to-speech tool offering 200+ natural voices for creating high-quality voiceovers for e-learning, podcasts, YouTubes & audiobooks, simplifying audio content production.

Additional Text-To-Speech Solutions

Turns your articles, PDFs, emails, etc. into podcasts, so you can listen to it on your own podcast player when convenient, with all the advantages that come with your podcast app.

SpeechNinja says what you type in real time. It enables people with speech difficulties to speak out loud using synthesized voice (AAC) and more.

Battle tested for years, serving millions of users, especially good for very long texts.

Need to read a webpage? Simply paste its URL here & click play. Leave empty to read about the Beatles 🎸

Books & Stories

Listen to some of the best stories ever written. We have them right here. Want to upload your own? Use the main player to upload epub files.

Simply paste any URL (link to a page) and it will import & read it out loud.

Chrome Extension

Reads out loud webpages, directly from within the page.

TTSReader for mobile - iOS or Android. Includes exporting audio to mp3 files.

NEW 🚀 - TTS Plugin

Make your own website speak your content - with a single line of code. Hassle free.

TTSReader Premium

Support our development team & enjoy ad-free better experience. Commercial users, publishers are required a premium license.

TTSReader reads out loud texts, webpages, pdfs & ebooks with natural sounding voices. Works out of the box. No need to download or install. No sign in required. Simply click 'play' and enjoy listening right in your browser. TTSReader remembers your text and position between sessions, so you can continue listening right where you left. Recording the generated speech is supported as well. Works offline, so you can use it at home, in the office, on the go, driving or taking a walk. Listening to textual content using TTSReader enables multitasking, reading on the go, improved comprehension and more. With support for multiple languages, it can be used for unlimited use cases .

Get Started for Free

Main Use Cases

Listen to great content.

Most of the world's content is in textual form. Being able to listen to it - is huge! In that sense, TTSReader has a huge advantage over podcasts. You choose your content - out of an infinite variety - that includes humanity's entire knowledge and art richness. Listen to lectures, to PDF files. Paste or upload any text from anywhere, edit it if needed, and listen to it anywhere and anytime.

Proofreading

One of the best ways to catch errors in your writing is to listen to it being read aloud. By using TTSReader for proofreading, you can catch errors that you might have missed while reading silently, allowing you to improve the quality and accuracy of your written content. Errors can be in sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar, but also in your essay's structure, order and content.

Listen to web pages

TTSReader can be used to read out loud webpages in two different ways. 1. Using the regular player - paste the URL and click play. The website's content will be imported into the player. (2) Using our Chrome extension to listen to pages without leaving the page . Listening to web pages with TTSReader can provide a more accessible, convenient, and efficient way of consuming online content.

Turn ebooks into audiobooks

Upload any ebook file of epub format - and TTSReader will read it out loud for you, effectively turning it into an audiobook alternative. You can find thousands of epub books for free, available for download on Project Gutenberg's site, which is an open library for free ebooks.

Read along for speed & comprehension

TTSReader enables read along by highlighting the sentence being read and automatically scrolling to keep it in view. This way you can follow with your own eyes - in parallel to listening to it. This can boost reading speed and improve comprehension.

Generate audio files from text

TTSReader enables exporting the synthesized speech with a single click. This is available currently only on Windows and requires TTSReader’s premium . Adhering to the commercial terms some of the voices may be used commercially for publishing, such as narrating videos.

Accessibility, dyslexia, etc.

For individuals with visual impairments or reading difficulties, listening to textual content, lectures, articles & web pages can be an essential tool for accessing & comprehending information.

Language learning

TTSReader can read out text in multiple languages, providing learners with listening as well as speaking practice. By listening to the text being read aloud, learners can improve their comprehension skills and pronunciation.

Kids - stories & learning

Kids love stories! And if you can read them stories - it's definitely the best! But, if you can't, let TTSReader read them stories for you. Set the right voice and speed, that is appropriate for their comprehension level. For kids who are at the age of learning to read - this can also be an effective tool to strengthen that skill, as it highlights every sentence being read.

Main Features

Ttsreader is a free text to speech reader that supports all modern browsers, including chrome, firefox and safari..

Includes multiple languages and accents. If on Chrome - you will get access to Google's voices as well. Super easy to use - no download, no login required. Here are some more features

Fun, Online, Free. Listen to great content

Drag, drop & play (or directly copy text & play). That’s it. No downloads. No logins. No passwords. No fuss. Simply fun to use and listen to great content. Great for listening in the background. Great for proof-reading. Great for kids and more. Learn more, including a YouTube we made, here .

Multilingual, Natural Voices

We facilitate high-quality natural-sounding voices from different sources. There are male & female voices, in different accents and different languages. Choose the voice you like, insert text, click play to generate the synthesized speech and enjoy listening.

Exit, Come Back & Play from Where You Stopped

TTSReader remembers the article and last position when paused, even if you close the browser. This way, you can come back to listening right where you previously left. Works on Chrome & Safari on mobile too. Ideal for listening to articles.

Vs. Recorded Podcasts

In many aspects, synthesized speech has advantages over recorded podcasts. Here are some: First of all - you have unlimited - free - content. That includes high-quality articles and books, that are not available on podcasts. Second - it’s free. Third - it uses almost no data - so it’s available offline too, and you save money. If you like listening on the go, as while driving or walking - get our free Android Text Reader App .

Read PDF Files, Texts & Websites

TTSReader extracts the text from pdf files, and reads it out loud. Also useful for simply copying text from pdf to anywhere. In addition, it highlights the text currently being read - so you can follow with your eyes. If you specifically want to listen to websites - such as blogs, news, wiki - you should get our free extension for Chrome

Export Speech to Audio Files

TTSReader enables exporting the synthesized speech to mp3 audio files. This is available currently only on Windows, and requires ttsreader’s premium .

Pricing & Plans

• Online text to speech player
• Chrome extension for reading webpages
• Premium TTSReader.com
• Premium Chrome extension
• Better support from the development team

Compare plans

Sister Apps Developed by Our Team

Speechnotes

Dictation & Transcription

Type with your voice for free, or automatically transcribe audio & video recordings

Buttons - Kids Dictionary

Turns your device into multiple push-buttons interactive games

Animals, numbers, colors, counting, letters, objects and more. Different levels. Multilingual. No ads. Made by parents, for our own kids.

Ways to Get In Touch, Feedback & Community

Visit our contact page , for various ways to get in touch with us, send us feedback and interact with our community of users & developers.

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13 Best Text-to-Speech Software of 2024 (Free, Paid & Online)

Text-to-speech software can bring tremendous advantages to your workflow.

Imagine being able to listen to a document instead of reading it so that you can multitask. You can just load the document into your phone and listen to it while you run your errands.

Auditory learners who retain more information by listening rather than reading will also find text-to-speech software useful.

Moreover, text-to-speech software is also invaluable to the visually impaired or people with dyslexia . They can help people who improve communication for people who can read a language but don’t speak it, or are trying to learn.

So, we’ve rounded up the 13 best text-to-speech software of 2022 in this post. We’ll review each one, talk about the key features to look out for in text-to-speech software, and explore some frequently asked questions about them.

Best Text-to-Speech Software

1. amazon polly, best overall text-to-speech software..

Amazon Polly is a service by—you guessed it—Amazon that turns text into lifelike speech , allowing you to build speech-enabled products and applications that talk.

With advanced deep learning technology, Polly synthesizes natural-sounding human speech, offering several realistic voices across dozens of languages so that you can build applications that work in many different countries.

Amazon Polly offers Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS) in addition to their Standard TTS voices . These voices come with advanced improvements in speech quality through a newer, better machine learning approach.

NTTS also supports two speaking styles so that you can match the speaking style to the specific use case. There’s the Newscaster reading style which is suited to news narration applications; and there’s a Conversational speaking style, which is great for two-way communication like in telephony applications.

Finally, you can get a custom voice created for your organization with Amazon Polly Brand Voice . In this engagement, you’ll work with the Amazon Polly team to build an NTTS voice that will be used exclusively by your organization.

On the free trial, Amazon Polly offers 5 million free characters per month for speech or Speech Mark requests for the first 12 months , beginning from the first time you request for speech. For the Neural voices, you get 1 million free characters.

Beyond the free trial, pricing is on a pay-as-you-go model. For $4, you get 1 million characters for Amazon Polly’s Standard voices . For the Neural voices, you get 1 million characters for $16.

• Incorporates lifelike voices
• Cache and replay feature so you don’t have to pay multiple times for the same text
• HIPAA compliant
• PCI DSS compliant
• Supports 60 voices and over 29 languages
• Some features are limited to certain voices or generation type
• Terminology sometimes is different from other similar tools

2. Linguatec Voice Reader

Best alternative to amazon polly text-to-speech..

Based out of Germany, Linguatech has been creating text-to-speech software for over 25 years now. Their flagship product is Voice Reader Home 15. It’s a deceptively simple yet powerful tool.

You can stop the playback at any time and have it resume from where you stopped. You can highlight a section of text and have it reread that section. And if you’d like to generate an audio file from your text, it’s as easy as tapping a button to convert the text to an MP3 file.

That said, you only get controls for speed, tone, pitch, and volume. With these controls, even a small change can be quite significant.

In addition to the reading functionality, there’s also a sophisticated editing function that can be likened to a highly simplified word processor. All fonts installed on your system are available, and you have the freedom to edit styles, highlight sections of text, align text, and do many other things.

The problem with this part of the platform, though, is that you may be introducing errors into the document you’re trying to edit since there’s no spelling or grammar check.

While the conversion of text to voice is often very well executed, this platform does have a few odd flaws.

For one, in English for example, honorifics that have a period after them—as in ‘Mr.’ or ‘Dr’—can be a bit problematic; Voice Reader takes the period as an actual period and flags a brief pause mid-sentence while reading such words. So Mr. Smith ends up being read as Mr…Smith .

The same occurs with soft returns—although this can be useful in detecting soft returns you didn’t intentionally insert into the document. Either way, these interruptions ruin the flow and bring to light the fact that the voice is synthetic.

Another flaw is that you can’t adjust pronunciations. So, heteronyms are often quite problematic. The platform can’t tell Polish apart from polish, for example; in this case, it always goes with the polish , the act of shining a surface, even when the intention is clearly to refer to something that has to do with Poland.

To get Voice Reader Home 15, you only have to pay a one-off purchase price of €49 and you can use it forever from that point onward. But here’s the catch: that will only give you one voice in a single language . Want a different voice or a different language? That’s another €49. And that’s for a private use license.

