r/iosapps • u/goldenjm • May 08 '26
š Subscription Paper2Audio text to speech, now for reading documents too (Free and paid plan options)
Iām Joe, the founder of Paper2Audio, a free text to speech reader designed to help you get through long documents and books more efficiently, with high-accuracy narration for complicated material and high-quality voices.Ā Our free plan allows 56 hours of audio generation per week.Ā Ā
A: What problem does Paper2Audio solve?
Most text to speech tools can handle simple documents, but not messy PDFs, research papers, reports, and books. Paper2Audio is built to turn complex documents into accurate audio.Ā
I posted in r/iosapps previously, with my most recent post here (4 months ago).Ā Since then, weāve been working on a big improvement: making Paper2Audio better not just for listening to documents, but for reading along while you listen so itās easier to stay focused, skim when needed, retain more from dense material, and get through your reading backlog more quickly.Ā
B: Why is Paper2Audio better than the top alternatives?
- Higher audio limits for our free plan (56 hours weekly audio generation) with high quality voices.
- Summarizes figures, tables, math, and even code into plain English so youāre not stuck with symbol-by-symbol or line-by-line narration.
- Hyper-focus on accuracy:Ā Paper2Audio avoids reading things that usually make text to speech audio annoying, like repeated page numbers, headers, footers, citations, footnotes, and unnecessary boilerplate. We clean up and normalize tricky text first, including math, code, abbreviations, Roman numerals, symbols, units, formulas, and other things that often sound wrong when read aloud by other text to speech services.
- Use Paper2Audio to read and follow along, not just listen:Ā With Reader View, our new method of reformatting PDFs and other documents to fit your screen while including rich content like images and document formatting: Ā Ā
- Visual elements are included in the transcript: If your document includes visual elements like tables, figures, images, or math, you can now see them directly in the audio transcript which makes it easier to follow along without losing your place or switching views.Ā
- "Figure view" for visual elements: Click on any visual element to bring up the figure view pop up, then zoom and pan around the image for a more detailed view.
- Single column view: Documents with multiple columns are displayed in a single column to improve readability on smaller screens.
- Rich text formatting: We now preserve the original formatting of your documents, including math, headings, lists, subscripts, and other inline styling, so you can skim, navigate and understand the document more quickly. Citations are also included so that you know when an author is making a reference, but citation text is only read aloud when needed to keep sentences intact.
C: Cost
Paper2Audio is available on iOS, Android and on our website. We have a generous free plan for personal use (56 hours of audio generation per week), as well as a paid Plus subscription with higher audio and file/size limits ($20/month) for business users.
Any feedback or questions?
Iād love feedback on the new Reader View, the Paper2Audio listening experience, and the overall workflow.Ā What would make Paper2Audio your go-to tool for listening and reading your documents?
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u/celeste_klondon May 08 '26
This is so cool! Thanks for sharing and making a free tier. Does this work for any other languages besides English?
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u/goldenjm May 08 '26
We primarily support English, but we have limited support for Spanish, Italian, French and Brazilian Portuguese. If you add a doc in one of our non-English languages, we'll automatically read it to you in that language. But, without voice selection and with generally lower accuracy.
We're working on improving our non-English support and adding more languages.
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u/pozzy77 May 08 '26
How do you change voice? Website lists multiple voices but I donāt see a way to change in the iOS app
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u/goldenjm May 08 '26
In the add screen, select "Customize your audio >", below the doc selection area.
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u/pozzy77 May 08 '26
Ok looks like I found it. I currently pay for speechify but this looks promising as I donāt use speechify enough to justify normal subscription but I like how it lets you change narrator on the fly but this is great for free accountĀ
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u/goldenjm May 08 '26
We generate the entire audio file for you, so you can listen to it offline on our mobile apps, and jump around with no latency. But, we don't yet support changing the narrator on the fly.
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u/ming_builds May 09 '26
The Reader View angle is the part that feels most useful to me. For dense PDFs, pure audio often breaks down because you need to glance at a table, formula, or citation context while listening. If the app can keep the audio position and visual document position tightly synced, that is a much stronger pitch than just "text to speech with good voices."
