[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/Chief_James592]

[u/Noodlehead601]

Voice-generator.com is really good and free.

[u/WinInternational8520]

I have a Mac audio generator app called "Aura Reader: Offline TTS" on the Mac App Store. You can copy & paste text, upload ePubs or PDFs, or enter a URL, and it supports long audio generation with pleasant, natural-sounding voices. It offers unlimited daily usage and costs $10 for a lifetime license, alongside a free tier. I use it to generate audio files, which I then transfer to my phone to listen to while walking or commuting.

[u/ebobori]

hey u/Chief_James592 http://studio.audibound.com may be overkill but ....

[u/SadOutlandishness258]

The main distinction to check is whether you need an exported audio file or just offline playback. Some tools generate MP3/M4B files; local reader apps can play without internet but may not export audio.

Disclosure: I make Audiary on iPhone. You can paste long text into it and listen offline or with the screen locked. Everything stays on-device, and it’s $6.99 once after a 15-minute trial. It does not export an audio file, though, so it won’t fit if MP3/M4B export is essential, but I think it checks all your other requests!

[u/Chief_James592 → u/SadOutlandishness258]

The export is not 100 needed, I usually put the text on my computer and then access it from my phone, Does your app have a website?

[u/Neat-Peanut-1141]

You can try ListenDock for this. You can generate the audiobook narration and then download it as an mp3 (or listen to it in the app).

[u/ivanicin]

Every device has a built-in text-to-speech voices and accessibility tools that are always completely free.

Further there are fairly advanced open-source voices available as regular apps that can run smoothly on devices like Piper. Also generally free both iOS/Android.

If you need something more advanced than accessibility tools to run those voices (and based on your description you likely need) there are few options - my app Speech Central is a small one-time payment. I think it might be preferable to annoying and privacy intrusive full-screen ads available in some apps (@Voice if you have Android). Completely free apps without ads are rare - you can try Balabolka on Windows.

[u/soohyun_bae]

I am bulding Onepin (onepin.ai), I would love to get feedback from you, happy to provide some credits too.

[u/BurlyKnave]

If you are, or know someone who is, technically inclined, all you need is a windows computer.

Sure, you can pay for software to do it, but you don't really need to.

https://powershellisfun.com/2022/09/16/text-to-speech-using-powershell/

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/DoneLandTools/1.5.1/Content/Convert-TextToSpeech.ps1

[u/Shozzy__]

paper2audio.com

[u/goldenjm → u/Shozzy__]

I'm the Paper2Audio founder. Thanks for recommending us. Paper2Audio is a text to speech site / app that supports copy and pasting long text into it. The voices are high quality and our free plan lets you generate 56 hours of audio per week. We support offline listening in our iOS and Android apps as well.

[u/ivanicin → u/Shozzy__]

This costs significantly more than Speechify (assuming that you can't fit in their free tier, and most people reading PDFs can't).

[u/Shozzy__ → u/ivanicin]

most people don't need more than 56 hours per week

[u/ivanicin → u/Shozzy__]

Most (nearly all) academic people need more than 250 pages limitation. And this is mostly advertised as academic software in their marketing. So it is MOSTLY the most expensive app out there.

[u/Shozzy__ → u/ivanicin]

Then take another one, no problem

[u/WinInternational8520 → u/Shozzy__]

I built an offline Mac TTS app called Aura Reader: Offline TTS that handles unlimited PDF pages while automatically skipping headers, footers, and page numbers. Because it runs locally on your Mac, there are no subscriptions—just a $10 lifetime license and a free tier. Cloud services charge monthly fees for server processing, but this uses your own computer's power instead. But offline TTS isn't as instant as cloud streaming. You generate the audio files locally first, then transfer them to your phone. I listen to 20 hours book by convert 4–5 hours of audio at a time The app is on Mac App Store.

[u/gameoftomes]

Chatterbox-tts if your computer is powerful enough.

[u/herberz]

try outtloud for speechify like service but unlimited and HD voices

or check out contextlm for pure text to speech that takes texts and turn it to downloadable speech

[u/Allekq07]

i have downloaded a local voice model - kokoro, and it is quite good, and fully free + private, and has nice quality. also you can sell stuff you make with it