If you would like to use the software commercially (such as for voiceovers on your videos) or require multiple voices in a single language, you should get Voice Reader Studio 15 instead for €499 .

• Support for 45 languages and 67 voices
• Regional accents supported
• Only one voice and language per private-use license, and one language per commercial license
• No pronunciation adjustment

3. Capti Voice

Best text-to-speech software for people with print disabilities..

Capti Voice Narrator is an app designed to be used by people with print disabilities such as blindness, low vision, and dyslexia.

Users can import all kinds and formats of documents, ebooks, and web pages into the system, and Capti Voice will read them out loud or display them in large text.

However, Capti Voice can also serve as a great productivity tool for people without disabilities. It is available as a browser-based platform, as an app for iOS devices, and as a Chrome browser extension .

Navigating the app is easy. You can import your content into the app with as few as four taps. As the app reads text out loud, it also displays the text and you can follow along if you want to.

But the text on the app menus is quite small; so, those with vision impairment may need to have a VoiceOver screen reader or Zoom magnifier to be able to use it.

Capti Voice Narrator features abundant options for people with disabilities, and it has won numerous awards for this reason. You can choose from six free voices or buy any of the premium voices, most of which cost about $5.

You can also have the content text displayed in a wide variety of fonts —including the widely popular OpenDyslexic font—and you can enlarge the font size as well.

You have the option to set the text to be displayed on high-contrast backgrounds and increase the spacing between words as needed.

As the voice narrator reads, Capti Voice highlights the text, allowing users with visual processing issues or dyslexia to focus more easily on words.

Moreover, Capti Voice offers numerous integrations with different services . Under the Book Libraries menu, you’ll find services like Bookshare and Project Gutenberg , giving readers access to hundreds of thousands of books.

The platform also integrates with cloud storage platforms like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud, allowing users to import files directly from these platforms. Adding web articles to Capti Voice Narrator can be done with the browser extension or by copy-pasting a link. And there is an OCR scanner built into the app .

You can download the app for free and create a free account — an account is required. But if you would like features such as image viewing, increased file size limits, language translation, and multiple playlists, you would need to pony up $18/year for the premium plan .

There are also premium voices available for purchase, and most of them cost about $5 each.

• The free plan is good enough for most people
• The premium plan is relatively inexpensive
• Offers several useful integrations, including an OCR scanner and other assistive technology
• The app menus on the interface are difficult to read

Best Text-to-Speech Software for Voice-overs.

Murf is a text-based voice-over maker that features hyper-realistic AI voices . Just type in your voice-over script or upload a voice recording and the app will convert it to a studio-quality AI voice-over.

Murf’s voices are trained on professional voice-over artists and checked for quality against several parameters. There’s a wide range of voices available; so, there’s always one that’s appropriate for every use case.

One difficult part of making videos with voice-overs is achieving perfect timing with visuals. Murf makes it easy to sync the timing of the voice-over with videos and presentations.

You can add pauses or alter the narration speed, thereby eliminating the need for post-processing. Murf also allows you to change pitch and even add emphasis to certain words. Bottom line, there’s a lot of flexibility for customization.

You can also convert voice into editable text. In this text, you can select and delete any part—just like a regular word processor—and the audio for the deleted part will be trimmed automatically.

Murf Studio has an AI assistant equipped to check for punctuation, grammatical, and spelling errors. The assistant makes recommendations to improve your script.

The Pause feature comes with three settings: weak, medium, and strong. But if you like, you can customize the duration of the pause or add pauses simply by stretching out the duration of an audio block in the timeline at the bottom of the screen.

Additionally, Murf comes with a wide selection of royalty-free background music for your videos. You can also upload your own music, recorded audio, video clips, and images. And you can trim parts of your video directly in the studio.

Murf allows you to combine multiple images and videos to create your final video . This means that you can add introduction slides and end screens to your video, and also insert images in between video clips.

Finally, the platform can also render videos in standard sizes according to the platform on which you’ll be uploading the video , including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and others.

On the free plan , Murf gives you 10 free minutes of voice-over render time to test voices and other features in the Studio. Priced plans start at $19 for the Basic plan and go as high as $99 and up for the Enterprise plan .

Alternatively, you can pay a one-time fee of $9 for 30 minutes of voice generation and all the features of the Basic plan if that’s all you need.

• Both subscription and one-off plans are available
• Gives users granular control over voiceovers
• Does not support voice recording at the moment

5. Natural Reader

Best text-to-speech software for webmasters aiming to improve website accessibility..

Many internet users may recognize the familiar voices of Natural Reader from several YouTube videos. It’s a popular solution that has become a victim of its success; its popularity detracts from its naturalness because people are now used to the sound of its voices.

Still, it would be a travesty to not include Natural Reader in this list as it is still one of the top text-to-speech solutions on the market today.

Natural Reader’s interface is as simple as it gets ; it’s pretty much a point-and-shoot affair. You simply paste your text into the panel in the center of the screen or drag and drop the text file there. Or you can load the file from your storage.

Or, if you’re using the online version on a Chrome browser, you can highlight text on a webpage and use the Chrome extension to transfer the text for transcription .

At the top of the screen, there’s a bar to control the playback, choose voices, and control the speed of delivery . On the far left, you have a menu with extra options such as controls to edit pronunciations .

Available languages include English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, and Swedish.

One unexpected use of this tool—and most other text-to-speech tools, for that matter—is that it can serve as a great alternative to professional proofreading since it is remarkably easier to hear a botched sentence than to read the errors.

Additionally, Natural Reader provides a WebReader widget that website creators can attach to their website to help users read web pages out loud. This feature is particularly useful for those with sight impairments that need to browse the internet.

When in use, the widget highlights the text being read and marks each word as it is spoken. It will use any of the 61 standard voices in any of the 18 languages available. This feature also works with web pages viewed on mobile, too.

The widget is free for websites that expect to use the widget on less than 2,000 pages per day , and there are subscription plans for those that need more.

In all, the flaws of this software become apparent when it comes to names, technical words, and the pronunciation of historical texts. But this should hardly come as a surprise as even humans have problems with the same things.

And the software even makes it easy to fix these issues by giving you access to a pronunciation editor.

Natural Reader is available in two versions: the Commercial version and the Non-commercial version. With both versions, there’s a free plan.

Beyond the free plan, the Commercial version costs $49/month (annual billing) for a single user . The Team plan starts at $59/month (annual billing) for 2 team members, adding $10 for every additional member .

For the Non-commercial version, Natural Reader starts at a one-time fee of $99.50 for the Personal plan and goes all the way up to $199.5 for the Ultimate plan .

• WebReader widget available
• Available on Windows, Mac, and as a browser-based application
• Free for 20 minutes every day
• Overused on YouTube
• Can sound stiff at times

6. Notevibes

Best text-to-speech software for translation..

Notevibes is a wonderful text-to-speech software with a free version and a feature-packed paid version. It offers 201 unique, natural-sounding voices and 18 languages. Users get 500 characters of translation and the ability to customize pronunciation.

While the free version is great for personal use, you’ll need a commercial license for commercial applications. The number of characters you can translate depends on the plan you purchase. After translation and voice synthesis, you can download the audio in MP3 or WAV format.

The platform supports anywhere from 200 – 1,000,000 characters. The voices generated are realistic and natural sounding. When you need to, you can add a pause with a single click. Changing the pitch and playback speed are also allowed, and you can manually emphasize certain words and control volume.

Notevibes’ free plan allows limited usage. There are two pricing plans; the Personal pack starts at $9/month while the Commercial pack starts at $90/month. Naturally, the Personal pack can only be used for personal projects and activities like e-learning and private listening.

If your plan runs out mid-project, you can refill with a pay-as-you-go option. These one-off packs range from $29.90 for 300,000 characters to $89.90 for 900,000 characters .

• Refill packs are available for when you run out of balance
• The commercial pack is pretty expensive
• The free plan is quite limited
• Refill packs are only available for personal use

7. Voice Dream Reader

Best text-to-speech software for mobile..

Text-to-speech software isn’t limited to computers alone; there are also plenty of great options for mobile and Voice Dream Reader is a standout example. It is a mobile text-to-speech app that offers users a premium Acapela Heather voice. It works on both Android and iOS , although it is primarily designed for iOS.

With this app, you can convert ebooks, web articles, and documents into natural-sounding speech. It comes with 200+ built-in voices and 30 languages that include English, Bulgarian, Arabic, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, and several others.

You can have the app read a list of articles while you drive, exercise, or work. There are also auto-scrolling, distraction-free, and full-screen modes to help you focus. And the platform integrates seamlessly with cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Instapaper, Evernote, and Pocket.

Even the free version of the application offers a rich feature set, boasting features such as text-to-speech conversion, text highlighting, dictionary lookups, creating & pinning notes, and full-screen reading mode.

As if that isn’t enough, the platform works offline , requiring no internet connection to work its magic. It supports files in several formats including ePub, PDF, Daisy audio & text, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, plain text, and webpage, etc.

Users can control parameters like pitch, speed, pause duration, and voice . There are also controls for font, font size, and font color .

And finally, there’s an integrated OCR module, and library management functionality.

Voice Dream costs $14.99 for iOS users . For Android users, the app is available as Legere Reader on the Play Store for $9.99 .

• Offers the best text-to-speech experience on mobile
• Includes loads of useful features, even on the free plan
• Comes with 36 built-in voices
• Integrates with cloud platforms
• iOS 12 users get 61 free voices
• More suitable for iOS users than Android users

8. Balabolka

Best free text-to-speech software..

Its website may not look like much but Balabolka is one of the best in the business, especially if you’re a developer looking for a free solution . It's available as a download that you install on your computer and supports various file formats including HTML, PDF, and DOC.

To use Balabolka, you can either copy and paste text into the program or open a supported file format in the program directly. You can adjust the speed, pitch, and volume of the playback to create a custom voice.

Besides reading words aloud, this free text-to-speech software can also save your narrations in a wide range of formats that include MP3 and WAV.

It also features bookmarking functionality so that you can jump to specific locations within your longer audio files. And if ever needed, you can customize the pronunciation of words , too.

Balabolka is completely free to use.

• Completely free
• Excellent file format support
• Several voices to choose from
• Can create audio files
• Comes with bookmarking tools

9. Natural Reader Online Reader

A pared-down, free version of natural reader..

Natural Reader Online Reader is the pared-down free version of Natural Reader . It can be used in a couple of ways. You may choose to load documents into its library and have Natural Reader read them aloud from there.