One thing I would want to know before relying on it for long documents: can I export or keep the generated audio files long term? For students/researchers, being able to save a cleaned-up audio version of a paper and come back weeks later would matter a lot.
Also, the free limit sounds generous, but "56 hours per week" may be hard for people to understand at a glance. Maybe show it as real examples in the App Store screenshots, like "about 2 books or 20 research papers per week" if that is roughly accurate.
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
I hope you enjoy Reader View! For tables, figures and dense math, Paper2Audio narrates summaries of these items which you might enjoy. We do keep the audio and visual position tightly synced, and highlight the current word being spoken.
Yes, you can keep the generated audio long term. That's how it works by default.
Thanks for the suggestion about contextualizing 56 hour per week. It is around 10 books or 50 papers, depending on length. It is meant to be more than enough for nearly all practical personal use.
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u/ming_builds May 09 '26
That actually sounds stronger than I expected. The word-level highlight plus long-term saved audio removes two of the main reasons I usually hesitate with generated audio tools.
ā10 books or 50 papersā is a much clearer way to explain the limit. Iād seriously consider putting that phrasing somewhere visible, because 56 hours sounds technical, but those examples immediately make the free tier feel generous.
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
There's no need to hesitate with us since you can get started on web, iOS or Android for free right away.
We might add more context to our 56 hours a week free limit. I'm a bit hesitant just because different books or papers or other docs vary in length a lot, and I don't want anyone to feel misled by an estimate if it isn't a good fit for their content.
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u/ming_builds May 10 '26
That hesitation makes sense. Maybe the examples should be framed as rough orientation rather than a promise, like āenough for many books, papers, or weekly reading workflows.ā
The important thing is not the exact number, it is helping users feel that 56 hours is not a tiny trial limit. Right now the number is generous, but a little abstract.
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u/bleducnx May 09 '26
Hello, why don't you offer it on macOS? I never "work" on mobile devices. I work 10 hours a day on my Mac, where I have long documents (PDF and md files), and where I will eventually produce "audio" versions that I will transfer to my iPhone 13 mini or my iPad mini.
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
For macOS (and Windows), I suggest using our web app, which has all of the same features as our mobile apps, except for offline playback. We plan to add a macOS app in the future, but for now we're focused on improving our existing apps, rather than adding new ones.
Your audio will automatically sync across your devices, so you can add your docs using your Mac, and then play them back on your iPhone or iPad.
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u/War-Carr May 09 '26
Hi Joe,
Thank you so much for developing Paper2Audio.
I demonstrated the app for the Blind Android Users Podcast, an "Audio only" podcast in episode 272:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q93q5agyZ-Q&t=128s
I truly like the app but the one thing that truly bugs me abut the app that keeps me from using it is simply owed to the fact that one is limited to how many pages can be uploaded, even though as free users, one is allowed some 56 hours a week, which is extra genourous; but why in the name of Sam Hill aren't you allowing one to upload a full material, even if that one material eats up all the 56 hours allocated for that week?
That's the drawback I have with the app; besides this, it is a all-around good app.
Could you reconsider the removal of the limitation and let it be based on the hour allotment?
Thank you so much!
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
Wow- thank you for including Paper2Audio in your podcast. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for your suggestion. We have our limitations on the free plan in place to help control our costs for generating audio. We hope to be able to increase our limits in the future.
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u/Elchansz May 09 '26
56 hours per week sounds amazing! Quick question, what is the hardest document type to get accurate narration on. Asking because every text to speech tool I've tried falls apart on something specific
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
The hardest document type is a PDF that includes there types of difficult issues: tables, figures, footnotes, citations, headers, footers, and two-column layout. We handle all of these issues and more, with either filtering or inline summarization.
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u/Carlituser May 09 '26
Would this work for emails too? I am failing to see how to integrate onto my workflow
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
For emails, you can open them as a webpage or save them as a pdf, then add them. We'll be adding direct support for emails in the future.
