🔊 Text to Speech
Paste any text and hear it read aloud with your device’s voices. No character limit, no signup, speed and pitch control, and sentence highlighting.
245 characters · 47 words · about 19 s at 1×
What Text to Speech Does
This text to speech tool reads anything you paste in a real voice, using the speech engine that already ships with your browser and operating system. There is no account and no character quota, because nothing is generated on a paid server: your device does the speaking. Paste a single paragraph or an entire chapter and it reads straight through.
Voices are the part that varies. A Windows laptop, a Mac, an Android phone and an iPhone each offer their own set, and Chrome and Edge add extra online voices on top. Each voice in the list is labeled either as installed on your device or as “online”. That label matters for privacy: the Web Speech standard lets a browser use a remote synthesizer, and when it does, the text you paste travels to that provider to be turned into audio.
Long passages are read one sentence-sized chunk at a time. It is the fix for the most common complaint about browser speech — Chrome’s online voices falling silent after a few sentences — and it lets the page highlight exactly which sentence is being spoken, which makes following along or proofreading by ear much easier.
How to Use Text to Speech
- Type or paste the text you want to hear into the box
- Choose a language and a voice — voices marked “online” send text to a speech provider
- Set the speed and pitch with the sliders
- Press Play; the sentence being read is highlighted as it goes
- Use Pause, Resume or Stop at any time
Where the Voices Come From
The list you see is assembled by your browser from these sources. Adding voices at the operating-system level makes them appear here after a page reload.
| Platform | Built-in voices | Add more voices |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 10/11 | Microsoft desktop voices (e.g. David, Zira) | Settings › Time & language › Speech › Add voices |
| macOS | Apple system voices | System Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content › System voice › Manage Voices |
| iPhone / iPad | Apple voices, including enhanced and premium downloads | Settings › Accessibility › Spoken Content › Voices |
| Android | Google speech services voices | Settings › Accessibility › Text-to-speech output |
| Chrome (any OS) | Adds several “Google …” online voices | Provided by the browser; marked online |
| Microsoft Edge | Adds Microsoft “Natural” online voices | Provided by the browser; marked online |
Reading Time at Different Speeds
Approximate listening time, assuming about 150 words per minute at 1× — a typical conversational speaking rate. Actual pace varies by voice.
| Length | At 1× | At 1.25× | At 1.5× |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 words (a short email) | 2 min | 1 min 36 s | 1 min 20 s |
| 1,000 words (a blog post) | 6 min 40 s | 5 min 20 s | 4 min 27 s |
| 2,500 words (a long article) | 16 min 40 s | 13 min 20 s | 11 min 7 s |
| 5,000 words (a short story) | 33 min 20 s | 26 min 40 s | 22 min 13 s |
How to Read Your Result
Listening is a proofreading tool
Your eyes autocorrect your own writing; your ears do not. Hearing a draft read aloud at 1× exposes doubled words, missing articles and sentences that run out of breath far more reliably than rereading. It is the main reason writers use text to speech, and it works best with a local voice at a slightly slower speed.
Choosing between a local and an online voice
Online voices in Chrome and Edge usually sound more natural because they run on the provider’s servers. Local voices keep your text on your device and keep working offline. For confidential documents — contracts, medical notes, unpublished work — pick a voice without the “online” label.
Pitch and speed are independent
Speed changes how fast the words come; pitch raises or lowers the voice without changing its pace. Small pitch changes (0.9–1.1) can make a voice easier to listen to for long periods; large ones quickly sound artificial.
Limitations & Accuracy Notes
- Audio cannot be downloaded. Browser speech engines play straight to your speakers and do not hand web pages a copy of the sound, so no browser-based tool that uses them can produce an MP3.
- Voice quality and language coverage depend entirely on your device and browser; this site cannot add voices to the list.
- Pronunciation of names, acronyms and numbers follows the voice’s own rules. Spelling a word phonetically in the box is the only way to change how it is said.
- SSML markup (pauses, emphasis tags) is not supported; punctuation is the only way to shape pauses.
- Online voices need an internet connection and send the text to their provider; local voices work offline.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this text to speech tool really free with no character limit?
Can I download the audio as an MP3?
Why do I see different voices on my phone and my laptop?
Is the text I paste sent to a server?
Why does speech stop partway through long text in some browsers?
How do I get more natural-sounding voices?
What reading speed should I use?
Does it read languages other than English?
References & Further Reading
- MDN Web Docs — SpeechSynthesis — The browser API this tool uses
- MDN Web Docs — SpeechSynthesisVoice.localService — How a page tells local voices from remote ones