This is a great way to manage several files, especially since the platform supports an impressive number of file formats.

There's also OCR functionality, which allows you to upload an image or scan a piece of text into the app and have the platform read it to you.

Alternatively, Natural Reader Online Reader offers a floating toolbar option. With this feature, you can highlight any text in any application and use the toolbar controls to start and control the narration.

This is a great way to use the app in your web browser, word processor, or other programs. Plus, there's a built-in browser to more easily convert web content to speech.

This version of Natural Reader is completely free to use.

• Built-in OCR
• Choice of interfaces
• Built-in browser
• Dyslexic-friendly font
• Not as full-featured as some other free options

A Powerful Text-to-Speech Software Bundled Together with an Exceptional Video Editing Platform.

Boasting over 2.5 million users across the world, Wideo is a video editing program that offers a free text-to-speech tool to its users. With Wideo, creators can produce professional videos with amazing voice-overs.

You can convert text into a high-quality voice-over that you can download as an MP3 file for use on videos that you create with the platform.

The text-to-speech feature comes bundled for free with Wideo’s editing platform . And while there’s a free version of the platform available, it’s pretty limited. Pricing starts at $19/month (billed annually) for the Basic plan and goes up to $79/month (billed annually) for the Pro+ plan.

• Comes for free with Wideo’s editing platform
• Standout editing features
• Offers concerted text as downloadable MP3 files
• Text-to-speech function not available as a standalone offering

11. Panopreter Basic

Best windows-only text-to-speech software..

Call it simple or basic, a lot can be said about this powerful text-to-speech solution. Panopreter is a Windows-only text-to-speech software . Panopreter offers both 32-bit and 64-bit applications, although it doesn't offer a 64-bit version for Windows 10, which is quite surprising.

While it isn't made for most browsers, Panopreter does come with a toolbar for Internet Explorer (another strange decision seeing as Internet Explorer is now obsolete) and Microsoft Word . The platform is incompatible with the .docx file format; it only works with the .doc file format.

To get started you have the option to purchase Panopreter directly or test drive the software for 30 days free of charge . It's a very easy-to-use piece of software, although its UI is rudimentary at best .

On the home screen, you get all the tools you need to get started. You can cut or copy, paste, delete, and replace sections of text just like with any old-fashioned text editor. Panopreter supports the following file types: TXT, RTF, PDF, DOC, HTM, HTML, and MHT.

Panopreter works with a wide variety of languages that you can choose from the left sidebar. You can also choose from several different voices, adjust volume, speed and pitch.

You can process XML tags and set the application to highlight words as it reads them.

Panopreter can also read the text you paste on your computer’s clipboard . This means that you do not necessarily have to open the application’s UI every time you need it to read something to you.

Finally, Panopreter offers support through the app, FAQs, and email.

There’s a 30-day free trial available after which the software costs a one-time fee of $32.95 . Your experience during the free trial won’t be encumbered by any limitations.

• Very easy to use
• Works with a wide range of document formats
• Integrates neatly with Microsoft Word
• Supports multiple languages
• One-time purchase
• Only available for Windows users
• Unattractive, outdated UI
• No support for modern web browsers
• No support for .docx files

12. WordTalk

Best free text-to-speech plugin for microsoft word..

WordTalk is an add-on developed by the University of Edinburgh that brings text-to-speech functionality to Microsoft Word . It is compatible with all editions of Word and can be accessed via the toolbar or ribbon, depending on what edition you're using.

While it is a barebones offering, it does support SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 voices , all of which you can tweak to your liking. The software can read individual words, sentences, or paragraphs aloud. You can also save your narrations, and there are several keyboard shortcuts for quick and easy access to options that you use frequently.

WordTalk is completely free to use.

• Integrates well with Microsoft Word
• Offers customizable voices
• Speaking dictionary
• Unattractive design

13. Google Cloud Text-to-Speech

Best text-to-speech software for application developers..

Google Cloud Text-to-Speech is not an option for general users. Instead, it is geared towards developers .

With this platform, developers can integrate text-to-speech and other Google apps to create an intelligent and comprehensive app . Developers can also combine Google Cloud Text-to-Speech with Google Translate to create something a lot more advanced.

Google says it can be used for voice response systems in call centers, enable IoT device speech, and convert media like news articles and books into audio format. Google Cloud Text-to-Speech offers 100+ different voices in 12 languages and allows users to control pitch, speed, and volume .

There’s a limited 90-day free trial available. After that, you get 4 million free characters per month on the Standard Voices plan and 1 million free characters on the WaveNet Voices plan. Then you’d have to shell out $4 per million characters for the Standard Voices plan and $6 per million characters for the WaveNet Voices plan.

• One of the best text-to-speech APIs on the market
• Great documentation
• Generous free plan
• Text processing can be slow at times
• Not for beginners or non-technical users

Key Features to Look for in Text-to-Speech Software

The features you’ll need in text-to-speech software depend on exactly what you need it for . A student with accessibility issues will need different features than an application developer who needs to add text-to-speech functionality to his latest creation.

As such, it would be impossible to create a one-size-fits-all list of features to look for in text-to-speech software. But there are still a few key factors that apply to text-to-speech software of all kinds; so, let’s explore some of them briefly.

Ideally, you’ll want text-to-speech software that comes with the most natural-sounding voices you can find.

While you might feel like you’re saving yourself a few bucks by going with something the comes with robotic-sounding voices, it won’t be long before you forget the low price you paid and find yourself stuck with a listening experience you don’t enjoy.

You’ll also want something that offers a wide range of customizations to the voices . You’ll want to be able to control the pitch, tone, volume, and speed of delivery , and you’ll also want to be able to customize pronunciations whenever necessary.

Finally, it’s nice to be able to select from a wide range of voices . Some providers offer several voices, some even as many as 200 voices. It’s great to know that you can change voices at any time to freshen the experience.

2. Languages

This is another big one, especially for those who may not speak English as a first language or who may want to use text-to-speech software to help them learn a new language.

You’ll want software that supports a wide range of languages, or at least offers your preferred language . Choosing a text-to-speech tool without checking if it supports your language would be a grave mistake.

3. Download Options

You’ll also want to be able to download narrations in a wide variety of formats such as MP3 or WAV. This will allow you to save your narrations and come back to them later.

Since a lot of providers price their services according to how many characters you have them narrate each month , being able to download your narrations means that you can listen to older narrations over and over again without eating into your character quota.

4. Licensing Options

Licensing is another important factor to consider when choosing text-to-speech software.

If you’d like to use the narrations generated by your text-to-speech software commercially (such as on YouTube videos, marketing material, premium courses, etc), you should opt for a tool that gives you a commercial-use license , not one that only gives you a personal-use license.

And if you only need text-to-speech software for personal use, why pay a premium for a commercial license ?

5. Extensibility

It’s always nice to be able to sync your software tools to one another. This eliminates the need to move data manually from one place to the other.

And it’s no different with text-to-speech software. For example, if you use cloud storage services to store your files, it makes sense to go for a provider that syncs with your cloud storage provider so that you can fetch files that you want to read without leaving the text-to-speech software’s interface .

This also applies to other services like Bookshare and Project Gutenberg, and even word processors .

Plus, it makes sense for the software to be compatible with your web browser, too, especially for visually challenged individuals or people with print disabilities who may have a hard time reading web content on their own.

6. User Experience

This goes without saying; the text-to-speech software you choose has to be easy to use and give you full control over the playback . You want to be able to pause, play, stop, and resume the playback in the most intuitive way possible.

Some providers offer extra features that boost usability, such as text highlighting (the reader highlights words on the screen as it reads them), the ability to control pause duration, and so on.

These extra features are nice to have for some people but may be necessary for others. Students learning a new language or those with reading disabilities looking to improve their reading might find the text highlighting feature particularly helpful , for example.

For visually challenged users, accessibility is a big issue , and providers who offer accessibility-driven features would be preferred.

Finally, OCR functionality is a nice-to-have feature. It allows users to scan printed documents into the software and have it read out the contents to them. This is very useful for accessibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

Text-to-speech software is a type of assistive technology that reads text inputted into it aloud. It converts text into audio at the tap of a button. It works with devices and text files of all kinds, and even works with web pages. 

No. Some use AI-generated voices, while others use actual human voices, with some premium offerings using voices of famous narrators like Morgan Freeman and David Attenborough. 

With text-to-speech software, even establishing a pricing range is near impossible , especially since there are many pricing models.  Some providers offer their products 100% free , some charge a monthly fee (some charging as high as $90/month), some charge a one-time fee (some as high as $199), and others charge per character (such as Google Cloud Text-to-Speech and Amazon Polly). At the end of the day, what you have to pay will be decided by what platform you choose to go for, and that will be determined by the features you need from your text-to-speech software. 

Text-to-speech software has a wide range of applications in various fields. Most commonly, it is used by people with learning disabilities, print disabilities, visual impairments, and literacy challenges .  Text-to-speech software is also used to provide queue-free self-service customer care in several industries like banking and finance. It can be used by text editors to detect mistakes and errors that they may have otherwise glossed over while reading.  Content creators— podcasters, YouTubers, online course creators , and others —may use text-to-speech software to create voice-overs for their content .  Even people who need to stay productive use text-to-speech software to read documents aloud while they multitask or run errands. The applications of text-to-speech software are truly wide-ranging.

Which Text to Speech Software Should I Pick?

We already established that choosing the right text-to-speech software depends on your specific needs. One software cannot fulfill everyone’s peculiar needs. Factors ranging from pricing and voices to licensing and download options will all play a role in your final decision.

But we can make a few suggestions based on what category of user you fall

• For bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, online course creators, and other content creators , Murf is an excellent choice.
• For businesses and eLearning projects, NaturalReader is a great option.
• Developers looking to create speech-enabled applications will find Google Cloud Text-to-Speech and Amazon Polly to be particularly useful options.
• Developers looking for a free way to add text-to-speech to their applications would be hard-pressed to find a better option than Balabolka .
• Anyone with print disabilities will find Capti Voice to be indispensable.

And for mobile users, check out Voice Dream Reader .

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Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.

Create Your Course

The best text to speech tools in 2024 (free & paid), share this article.

Thanks to incredible advancements in AI technology, text to speech software in 2023 is now sounding less and less like a robot – and more like a human reader.

This is great news for any Creator Educators looking to make their content creation process more efficient, without compromising on quality.

Text to speech apps can take your content from dull to dynamic in just one step, helping to transform boring text into natural-sounding audio that improves accessibility, productivity and engagement for learners.