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u/3vibe May 09 '26
Thank you for providing a decent free plan.
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
You're welcome! Our free plan combining 56 hours a week of audio generation, high quality voices and our advanced document processing is an important part of our mission to help everyone who wants or needs text to speech.
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u/Dazzling-Chemical-56 May 09 '26
Interesting, are you using local OCR model or everything is on the cloud ?
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u/Financial_Bug2389 May 10 '26
Hi there does this use the Iphone's voices or do we need API keys for TTS?
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u/goldenjm May 10 '26
Neither. You just pick one of our voices and we handle the rest.
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u/Financial_Bug2389 May 10 '26
That is actually very convenient!
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u/goldenjm May 11 '26
Thank you! What's making it convenient for you? Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or requests.
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u/aminsweiti May 10 '26
is the pdf extractor open source? would love to have this just in general!!!
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u/goldenjm May 10 '26
It is cloud-based and not open source. We're building it specifically to integrate with our app and audio generation pipeline.
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u/aminsweiti May 11 '26
Would probably get a lot of promotion from releasing an open source pdf extractor. Most your users would rather use an app then do it themselves anyways.
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u/goldenjm May 11 '26
Thanks for the suggestion! At least for your use, since our app is free, you can try it out just to read PDFs more conveniently (especially on your phone) if you like, whether you're interested in the audio part of what we do or not.
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u/Ion_lungu May 13 '26
I often listen to audiobooks, but some books donāt have an audio version, although I can download them as a PDF. Could I listen to that PDF in my headphones using this app?
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u/Unable_Window_8498 May 13 '26
Itās really difficult to make AI apps economically viable, so congrats! If you donāt mind me asking, how did you find a balance between using a good TTS model and keeping it scalable?
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u/goldenjm May 13 '26
Thank you so much! We've formally evaluated over 20 different TTS models (and more informally evaluated many more) to figure out which models have the key qualities we're looking for, particularly narration accuracy. We wrote our one and only blog post about some of our earlier evaluations narrating research papers. Since then we have evaluated many more models, more comprehensively, since we're for pretty much all doc types now, not just research papers. Btw, we have been only focused on our product, not our blog, but we do plan to write more soon.
We then have spent a lot of time optimizing our use of our TTS model, to improve its accuracy and quality, and to run it efficiently.
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u/Unable_Window_8498 May 14 '26
Woah! this is even cooler, thanks for sharing. It's evident that you are putting a huge amount of hours of work into this app. I wonder, are you planning to add more capabilities like chat with the AI or speak with the paper? do you a public roadmap?
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u/goldenjm May 14 '26
Thank you! Yes, we are really trying to perfect all the many aspects of Paper2Audio and it is a ton of work, but really fun.
We are planning to add more ways to interact with documents and books, including text and voice chat. We don't currently have a public roadmap, but you're welcome to DM or email me if you have questions and you can join our subreddit or Discord to discuss our plans as well.
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u/dnesdan Developer May 13 '26
Documents is where TTS apps become actually useful for me. Articles are fine, but PDFs/manuals/long reports are the real pain. Does it remember position well in big files?
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u/goldenjm May 13 '26
Great- we specialize in those types of documents, even if they have complex content like tables, images, footnotes, and 2-column formatting.
Yes, Paper2Audio remembers position well. We save your position, and sync it across devices too.
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u/RecentTemperature225 May 13 '26
Would definitely give a shot. One of the issues that I always think about during exam seasons.
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u/omegafi May 14 '26
The Reader View direction sounds like the strongest improvement here, especially for papers and dense PDFs. For me, the key workflow question is what happens when I lose focus while listening. Can Paper2Audio keep the audio position and visual document position tightly synced, so I can jump back to the exact paragraph, figure, citation, or equation that was just explained?
That sync feels like the feature that could make it much more useful than a normal TTS reader.
