Free Text to Speech

Every modern browser can speak text through the Web Speech API, using voices supplied by your operating system or browser. This page passes your text to those voices one sentence at a time, which avoids the cut-off some browsers apply to long speech and lets you follow along: the word being spoken is highlighted, or the whole sentence where a voice does not report its position.

Speed runs from half to double the normal rate. Pitch makes the voice higher or lower. The choices apply the next time you press Read aloud.

The voice list comes from your device, so it changes from one computer or phone to the next. The browser tells the page whether each voice is local or remote, and the tool marks remote ones “(online)”:

• Local voices produce the speech on your device. Your text stays there.
• Online voices are produced by a speech service run by your browser’s maker, so the browser sends them the text. They often sound more natural, which is the trade-off.

When the page opens it picks a local voice in your language if there is one. This site never receives or stores what you paste.

• Proofreading. Hearing your writing read back catches missing words, repeated words and clumsy sentences that your eyes skip over.
• Rehearsing a speech. Listen to how it flows, then check its length with the speaking time calculator.
• Reading long articles. Listen while you do something else, at a speed that suits you.
• Learning a language. Choose a voice in the language you are learning and slow it down.
• Accessibility. For anyone who finds long blocks of text tiring to read.