Use text to speech software to open up new revenue streams for your business by transforming your existing content into videos and audio, as well as helping to make your content accessible for everyone. With these tools, you can create professional-sounding audio content in a fraction of the time you’d spend recording yourself. It’s a win-win!

Here’s our top list of the best text to speech software to help grow your business in 2023.

Click the links below to skip ahead:

• Standard TTS vs Neural TTS

The best text to speech software in 2023

Amazon polly, google cloud text-to-speech, microsoft azure speech, natural reader, voiceovermaker, why use text to speech software.

If you’re a Creator Educator looking to convert your text content into audio for videos, audiobooks, social media and more, it’s time to find text to speech software for your business.

Here are some of the top use cases for businesses:

• Enhance accessibility: Use text to speech software across all your content to boost accessibility for all learners and customers
• Convert education content to audio: Make your educational content accessible for learners who are visually impaired, dyslexic, or who learn better with audio
• Add voiceovers to presentations: Bring your content alive by adding professional voiceovers to slides and animations
• Create audiobooks: Open up a new revenue stream by capturing sales from learners who prefer to listen rather than read
• Make content more engaging: Enhance your existing content with more video elements to improve the learner experience
• Repurpose blogs: Turn blog content into narration for engaging videos on YouTube, social media, and more

Turn text into speech to instantly repurpose your existing content into new formats and make sure your content is accessible to all.

Standard TTS vs. Neural TTS

Before diving into the world of text to speech, here’s a quick look at the difference between standard and neural text to speech tools.

• Standard TTS is the older approach to text to speech software. If you think of artificial, stiff-sounding text to speech audio, you’re thinking of standard TTS.
• Neural TTS draws on neural network technology or AI to generate more natural-sounding, humalike speech. Don’t let that creep you out, though – neural TTS can create truly lifelike and listenable audio that cuts out a major chunk of time for businesses and creators, helping you reach more people with your content.

Check out these best text to speech apps in 2023 to create stunning audio content – while saving you essential time and energy.

Best paid text to speech software

The best all-round cloud-based text to speech software for Creator Educators

Pricing Options

• Standard TTS: Up to 5 million characters per month for 12 months
• Neural TTS: Up to 1 million characters per month for 12 months
• Standard TTS: $4 per 5 million characters
• Neural TTS: $16 per 1 million characters

Reasons to buy

• Choose from 100+ voices across 36 languages
• Stream converted speech audio on the go, without downloading files
• Use Speech Marks to sync text and audio

Consistently ranked by users as the best option for text to speech software, Amazon Polly is one of the best TTS tools for generating natural-sounding audio content. Thanks to advanced AI and deep learning technology, Amazon Polly helps creators get high-quality, human-like audio that can be rolled out to a global audience. Choose from both standard and neural services to create your audio – and since it’s pay-as-you-go, there’s no need to worry about subscription fees draining your bank account when it’s not being used. 

Amazon Polly also includes the handy Speech Marks feature, a tool that allows you to match your AI-generated audio with text so learners can follow along with your voiceover. 

Try Amazon Polly

The best alternative with wide range of voices and languages to choose from

• 60 minutes per month
• Standard TTS: $4 per 4 million characters
• 380+ voices in 50+ languages and variants
• Personalize pitch with 20 semitones
• Option to create a one-of-a-kind voice

As a close competitor to Amazon Polly, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech offers a comprehensive range of features as part of its text to speech software that lets you customize and control every aspect of your audio. Use voice tuning to personalize the pitch of your selected voice and use SSML tags to add pauses, numbers, and other pronunciation notes to create content that flows.

Google’s text to speech software makes use of their DeepMind speech synthesis expertise to deliver over 380 human-quality voices across a wide range of languages – ideal for tapping into a global audience with your content. Google’s TTS tool also has a custom voice generator that lets you create a unique voice for your brand – that no one else can use.

Try Google Text-to-Speech

The best choice for better data security and compliance

• Neural TTS: Up to 0.5 million characters per month
• Standard TTS: 5 audio hours per month
• Custom TTS: $24 per 1 million characters
• Better data security and privacy than other TTS apps
• Zero code options available
• Create and adapt custom voices for your brand

Take advantage of Microsoft’s AI-driven text to speech software and use their wide range of in-built features to help your content stand out from the crowd. Build your own custom voice and choose between different emotions and speaking styles to craft the perfect personality for your brand. This tool is also ideal for adapting your speech content to different use cases like customer support chatbots and educational content. Their no code tools also mean you don’t need to be a tech expert to take advantage of their top features.  

There’s good news if you’re concerned about data security too – Microsoft’s text to speech tool comes in top for security and compliance. You don’t need to worry about speech inputs being logged during processing and you can breathe easier knowing Microsoft invests heavily in cybersecurity and privacy.

Try Azure Speech Services

The best choice for AI-powered video voiceovers

• Up to 10 mins of voice generation per month
• Starting at $39/month for 4 hours of voice generation per user/month
• Create AI video voiceovers in minutes
• 120+ voices in 20+ languages
• Convert home recordings to professional voiceovers

Specially tailored to video voiceovers, Murf offers text to speech software that lets users create studio-quality audio in minutes. Murf has a wide range of AI-voices to suit every context, with categories ranging from Educator to Corporate Coach to Educator to Marketer and more. Use Murf to convert any text to speech or to turn your home-recorded audio into professional, studio-quality content that’s ideal for videos, podcasts, presentations, and more.

Murf’s in-built video editor lets you add images, music and videos to your audio so you don’t need to switch between multiple platforms and apps to create your content. You can also tweak your AI voiceover to add different pitches, emphasis, and interjections. If you want to add more users and collaborate with multiple members of your team or across different organizations, opt for Murf’s Enterprise plan.

The best stripped-down text to speech software for creators who want simplicity

• 20 minutes of voice per day
• Starting at $9.99/month for personal use
• Starting at $49/month for commercial use

Reasons to Buy

• Over 100 voices on paid plans
• Works on mobile devices for editing on-the-go
• Supports multiple text formats and includes OCR scanning

Designed for small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike, Natural Reader is known for being extra user-friendly. With a simple user interface and pricing packages free of API frills, Natural Reader is a top choice for generating audio for YouTube videos, social media and education purposes. Simply paste your text into the text to speech tool and export the audio file – it’s instant and code-free.

If you want to make your voiceovers more engaging, experiment with adding extra emotions and effects in the app and use the studio editor to easily alter your audio without switching platforms. There’s one key drawback to note though – thanks to its usability, Natural Voice is popular with YouTube creators so you run the risk of choosing a voice option that’s been heard many times before.

Try Natural Reader

The best for creating multilingual voiceover content fast

• Up to 800 characters per month
• Starting from 9€/month (approx $9 USD/month) for 60,000 characters
• Built-in easy-to-use video editor
• Automatic translation into 30 languages
• Uses Google’s WaveNet technology

If you’re just getting started with video, VoiceOverMaker is a quick and easy text to speech tool to help you get realistic-sounding audio content for your videos. The service uses Google’s neural WaveNet technology to create humanlike voices – and gives you a single, cloud-based app to edit your voice track and videos together. The software includes useful features like automatic translation, background music, and a built-in screen recorder tool. Plus, take advantage of VoiceOverMaker’s pay-as-you-go pricing to keep costs to a minimum.

Try VoiceOverMaker

Best free text to speech software

The best option for free text to speech software for commercial use

• 10,000 characters per month
• Starting from $19/month for 1,000,000 characters

Reasons to use

• Higher character limit than competitors
• Download audio as mp3 in seconds
• Powered by Google machine learning

With no registration or sign-up required, you can start using FreeTTS immediately to convert up to 10,000 characters each month – and it’s completely free! FreeTTS prides itself on being super fast, helping Creator Educators easily convert scripts into mp3 audio files in seconds, so it’s ideal for producing video voiceovers quickly and efficiently. FreeTTS uses Google’s machine learning technology to deliver decent quality results across 50+ languages and the free version is suitable even for commercial use – but it’s important to note that you can only convert 500 characters of text at a time, so it’s best for short videos.

Try FreeTTS

Straightforward, free text to speech software with mobile app

• Unlimited text reading for personal use
• $2/month for commercial use
• Straightforward, no frills tool
• Upload files, PDFs, ebooks,and more
• Use online or download the iOS and Android app

On the surface, the TTSReader free text to speech software may look dated, but their free tool includes an impressive range of features. The TTSReader tool is about as utilitarian as it gets – it’s pared back but powerful, accepting a wide variety of file types that can be converted into simple audio files to listen to in your browser or save for later. The free version supports multiple languages and includes basic editing tools too. To unlock more features, you’ll need to purchase the premium plan – but at just $2 per month it won’t break the bank.

Try TTSReader

Use these top text to speech tools to engage your audience

Once you’ve started using text to speech software, there’s no going back. It’s so easy, efficient, and delivers impressive results – especially thanks to the range of new AI-driven tools on offer. To help you find the best text to speech apps for your needs, take advantage of the free plans and tools in this list and take some time to experiment with different options. Don’t forget, you can even create a unique voice for your brand!

If you’re a Creator Educator looking to earn more from your content, try Thinkific for free .

This post was originally created in 2022, it’s since been updated in June 2023.

Colin is a Content Marketer at Thinkific, writing about everything from online entrepreneurship & course creation to digital marketing strategy.

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Free Text to Speech Software (TTS)

An easy way to convert text to voice that’s fast and straightforward – it’ll make your message more catchy and inclusive., listen to any text, book, email, or pdf you need to read to save hours of time & understand more with speechify.

Why do you need narration in your videos?

If you’re planning on creating a demo or explainer video , you should consider adding a voiceover to your video.

Adding narration to your videos will help you to gain and maintain the viewer’s attention.  This will, in turn, help you to make the message of your video easier to understand, and you´ll be able to drive action with your content

So boost your marketing videos ´ performance by adding a voice-over narration with the free text-to-speech technology.

How does text to speech software work?

Write your message directly into the box below or upload a text file from your computer, choose the voice you like most, pick the speed, and that’s it!

The online voice generator will make do its magic. Click play to listen to your message and download it as an mp3 file.

It’s simple and free.

BONUS: Learn how to add subtitles to your video using the same script from the text-to-speech solution.

What is Wideo?

Wideo is an online animated video maker with more than 2.5 million registered users around the world. Create promo videos, explainer videos, demo videos, presentations, etc. No experience is needed. Anyone can create professional videos using Wideo. If you are looking to scale your video content creation process, explore Wideo´s Video Automation Solution

We decided to share a text to speech option integrated with Google text to speech API after many requests from our clients. Now you can convert text to voice, download it as an mp3 file, upload the audio file to the video editor and make your videos more dynamic with a professional voiceover.