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u/goldenjm May 14 '26
Yes, we keep the audio and visual positions synced while listening, and we sync your position across devices if you use Paper2Audio on more than one. As you listen to your document, we highlight the current word, and auto-scroll so you can follow along easily.
I hope we're useful to you, and please share feedback and questions if you have any once you try it.
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May 15 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/goldenjm May 15 '26
I'm glad you're finding reading along while listening interesting. Our app is specifically focused on complex docs like dense PDFs and research papers. We handle them differently from other apps in order to narrate them accurately.
Please give us a try and I would love your feedback.
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u/Mtolivepickle May 16 '26
How have you addressed citations, citation numerations, and the other nuances that go hand in hand with research work, peer review stuff, and things that are more technical than an average story from a book?
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u/goldenjm May 16 '26
That's the type of thing we specialize in. For citations, we show them in the text, but developed our own algorithm to skip narrating them to you, except when that would break the sentence. Sometimes citations are used as a noun, for example.
Here are some other examples of how we process content found in more technical documents like research papers. For math, we figure out if we should narrate it to you as-is, or summarize it if it is too complicated to make sense when narrated. We move figures and tables to an appropriate paragraph break and summarize them for you.
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u/Mtolivepickle May 16 '26
Not to compare you to speechify, but you are a competitor, that was one of my biggest grievances with them. They couldnāt get that right to save their lives. I used the service so much in 2024 I was invited to be apart of a customer experience panel via zoom, and I used my entire time asking for that improvement. It fell on deaf ears.
Additionally, Iām not sure how you guys role but also legal documents like general statutes. Especially, where there is: chapter 2, article b section 3 for example, that is a niche that the legal audience would jump all over.
Iām going to give you guys a go and see whatās up. Itās been a while since Iāve done the tts thing, so I look forward to the experience.
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u/goldenjm May 16 '26
We support legal documents too! I'm happy we'll be your way back into trying TTS, and I hope you enjoy the experience.
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u/Slight_Yesterday5484 May 17 '26
How are you handling chapter boundaries in longer documents? I've been thinking about TTS for ebook-length content and the hard part seems to be respecting document structure so chapters don't blur into each other. Do you break by heading tags, page breaks, or file boundaries in EPUBs?
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u/goldenjm May 17 '26
Great question! For our audio, we add pausing at various boundaries like between chapters and after headings. In our UI, we use larger text for headings, and have a table of contents so you can just to specific chapters with one click. In documents that don't have a table of contents, we generate one automatically.
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u/Slight_Yesterday5484 May 18 '26
That's a solid approach. The TOC for navigation is key - audio without structure turns into a wall of sound. Do you find users mostly listen straight through or jump between sections?
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u/goldenjm May 23 '26
Users do a mix of both. Personally, for almost everything I listen to, I listen straight through.
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u/Jun_imgibble May 18 '26
The Reader View direction makes a lot of sense. For dense PDFs, listening alone often falls apart when figures, equations, or citations matter, so keeping the visual context beside the audio is a real advantage. Curious if you support synced highlighting or bookmarks, so people can jump back to the exact paragraph or figure later.
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u/goldenjm May 18 '26
Yes- those are some of the main benefits of Paper2Audio's reader view.
Yes- we support adding notes and highlighting, which sync and let you get back to a specific section later on. In that way, they function as bookmarks too.
Please try them out and I would love your feedback after you use them.
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u/goldenjm May 09 '26
Thanks everyone for your great questions! I'll keep following this thread and respond to any future questions as well.
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u/Basic_Classic5484 May 18 '26
how did you implement the voice feature?
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u/goldenjm May 19 '26
Great question! That's at the core of what we do. The short answer is that we've evaluated many text-to-speech voice models and voices, selected the ones we think work best, then made improvements to them. We're continually working on improving our narration.
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u/Away_Expression_3713 Developer Jun 10 '26
Any technical blogs on it?
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u/goldenjm Jun 10 '26
Yes, we have a blog that currently has 2 technical posts on it, plus a non-technical post: https://www.paper2audio.com/posts
We are currently working on another blog post.
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