Comparison · honest about the trade-off
A free Speechify alternative that runs on your machine
Same job, text read aloud with the words highlighted, on a different bargain: reading uses the voices already on your computer, so it is free, there is no quota on those voices, and nothing you read is uploaded to be turned into audio.
No account needed to start. Reading happens on your device.
The honest version
What you gain, and what you give up.
People look for a Speechify alternative for three reasons, usually in this order: the subscription, the limits on the free plan, and the discomfort of feeding work documents into somebody else’s cloud. Lumotext answers all three by moving the speech engine to your own device. Your operating system already ships good voices, Apple’s enhanced and premium voices on macOS and the natural voices on Windows, and Lumotext drives those directly.
The trade-off runs the other way too, and we would rather state it than let you find out: hosted readers offer large neural voices that no laptop renders locally, and a much bigger catalogue of them. If one specific voice is what you are paying for, a hosted product still wins on that. Lumotext Pro adds six natural AI voices for anyone who wants more realism, but the free reader is built on the voices you already own.
The reading experience is the part we actually compete on. Paragraph, sentence and word are highlighted together; you click a sentence to start there rather than scrubbing an audio bar; PDFs keep their real page layout with the highlight drawn on top; your place is kept per document. See the reader itself, the Chrome extension, or how it reads PDFs aloud.
Side by side
Where the two approaches differ.
| Lumotext | Typical hosted reader | |
|---|---|---|
| Where speech is made | On your device, by your system’s voices (Pro AI voices are the exception) | On the provider’s servers, then streamed back |
| Does your text leave the machine | Not with device voices | Yes, the text has to be sent to be rendered |
| Cost of reading | Free with device voices, no quota | Free tier plus a paid plan for the better voices |
| Account required | No, optional for syncing | Usually yes |
| Voice ceiling | As good as the voices your OS ships, or Pro AI voices | Large neural voices you could not run locally |
| Start-up delay | None with device voices | A render or buffering step before audio starts |
| Works offline | Yes, with locally stored voices | No |
| Highlighting | Paragraph, sentence and word together | Varies by product |
| PDF handling | Real pages rendered, highlight drawn over them | Commonly extracted to reflowed text |
This table compares two architectures, local speech synthesis against hosted synthesis, rather than a feature checklist frozen in time. Speechify is a trademark of its owner; Lumotext is not affiliated with it. Products change; check each vendor’s own site for current plans, pricing and features before deciding.
FAQ
Switching questions, answered.
Is Speechify free?
Speechify has a free plan. According to its own pricing page (checked October 2026), the free plan listens at speeds up to 1.5× with a small set of standard voices, and the natural voices are part of Premium.
Lumotext reads free with every voice installed on your computer, at up to 2× signed out and up to 4× with a free account. There is no card to enter and no trial that ends.
How much does Speechify cost compared with Lumotext?
Speechify lists Premium at $29 a month billed monthly, with a discount for paying yearly (pricing page, checked October 2026). Lumotext costs nothing to read with device voices. Lumotext Pro, which adds six AI voices, a larger library and file storage, is $12.99 a month or $99 a year.
Are the voices as good as a cloud reader’s?
It depends on your system. Apple’s enhanced and premium voices on macOS and the natural voices on Windows are very good, and cost nothing once downloaded in your system settings; here is where to find them. The largest hosted neural voices are still ahead. If a specific voice is the reason you subscribe, that is a fair reason to stay.
Can I import the documents I already have?
PDF, EPUB, markdown and plain text all import into the reader. PDFs keep their real page layout rather than being flattened into a text column. There is no optical character recognition yet, so an image-only scan cannot be read.
What is the catch on privacy?
Two caveats worth stating. A few browser voices are synthesised online by the browser vendor rather than on your machine; those are labelled in the voice picker. And Pro’s AI voices send the sentence being read to be spoken. Everything else is local, and the privacy policy lists every network request the product makes.
Does it work on iPhone?
Not properly yet. Mobile Safari cannot keep speech running in the background or with the screen locked. A native iOS app is being built for that; for now use a desktop browser.
Start reading in the next minute.
Paste something in and press play. No email, no account. Sign in later if you want it saved.
Free to use. An optional free account syncs your library across devices.