Check out our video templates gallery

Generate your mp3 file with an online voice generator and use it in any of our video templates, which have been pre-designed by professionals..

Tutorial Video

Promo Video

App Demo Video

Need help creating your videos, talk to our wideo pros and get a quote on an editable video of your own..

Free Text to Speech (TTS) Online

Try text to speech online and enjoy the best AI voices that sound human. TTS is great for Google Docs, emails, PDFs, any website, and more.

Mr. President

Select Voice

• Recommended

Select Speed

⚡️ 110 % productivity boost.

• Speed Reader
• 4.5x (900 WPM)
• 3.0x (600 WPM)
• 1.5x (300 WPM)
• 1.0x (200 WPM)

Type or paste anything and press play to convert text to speech. Unlock your reading super powers. Speechify can cut your reading time in half!

Choose from 40+ languages

Create a free account to continue

• Convert any text into audio
• 50+ premium voices
• Create your own custom voices
• Added layer of security for your documents
• Save your files
• Faster listening speeds (1.1x & above)
• Automatically skip content (headers, footers, citations etc)
• No limits or ads

Paste Web Link

Paste a web address link to get the contents of a webpage

• Text to Speech

Text to Speech Features

Ditch robotic voices for Speechify’s text to speech that sound very real.

The Best Text to Speech Converter

Listen up to 9x faster with Speechify’s ultra realistic text to speech software that lets you read faster than the average reading speed, without skipping out on the best AI voices.

Listen & Read at the Same Time

With Speechify text highlighting you can choose to just listen, or listen and read at the same time. Easily follow along as words are highlighted – like Karaoke. Listening and reading at the same time increases comprehension.

Convert Text to Studio-Quality Voices

With Speechify’s easy-to-use AI text to speech voices, you can forget about warbly robotic text to speech AI voices. Our accurate human-like AI voices are HD quality and available in 30+ languages and 100+ accents.

Image to Speech

Scan or take a picture of any image and Speechify will read it aloud to you with its cutting-edge OCR technology. Save your images to your library in the cloud and access it anywhere. You can now listen to that note you got from a friend, relative, or other loved one.

Try Text to Speech in these Popular Voices

The most realistic TTS voices only on the best text to speech app.

Gwyneth Paltrow

What is text to speech

Text to speech, also known as TTS, read aloud, or even speech synthesis . It simply means using artificial intelligence to read words aloud be; it from a PDF , email, docs, or any website. There isn’t a voice artist recording phrases or words, or even the entire article. Speech generation is done on-the-fly, in real time, with natural sounding AI voices.

And that’s the beauty of it all. You don’t have to wait. You simply press play and artificial intelligence makes the words come alive instantly, in a very natural sounding voice. You can change voices and accents across multiple languages.

Listen to any article. Easily scan any printed material and convert the image to audio.

Get Text to Speech Today

And begin removing barriers to reading online

I used to hate school because I’d spend hours just trying to read the assignments. Listening has been totally life changing. This app saved my education.

Ana Student with Dyslexia

Speechify has made my editing so much faster and easier when I’m writing. I can hear an error and fix it right away. Now I can’t write without it.

Daniel Writer

Speechify makes reading so much easier. English is my second language and listening while I follow along in a book has seriously improved my skills.

Lou Avid Reader

More text to speech features you’ll love, speechify text to speech online reviews, kate marfori.

Product Manager at The Star Tribune

With Speechify’s API, we can offer our users a new and accessible way to consume our content. We’ve seen that readers who choose to listen to articles with Speechify are on average 20% more engaged than users who choose not to listen.

Susy Botello

Thanks for sharing this.I love this feature. I just tweeted at you on how much I like it. The voice is great and not at all like the text-to-speech I am used to listening to. I am a podcaster and I think this will help a lot of people multitask a bit, especially if they are interrupted with incoming emails or whatever. You can read-along but continue reading if your eyes need to go elsewhere. Hope you keep this. It’s already in other web publications. I also see it in some news sites. So I think it could become a standard that readers expect when they read online. Can I vote twice?

Renato Vargas

I just started using Medium more and I absolutely love this feature. I’ve listened to my own stories and the Al does the inflections just as I would. Many complain that they can’t read their own stories, but let’s be honest. How many stories would go without an audio version if you had to do all of them yourself? I certainly appreciate it. Thanks for this!!

Oh! How cool – I love it 🙂 The voice is surprisingly natural sounding! My eyes took a much appreciated rest for a bit. I’ve been a long time subscriber to Audible on Amazon. I think this is Great 🙂 Thank you!

Paola Rios Schaaf

Super excited about this! We are all spending too much time staring at our screens. Using another sense to take in the great content at Medium is awesome.

Hi Warren, I am one of those small, randomly selected people, and I ABSOLUTELY love this feature. I have consumed more ideas than I ever have on Medium. And also as a non-native English speaker, this is really helping me to improve my pronunciation. Keep this forevermore! Love, Ananya:)

This is the single most important feature you can role out for me. I simply don’t have the time to read all the articles I would like to on Medium. If I could listen to the articles I could consume at least 3X the amount of Medium content I do now.

Andrew Picken

Love this feature Warren. I use it when I’m reading, helps me churn through reading and also stay focused on the article (at a good speed) when my willpower is low! Keeping me more engaged..

I was THRILLED the other day when I saw the audio option. I didn’t know how it got there, but I pressed play, and then I was blown away hearing the words that I wrote being narrated

Neeramitra Reddy

LOVE THISSS. As someone who loves audio almost as much as reading, this is absolute gold

What is text to speech (TTS)?

Text-to-speech goes by a few names. Some refer to it as TTS,  read aloud , or even speech synthesis ; for the more engineered name. Today, it simply means using  artificial intelligence  to read words aloud be; it from a PDF, email, docs, or any website. Instantly turn text into audio. Listen in English, Italian, Portuguese,  Spanish , or more and choose your accent and character to personalize your experience.

How does AI text to speech work?

Beautifully. Speech synthesis works by installing an app like Speechify either on your device or as a browser extension. AI scans the words on the page and  reads it out loud , without any lag. You can change the default voice to a custom voice, change accents, languages, and even increase or decrease the speaking rate.

AI has made significant progress in synthesizing voices. It can pick up on formatted text and change tone accordingly. Gone are the days where the voices sounded  robotic . Speechify is revolutionizing that.

Once you install the TTS mobile app, you can easily convert text to speech from any website within your browser, read aloud your email, and more. If you install it as a  browser extension , you can do just the same on your laptop. The web version is OS agnostic. Mac or Windows, no problem.

What is the text-to-speech service?

A text-to-speech service is a tool, like Speechify text to speech, that transforms your written words into spoken words. Imagine typing out a message and having it read out loud by a digital voice – that’s what TTS services, like Speechify TTS do.

What are the benefits of text to speech?

TTS technology offers many benefits, like helping those with reading difficulties, providing rest for your eyes, multitasking by listening to content, improving pronunciation and language learning, and making content accessible to a wider audience.

How is Speechify TTS better than Murf AI text to speech, Google Voice, or TTSReader?

Speechify TTS stands out by offering a more natural and human-like voice quality, a wider range of customization options, and user-friendly integration across devices. Plus, our dedication to accessibility means that we ensure a seamless and inclusive experience for all users.

Only available on iPhone and iPad

To access our catalog of 100,000+ audiobooks, you need to use an iOS device.

Coming to Android soon...

Join the waitlist

Enter your email and we will notify you as soon as Speechify Audiobooks is available for you.

You’ve been added to the waitlist. We will notify you as soon as Speechify Audiobooks is available for you.

Voice   Generator

This web app allows you to generate voice audio from text - no login needed, and it's completely free! It uses your browser's built-in voice synthesis technology, and so the voices will differ depending on the browser that you're using. You can download the audio as a file, but note that the downloaded voices may be different to your browser's voices because they are downloaded from an external text-to-speech server. If you don't like the externally-downloaded voice, you can use a recording app on your device to record the "system" or "internal" sound while you're playing the generated voice audio.

Want more voices? You can download the generated audio and then use voicechanger.io to add effects to the voice. For example, you can make the voice sound more robotic, or like a giant ogre, or an evil demon. You can even use it to reverse the generated audio, randomly distort the speed of the voice throughout the audio, add a scary ghost effect, or add an "anonymous hacker" effect to it.

Note: If the list of available text-to-speech voices is small, or all the voices sound the same, then you may need to install text-to-speech voices on your device. Many operating systems (including some versions of Android, for example) only come with one voice by default, and the others need to be downloaded in your device's settings. If you don't know how to install more voices, and you can't find a tutorial online, you can try downloading the audio with the download button instead. As mentioned above, the downloaded audio uses external voices which may be different to your device's local ones.

You're free to use the generated voices for any purpose - no attribution needed. You could use this website as a free voice over generator for narrating your videos in cases where don't want to use your real voice. You can also adjust the pitch of the voice to make it sound younger/older, and you can even adjust the rate/speed of the generated speech, so you can create a fast-talking high-pitched chipmunk voice if you want to.

Note: If you have offline-compatible voices installed on your device (check your system Text-To-Speech settings), then this web app works offline! Find the "add to homescreen" or "install" button in your browser to add a shortcut to this app in your home screen. And note that if you don't have an internet connection, or if for some reason the voice audio download isn't working for you, you can also use a recording app that records your devices "internal" or "system" sound.

Got some feedback? You can share it with me here .

If you like this project check out these: AI Chat , AI Anime Generator , AI Image Generator , and AI Story Generator .

google-text-to-speech 0.1.27

pip install google-text-to-speech Copy PIP instructions

Released: Feb 2, 2024

A text-to-speech conversion tool using Google Translate API

Project links

View statistics for this project via Libraries.io , or by using our public dataset on Google BigQuery

License: MIT License (MIT)

Author: Momcilo Krunic

Maintainers

Classifiers

• OSI Approved :: MIT License
• OS Independent
• Python :: 3

Project description

Google translate text-to-speech.

The google_text_to_speech package is a Python-based solution designed to provide versatile and user-friendly text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. Leveraging the Google Translate TTS API, it enables users to convert written text into spoken words in various languages.

• Table of Contents

Installation

Quick start, documentation and reports, contributing.

• Multiple Language Support: Utilizes Google's TTS service to offer speech synthesis in numerous languages.
• Handling of Large Texts: Splits long texts into sentences to avoid limitations related to URL length and TTS service constraints.
• Real-Time Audio Playback: Converts text to speech in real-time, with the capability to play the audio immediately.
• Documentation
• Pylint report
• Test coverage report
• The code quality report - Navigate to the Pipelines page , select the latest pipeline, and open the Code Quality tab.
• The test results report - Navigate to the Pipelines page , select the latest pipeline, and open the Tests tab.

Contributions are welcome! Please read our Contributing Guidelines for more information.

This project is licensed under the MIT License .

Developed with ❤️ by

Project details

Release history release notifications | rss feed.

Feb 2, 2024

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Gemini 1.5 Pro could do for audio what previous versions did for text

Published on April 9, 2024

• Google has announced that the Gemini 1.5 Pro model is now available for public preview.
• The company added that the upgraded AI model supports audio processing.
• Google says this tech can be used for high-quality transcriptions, analysis of earnings calls, and more.

Google’s Gemini generative AI models are divided into Nano, Pro, and Ultra. The company announced Gemini 1.5 back in February, and it’s now confirmed that Gemini 1.5 Pro is available for public preview and has gained a notable feature.

Google confirmed that Gemini 1.5 Pro now supports the processing of audio. The search giant says this support includes audio in video files and speech.

“This provides users with seamless cross-modal analysis, providing insights across text, images, videos, and audio. It also provides high-quality transcription and can be used to search audio and video content, such as using it to search, analyze, and answer questions across earnings calls or investor meetings,” Google explained.

A major upgrade for Google’s AI efforts

The company previously claimed that Gemini 1.5 Pro beat Gemini 1.0 Pro in 87% of benchmarks and was almost on par with Gemini 1.0 Ultra. It also previously stated that customers could process an hour of video, 11 hours of audio, codebases with over 30,000 lines of code, or over 700,000 words in a single stream.

It’s worth noting that the Gemini 1.5 Pro is for Workspace users rather than consumers. But it’ll eventually be accessible to consumers via the Gemini assistant and other avenues. Nevertheless, the support for audio processing opens the door to plenty of other features in the future.

Google already offers audio-related tricks on Pixel phones , such as transcription in the Recorder app (powered by older AI tech) and the Audio Magic Eraser tool. So we’re keen to see whether Gemini 1.5 Pro’s core audio capabilities will trickle down into a future on-device AI model as this could enable more advanced audio features on smartphones down the line.

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Speech-to-Text

Experience industry-leading speech-to-text accuracy with Speech AI models on the cutting-edge of AI research, accessible through a simple API.

Call Transcript (04.02.2024)

Thank you for calling Acme Corporation, Sarah speaking. How may I assist you today? Hi Sarah, this is John. I’m having trouble with my Acme Widget. It seems to be malfunctioning. I’m sorry to hear that, John. Let’s get that sorted out for you. Could you please provide me with the serial number of your widget? Thank you, John. Now, could you describe the issue you’re experiencing with your widget? Well, it’s not turning on at all, even though I’ve replaced the batteries. Let’s try a few troubleshooting steps. Have you checked if the batteries are inserted correctly? Yes, I’ve double-checked that.

Universal-1

State-of-the-art multilingual speech-to-text model

Latency on 30 min audio file

Hours of multilingual training data

Industry’s lowest Word Error Rate (WER)

See how Universal-1 performs against other Automatic Speech Recognition providers.

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*Benchmark performed across 11 datasets, including 8 academic datasets & 3 internally curated datasets representing real world English audio.

Harness best-in-class accuracy and powerful Speech AI capabilities

Async speech-to-text.

The AssemblyAI API can transcribe pre-recorded audio and/or video files in seconds, with human-level accuracy. Highly scalable to tens of thousands of files in parallel.

See how in docs

Custom Vocabulary

Boost accuracy for vocabulary that is unique or custom to your specific use case or product.

Speaker Diarization

Detect the number of speakers in your audio file, with each word in the text associated with its speaker.

International Language Support

Gain support to transcribe over 99+ languages and counting, including Global English (English and all of its accents).

Auto Punctuation and Casing

Automatically add casing and punctuation of proper nouns to the transcription text.

Confidence Scores

Get a confidence score for each word in the transcript.

Word Timings

View word-by-word timestamps across the entire transcript text.

Filler Words

Optionally include disfluencies in the transcripts of your audio files.

Profanity Filtering

Detect and replace profanity in the transcription text with ease.

Automatic Language Detection

Automatically detect if the dominant language of the spoken audio is supported by our API and route it to the appropriate model for transcription.

Custom Spelling

Specify how you would like certain words to be spelled or formatted in the transcription text.

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AssemblyAI is committed to the highest standards of security practices to keep your data and your customers' data safe.

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AssemblyAI's accuracy is better than any other tools in the market (and we have tried them all).

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Choosing the Right Open Source Speech to Text Software

Home > Speech-to-Text > Choosing the Right Open Source Speech to Text Software

Karen William

• Filed to: Speech-to-Text

66795 views, 4 min read

Open source speech to text technology processes audio signals using speech recognition techniques to convert spoken content into editable text form. Its applications include real-time captioning, voice search, audio content analysis, etc.

It offers advantages such as improving information retrieval efficiency, supporting multiple languages and dialects, and promoting innovation.

Pros of Speech to Text Open Source

Cons of speech to text open source:, part 2: alternatives to open source speech to text software, 3. deepspeech, 4. paddlespeech, 5. flashlight asr, part 1: pros and cons of open source speech to text.

Before we begin introducing open source speech to text software , we'd like you to understand their advantages and disadvantages.

Customizability: Open-source software can be customized and modified to meet specific use case requirements.

Community support: The active open-source community provides users with extensive technical support and resource sharing.

Accuracy limitations: Open-source speech-to-text technology may not achieve the same level of accuracy as more specialized products.

Feature limitations: Some open-source projects may have limited features and may not meet advanced requirements.

Technical barriers: Using open-source software requires a certain level of technical background and experience, which may not be user-friendly for ordinary users.

Based on the advantages and disadvantages mentioned above, we recommend using professional speech-to-text software that is not open-source. However, if you still prefer to use open source speech to text software, you can proceed to part 3 for more information.

So, based on the advantages and disadvantages of open-source speech-to-text software introduced in the previous section, iMyFone VoxBox is the professional speech-to-text software we want to introduce to you. You can upload audio files or record directly to convert them into text. Additionally, VoxBox supports four common devices (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android).

Key Features:

High accuracy in converting speech to text

Recognition of over 46 languages

Support for importing various file types

Ability to convert audio to text after recording

A software that integrates TTS, STT, and voice cloning

Step-by-Step Guide to Convert Speech to Text

Converting speech to text with VoxBox is exceptionally simple. It only requires three easy steps to get it done.

Step 1: Click the button below to download and install VoxBox, then launch the software.

Step 2: Once VoxBox is opened, click on the "Speech to Text" button in the left-hand menu. Now, you can click the "+ Add File" button to import your file.

Step 3: After importing the file, you can choose the language of your file's content for accurate recognition. You can also choose whether to include punctuation. Once all settings are complete, click "Convert" to start converting your speech to text.

Part 3: Top 5 Open Source Speech to Text Software

Kaldi is an open-source speech recognition toolkit written in C++, designed for speech recognition and signal processing, provided freely under the Apache License v2.0. A major advantage of this open-source software is its cross-platform compatibility, allowing usage on devices running Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

Whisper is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system trained on a vast dataset of multilingual and multitask supervised data collected from the internet, totaling 680,000 hours. It is capable of transcribing multiple languages and translating them into English.

The architecture of Whisper is a simple end-to-end approach implemented in the form of an encoder-decoder Transformer. The input audio is segmented into 30-second chunks, converted into log mel-spectrograms, and then passed to the encoder.

DeepSpeech is an open-source Speech-To-Text engine that utilizes machine learning techniques trained on research papers from Baidu Deep Speech. The DeepSpeech project leverages Google's TensorFlow to simplify implementation.

It offers specialized wrappers for Python, C, .Net Framework, and Javascript, allowing users to utilize the tool regardless of the programming language they prefer.

PaddleSpeech is an open-source integrated speech toolkit designed to facilitate the development and research of speech processing technology by providing an easy-to-use command-line interface and a simple code structure.

It achieves competitive or state-of-the-art performance on various speech datasets and implements popular methods. PaddleSpeech also offers recipes and pre-trained models for quickly reproducing the experimental results mentioned in this article.

The ASR application of Flashlight (formerly known as the wav2letter project) provides training and inference capabilities for end-to-end speech recognition systems. In addition to the original research conducted with Flashlight and wav2letter, the codebase also includes the latest architectures and implementations developed in the field of speech.

Nowadays, there are relatively few open-source speech-to-text software options available on the market, with many being outdated versions. Therefore, we have gathered these five speech-to-text software options to the best of our ability for you to choose from.

Additionally, we have introduced VoxBox, a non-open-source speech-to-text software, which may surprise you with its effectiveness. If you are interested in trying it out, the button below can assist you.

Related Articles:

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• Review: AWS Transcribe vs.Microsoft Azure Speech Service vs Google Speech to Text
• How to Set Speech to Text on Mac Effortlessly?
• Speech To Text Software Comparison: Twilio VS Converse Smartly

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Adobe’s AI text-to-video tool already sounds better than Sora

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

Adobe is working on a mysterious text-to-video generative AI product that will let users create video clips with nothing but text prompts. If the feature sounds familiar, that’s because Adobe won’t be the first to launch a product like this. OpenAI showed off Sora demos earlier this year, allowing people to create videos using text prompts. Of note, Sora has been trained on actual videos from creators.

According to Adobe documents that Bloomberg saw , Adobe has started purchasing videos for its Sora rival. Adobe is reportedly offering its network of creators $120 for “videos of people engaged in everyday actions such as walking or expressing emotions including joy and anger.”

Adobe also wants anatomy shots of feet, hands, and eyes, the report says. People interacting with objects like smartphones or fitness equipment are also priorities. But Adobe doesn’t want copyrighted content, nuditity, or other potentially offensive material.

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ChatGPT creator OpenAI stunned the world a few weeks ago with Sora, its text-to-video AI tool that generates clips that look almost like the real thing. A few weeks later, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced plans to release Sora to the public later this year.

That is, OpenAI might have trained Sora on publicly available clips from social media or even sites like YouTube without actually getting approvals from content creators or social networks.

Murati eventually confirmed OpenAI used videos from Shutterstock, but wouldn’t say whether YouTube and Meta clips were also used for training Sora.

Adobe already has genAI tools for generating images and performing edits. A text-to-video AI program that rivals Sora seems like the logical next step.

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How Tesla Planted the Seeds for Its Own Potential Downfall

Elon musk’s factory in china saved his company and made him ultrarich. now, it may backfire..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Katrin Bennhold. This is “The Daily.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, the story of how China gave Tesla a lifeline that saved the company — and how that lifeline has now given China the tools to beat Tesla at its own game. My colleague, Mara Hvistendahl, explains.

It’s Tuesday, April 9.

So, Mara, you’ve spent the past four months investigating Elon Musk and his ties to China through his company, Tesla. Tell us why.

Well, a lot of American companies are heavily invested in China, but Tesla’s kind of special. As my colleagues and I started talking to sources, we realized that many people felt that China played a crucial role in rescuing the company at a critical moment when it was on the brink of failure and that China helps account for Tesla’s success, for making it the most valuable car company in the world today, and for making Elon Musk ultra rich.

That’s super intriguing. So maybe take us back to the beginning. When does the story start?

So the story starts in the mid 2010s. Tesla had been this company that had all this hype around it. But —

A lot of people were shocked by Tesla’s earnings report. Not only did they make a lot less money than expected, they’re also making a lot less cars.

Tesla was struggling.

The delivery of the Model 3 has been delayed yet again.

Tesla engineers are saying 40 percent of the parts made at the Fremont factory need reworking.

At the time, they made their cars in Fremont, California, and they were facing production delays.

Tesla is confirming that Cal/OSHA is investigating the company over concerns over workplace safety.

Elon Musk has instituted a kind of famously grueling work culture at the factory, and that did not go over well with California labor law.

The federal government now has four active investigations involving Tesla.

They were clashing with regulators.

The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate a second crash involving Tesla’s autopilot system.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk — friends are really concerned about him. That’s what Musk told “The New York Times.”

And by 2018, he was having all of these crises.

According to “The Times,” Musk choked up multiple times and struggled to maintain his composure during an hour-long interview about turmoil at his electric car company, Tesla.

So all of this kind of converged to put immense pressure on him to do something.

And where does China come in?

Well, setting up a factory in China, in a way, would solve some of these problems for Musk. Labor costs were lower. Workers couldn’t unionize there. China provided access to this steady supply of cheaper parts. So Elon Musk was set on going to China. But first, Tesla and Musk wanted to change a key policy in China.

Hmm, what kind of policy?

So they wanted China to adopt a policy that was aimed at lowering car emissions. And the idea was that it would be modeled after a similar policy in California that had benefited Tesla there.

OK, so explain what that policy actually did. And how did it benefit Tesla?

So California had this system called the Zero-Emission Vehicle program. And that was designed to encourage companies to make cleaner cars, including electric vehicles. And they did that by setting pollution targets. So companies that made a lot of clean cars got credits. And then companies that failed to meet those targets, that produced too many gas-guzzling cars, would have to buy credits from the cleaner companies.

So California is trying to incentivize companies to make cleaner cars by forcing the traditional carmakers to pay cleaner car makers, which basically means dirtier car makers are effectively subsidizing cleaner cars.

Yes, that’s right. And Tesla, as a company that came along just making EVs, profited immensely from this system. And in its early years, when Tesla was really struggling to stay afloat, the money that it earned from selling credits in California to polluting car companies were absolutely crucial, so much so that the company structured a lot of its lobbying efforts around this system, around preserving these credits. And we talked to a former regulator who said as much.

How much money are we talking about here?

So from 2008, when Tesla unveiled its first car, up until the end of last year, Tesla made almost $4 billion by selling credits in California.

Wow. So Musk basically wants China to recreate this California-style program, which was incredibly lucrative for Tesla, there. And they’re basically holding that up as a condition to their building a factory in China.

Right. And at this point in the story, an interesting alliance emerges. Because it wasn’t just Tesla that wanted this emissions program in China. It was also environmentalists from California who had seen the success of the program up close in their own state.

If you go back to that period, to the early 2010s, I was living in China at the time in Beijing and Shanghai. And it was incredibly polluted. We called it airpocalypse at times. I had my first child in China at that point. And as soon as it was safe to put a baby mask on her, we put a little baby mask on her. There were days where people just would try to avoid going outside because it was so polluted. And some of the pollution was actually wafting across the Pacific Ocean to California.

Wow, so California is experiencing that Chinese air pollution firsthand and, in a way, has a direct stake in lowering it.

That’s right. So Governor Jerry Brown, for example — this became kind of his signature issue, was working with China to clean up the environment, in part by exporting this emission scheme. It was also an era of a lot more US-China cooperation. China was seen as absolutely crucial to combating climate change.

So you had all these groups working to get this California emissions scheme exported to China — and the governor’s office and environmental groups and Tesla. And it worked. In 2017, China did adopt a system that was modeled after California’s.

It’s pretty incredible. So California basically exports its emissions-trading system to China, which I imagine at the time was a big win for Californian environmentalists. But it was also a big win for Tesla.

It was definitely a big win for Tesla. And we know that in just a few years Tesla, made almost $1 billion from the emissions-trading program he helped lobby for in China.

So Elon Musk goes on, builds a factory in China. And he does so in Shanghai, where he builds a close relationship with the top official in the city, who actually is now the number-two official in all of China, Li Qiang.

So according to Chinese state media, Elon Musk actually proposed building the factory in two years, which would be fast. And Li came back and proposed that they do it in one year, which — things go up really quickly in China. But even for China, this is incredibly fast. And they broke ground on the factory in January 2019. And by the end of the year, cars were rolling off the line. So then in January 2020, Musk was able to get up on stage in Shanghai and unveil the first Chinese-made Teslas.

Really want to thank the Tesla team and the government officials that have been really helpful in making this happen.

Next to him on stage is Tesla’s top lobbyist who helped push through some of these changes.

Thank you. Yeah, everybody can tell Elon’s super, super happy today.

[SPEAKING CHINESE]

And she says —

Music, please.

Cue the music. [UPBEAT MUSIC]

And he actually broke into dance. He was so happy, a kind of awkward dance.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

And what is the factory like?

The Shanghai factory is huge. 20,000 people work there. Tesla’s factories around the world tend to be pretty large, but the Shanghai workers work more shifts. And when Tesla set up in China, Chinese banks ended up offering Tesla $1.5 billion in low-interest loans. They got a preferential tax rate in Shanghai.

This deal was so generous that one auto industry official we talked to said that a government minister had actually lamented that they were giving Tesla too much. And it is an incredibly productive factory. It’s now the flagship export factory for Tesla.

So it opens in late 2019. And that’s, of course, the time when the pandemic hits.

Yes. I mean, you might think that this is really poor timing for Elon Musk. But it didn’t quite turn out that way. In fact, Tesla’s factory in Shanghai was closed for only around two weeks, whereas the factory in Fremont was closed for around two months.

That’s a big difference.

Yes, and it really, really mattered to Elon Musk. If you can think back to 2020, you might recall that he was railing against California politicians for closing his factory. In China, the factory stayed open. Workers were working around the clock. And Elon Musk said on a podcast —

China rocks, in my opinion.

— China rocks.

There’s a lot of smart, hardworking people. And they’re not entitled. They’re not complacent, whereas I see —

We’ve seen a lot of momentum and enthusiasm for electric vehicles, stocks, and Tesla certainly leading the charge.

Tesla’s stock price kept going up.

Tesla has become just the fifth company to reach a trillion-dollar valuation. The massive valuation happened after Tesla’s stock price hit an all-time high of more than $1,000.

So this company that had just a few years earlier been on the brink of failure, looking to China for a lifeline, was suddenly riding high. And —

Tesla is now the most valuable car company in the world. It’s worth more than General Motors, Ford, Fiat, Chrysler.

By the summer, it had become the most valuable car company in the world.

Guess what? Elon Musk is now the world’s richest man.

“Forbes” says he’s worth more than $255 billion.

And Elon Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock. And in the following year, he became the wealthiest man in the world.

So you have this emission trading system, which we discussed and which, in part, thanks to Tesla, is now established in China. It’s bringing in money to Tesla. And now this Shanghai factory is continuing to produce cars for Tesla in the middle of the pandemic. So China really paid off for Tesla. But what was in it for China?

Well, China wasn’t doing this for charity.

What Chinese leaders really wanted was to turn their fledgling electric vehicle industry into a global powerhouse. And they figured that Tesla was the ticket to get there. And that’s precisely what happened.

We’ll be right back.

So, Mara, you’ve just told us the story of how Elon Musk used China to turn Tesla into the biggest car maker in the world and himself — at one point — into the richest man in the world. Now I want to understand the other side of this story. How did China use Tesla?

Well, Tesla basically became a catfish for China’s EV industry.

A catfish, what do you mean by that?

It’s a term from the business world. And, essentially, it means a super aggressive fish that makes the other fish in the pond swim faster. And by bringing in this super competitive, aggressive foreign company into China, which at that point had these fledgling EV companies, Chinese leaders hoped to spur the upstart Chinese EV makers to up their game.

So you’re saying that at this point, China actually already had a number of smaller EV companies, which many people in the West may not even be aware of, these smaller fish in the pond that you were referring to.

Yes, there were a lot of them. They were often locally based. Like, one would be strong in one city, and one would be strong in another city. And Chinese leaders saw that they needed to become more competitive in order to thrive.

And China had tried for decades to build up this traditional car industry by bringing in foreign companies to set up joint ventures. They had really had their sights set on building a strong car industry, and it didn’t really work. I mean, how many traditional Chinese car company brands can you name?

Exactly none.

Yeah, right. So going back to the aughts and the 2010s, they had this advantage that many Chinese hadn’t yet been hooked on gas-guzzling cars. There were still many people who were buying their first car ever. So officials had all these levers they could pull to try to encourage or try to push people’s behavior in a certain direction.

And their idea was to try to ensure that when people went to buy their first car, it would be an EV — and not just an EV but, hopefully, a Chinese EV. So they did things like — at the time, just a license plate for your car could cost an exorbitant amount of money and be difficult to get. And so they made license plates for electric vehicles free. So there were all these preferential policies that were unveiled to nudge people toward buying EVs.

So that’s fascinating. So China is incentivizing consumers to buy EV cars and incentivizing also the whole industry to get its act together by chucking this big American company in the mix and hoping that it will increase competitiveness. What I’m particularly struck by, Mara, in what you said is the concept of leapfrogging over the conventional combustion engine phase, which took us decades to live through. We’re still living in it, in many ways, in the West.

But listening to you, it sounds a little bit like China wasn’t really thinking about this transition to EVs as an environmental policy. It sounds like they were doing this more from an industrial-policy perspective.

Right. The environment and the horrible era at the time was a factor, but it was a pretty minor factor, according to people who were privy to the policy discussions. The more significant factor was industrial policy and an interest in building up a competitive sphere.

So China now wants to become a leader in the global EV sector, and it wants to use Tesla to get there. What does that actually look like?

Well, you need sophisticated suppliers to make the component parts of electric vehicles. And just by being in China, Tesla helped spur the development of several suppliers. Like, for example, the battery is a crucial piece of any EV.

And Tesla, with a fair amount of encouragement — and also various levers from the Chinese government — became a customer of a battery maker called CATL, a homegrown Chinese battery maker. And they have become very close to Tesla and have even set up a factory near Teslas in Shanghai. And today, with Tesla’s business — and, of course, with the business of some other companies — CATL is the biggest battery maker in the world.

But beyond just stimulating the growth of suppliers, Tesla also made these other fish in the pond swim faster. And the biggest Chinese EV company to come out of that period is one called BYD. It’s short for Build Your Dreams.

We are BYD. You’ve probably never heard of us.

From battery maker to the biggest electric vehicle or EV manufacturer in China.

They’ve got a lot of models. They’ve got a lot of discounts. They’ve got a lot of market growth.

China’s biggest EV maker just overtook Tesla in terms of worldwide sales.

BYD 10, Chinese automobile redefined.

I’ve actually started seeing that brand on the streets here in Europe recently, especially in Germany, where my brother actually used to lease a Tesla and now leases a BYD.

Does he like it?

He does. Although he did, to be fair, say that he misses the luxury of the Tesla, but it just became too expensive, really.

The price point is a huge reason that BYD is increasingly giving Tesla a run for its money. Years ago, back in 2011 —

Although there’s competitors now ramping up. And, as you’re familiar with, BYD, which is also —

— Elon Musk actually mocked their cars.

— electric vehicles, here he is trying to compete. Why do you laugh?

He asked an interviewer —

Have you seen their car?

I have seen their car, yes.

— have you seen their cars? Sort of suggesting, like, they’re no competition for us.

You don’t see them at all as a competitor?

Why is that? I mean, they offer a lower price point.

I don’t think they have a great product. I think their focus is — and rightly should be — on making sure they don’t die in China.

But they have been steadily improving. They’ve been in the EV space for a while, but they really started improving a few years ago, once Tesla came on the scene. That was due to a number of factors, not entirely because of Tesla. But Tesla played a role in helping train up talent in China. One former Tesla employee who worked at the company as they were getting set up in China told me that most of the employees who were at the company at the time now work for Chinese competitors.

So they have really played this important role in the EV ecosystem.

And you mentioned the price advantage. So just for comparison, what does an average BYD sell for compared to a more affordable Tesla car?

So BYD has an ultra-cheap model called the Seagull that sells for around $10,000 now in China, whereas Tesla Model 3s and Model Ys in China sell for more than twice that.

Wow. How’s BYD able to sell EVs at these much lower prices?

Well, the Seagull is really just a simpler car. It has less range than a Tesla. It lacks some safety measures. But BYD has this other crucial advantage, which is that they’re vertically integrated. Like, they control many aspects of the supply chain, up and down the supply chain. When you look at the battery level, they make batteries. But they even own the mines where lithium is mined for the batteries.

And they recently launched a fleet of ships. So they actually operate the boats that are sending their cars to Europe or other parts of the world.

So BYD is basically cutting out the middleman on all these aspects of the supply chain, and that’s how they can undercut other car makers on price.

Yeah. They’ve cut out the middleman, and they’ve cut out the shipping company and almost everything else.

So how is BYD doing now as a company compared to Tesla?

In terms of market cap, they’re still much smaller than Tesla. But, crucially, they overtook Tesla in sales in the last quarter of last year.

Yeah, that was a huge milestone. Tesla still dominates in the European market, which is a very important market for EVs. But BYD is starting to export there. And Europe traditionally is kind of automotive powerhouse, and the companies and government officials there are very, very concerned. I interviewed the French finance minister, and he told me that China has a five - to seven-year head start on Europe when it comes to EVs.

Wow. And what has Elon Musk said about this incredible rise of BYD in recent years? Do you think he anticipated that Tesla’s entry into the Chinese market could end up building up its own competition?

Well, I can’t get inside his head, and he did not respond to our questions. But —

The Chinese car companies are the most competitive car companies in the world.

— he has certainly changed his tune. So, remember, he was joking about BYD some years ago.

Yeah, he’s not joking anymore.

I think they will have significant success.

He had dismissed Chinese EV makers. He now appears increasingly concerned about these new competitors —

Frankly, I think if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world.

— to the point that on an earnings call in January, he all but endorsed the use of trade barriers against them.

They’re extremely good.

I think it’s so interesting, in a way — of course, with perfect hindsight — the kind of maybe complacency or naivete with which he may not have anticipated this turn of events. And in some ways, he’s not alone, right? It speaks to something larger. Like, China, for a long time, was seen as kind of the sweatshop or the manufacturer of the world — or perhaps as an export market for a lot of these Western companies. It certainly wasn’t putting out its own big brand names. It was making stuff for the brand names.

But recently, they have quite a lot of their own brand names. Everybody talks about TikTok. There’s Huawei. There’s WeChat, Lenovo. And now there is BYD. So China is becoming a leader in technology in certain areas. And I think that shift in some ways has happened. And a lot of Western companies — perhaps like Tesla — were kind of late to waking up to that.

Right. Tesla is looking fragile now. Their stock price dropped 30 percent in the first quarter of this year. And to a large degree, that is because of the threat of companies like BYD from China and the perception that Tesla’s position as number one in the market is no longer guaranteed.

So, Mara, all this raises a much bigger question for me, which is, who is going to own the future of EVs? And based on everything you’ve said so far, it seems like China owns the future of EVs. Is that right?

Well, possibly, but the jury is still out. Tesla is still far bigger for now. But there is this increasing fear that China owns the future of EVs. If you look at the US, there are already 25 percent tariffs on EVs from China. There’s talk of increasing them. The Commerce Department recently launched an investigation into data collection by electric vehicles from China.

So all of these factors are creating uncertainty around what could happen. And the European Union may also add new tariffs against Chinese-made cars. And China is an economic rival and a security rival and, in many ways, our main adversary. So this whole issue is intertwined with national security. And Tesla is really in the middle of it.

Right. So the sort of new Cold War that people are talking about between the US and China is, in a sense, the backdrop to this story. But on one level, what we’ve been talking about, it’s really a corporate story, an economic story that has this geopolitical backdrop. But it’s also very much an environmental story. So, regardless of how Elon Musk and Tesla fare in the end, is BYD’s rise and its ability to create high-quality and — perhaps more importantly — affordable EVs ultimately a good thing for the world?

If I think back on those years I spent living in Shanghai and Beijing when it was extremely polluted and there were days when you couldn’t go outside — I don’t think anyone wants to go back to that.

So it’s clear that EVs are the future and that they’re crucial to the green energy transition that we have to make. How exactly we get there is still unclear. But what is true is that China did just make that transition easier.

Mara, thank you so much.

Thank you, Katrin.

Here’s what else you need to know today.

[CROWD CHEERING]

Millions of people across North America were waiting for their turn to experience a rare event on Monday. From Mexico —

Cuatro, tres, dos, uno.

— to Texas.

Awesome, just awesome.

We can see the corona really well. Oh, you can see —

[BACKGROUND CHATTER]

Oh, and we are falling into darkness right now. What an incredible sensation. And you are hearing and seeing the crowd of 15,000 gathered here in south Illinois.

Including “Daily” producers in New York.

It’s like the sky is almost —

— like a deep blue under the clouds.

Wait, look. It’s just —

Oh my god. The sun is disappearing. And it’s gone. Oh. Whoa.

All the way up to Canada.

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about.

The moon glided in front of the sun and obscured it entirely in a total solar eclipse, momentarily plunging the day into darkness.

It’s super exciting. It’s so amazing to see science in action like this.

Today’s episode was produced by Rikki Novetsky and Mooj Zadie with help from Rachelle Bonja. It was edited by Lisa Chow with help from Alexandra Leigh Young, fact checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Diane Wong, Elisheba Ittoop, and Sophia Lanman and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m catching Katrin Bennhold. See you tomorrow.

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• April 9, 2024   •   30:48 How Tesla Planted the Seeds for Its Own Potential Downfall
• April 8, 2024   •   30:28 The Eclipse Chaser
• April 7, 2024 The Sunday Read: ‘What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About Living’
• April 5, 2024   •   29:11 An Engineering Experiment to Cool the Earth
• April 4, 2024   •   32:37 Israel’s Deadly Airstrike on the World Central Kitchen
• April 3, 2024   •   27:42 The Accidental Tax Cutter in Chief
• April 2, 2024   •   29:32 Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate
• April 1, 2024   •   36:14 Ronna McDaniel, TV News and the Trump Problem
• March 29, 2024   •   48:42 Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband
• March 28, 2024   •   33:40 The Newest Tech Start-Up Billionaire? Donald Trump.

Hosted by Katrin Bennhold

Featuring Mara Hvistendahl

Produced by Rikki Novetsky and Mooj Zadie

With Rachelle Bonja

Edited by Lisa Chow and Alexandra Leigh Young

Original music by Marion Lozano ,  Diane Wong ,  Elisheba Ittoop and Sophia Lanman

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

When Elon Musk set up Tesla’s factory in China, he made a bet that brought him cheap parts and capable workers — a bet that made him ultrarich and saved his company.

Mara Hvistendahl, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains why, now, that lifeline may have given China the tools to beat Tesla at its own game.

On today’s episode

Mara Hvistendahl , an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading

A pivot to China saved Elon Musk. It also bound him to Beijing .

Mr. Musk helped create the Chinese electric vehicle industry. But he is now facing challenges there as well as scrutiny in the West over his reliance on China.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Fact-checking by Susan Lee .

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Katrin Bennhold is the Berlin bureau chief. A former Nieman fellow at Harvard University, she previously reported from London and Paris, covering a range of topics from the rise of populism to gender. More about Katrin Bennhold

Mara Hvistendahl is an investigative reporter for The Times focused on Asia. More about Mara Hvistendahl

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