Comparison

Speechify vs Readwise Reader

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Speechify

This app transforms text into spoken word with lifelike voices, reads documents, images, and articles aloud, and offers voice typing. It also features an AI assistant for summarizing and quizzing, and allows for AI podcast creation.

Highlights
  • Reads text aloud from various sources
  • Voice typing for faster input
  • AI assistant for summarization and quizzes
  • Customizable listening speeds
  • Human-like voices
  • Cross-device syncing
  • AI podcast creation
Features
Read full description

Text to speech from Speechify lets you listen to docs, articles, PDFs, email, and various other formats — anything you read. With 50M+ users, it is the top rated TTS app in the AppStore. Sir Richard Branson Loves Speechify. It helps him read with Dyslexia ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Speechify is brilliant. I’m so glad to have it today.” – Sir Richard Branson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our users have listened to 6.5 billion words. FEATURES YOU'LL LOVE • Listen at Any Speed Our high-quality AI voices can read 4.5x faster than the average reading speed, so you can learn even more in less time. Ease into 300 words per minute & slowly increase the speed to as fast as you need it to be. • Natural-sounding Human Voices Our text to speech voices sound more fluid & human-like than any other AI reader. • Active Text Highlighting The text is highlighted and perfectly synced, word for word, with the voice reader to help you read along. Reading & listening helps you retain more. • Listen to Any Book on Your Shelf Use the app to snap a pic of a page in any book or printed material and hear it read out loud to you. Your favorite book sitting on your bookshelf? Turn it into an audiobook. • Screenshot Image to Audio Find an image with text on it, no matter the length, with one click, you can easily take a screenshot and sync it to your cloud. Speechify will read the text out loud. Letters from loved ones? Scan them and turn them into audible notes. • Desktop or Mobile Anything you’ve saved to your Speechify library instantly syncs across devices so you can listen to anything, anywhere, anytime. * Hundreds of Timeless Books Titles you get with Speechify: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll; Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; Moby Dick by Herman Melville; A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens; Ulysses by James Joyce; War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Great Expectations by Charles Dickens; Beowulf; Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Les Misérables by Victor Hugo; Walden by Henry David Thoreau; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Gwyneth Paltrow Uses Speechify to Listen to Scripts. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Speechify lets me listen to Goop blog posts out loud in the car and gets my friends through grad school. It's amazing for scripts." – Gwyneth Paltrow ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Features • Note taking tools • Save audio bookmarks • Floating widget • Exemplary customer experience • Inline player seamlessly integrates into all your websites • Get hundreds of timeless audiobooks for free • Cloud sync makes for a seamless listening experience across all your devices We created Speechify so that reading is never a barrier for anyone again. Designed to help people with dyslexia, ADHD, low vision acuity, concussions, and other reading disabilities. Speechify now helps hundreds of thousands of people to consume their reading content with ease. From those with reading disabilities to auditory learners, productivity fanatics, second language learners, hobbyists, and more, we love all of our users and strive every day to create a reading assistant that empowers them to read more and succeed in life. We can't wait for you to join the family :) Install Speechify today, for free! Privacy Policy: https://speechify.com/privacy/ Terms of Service: https://speechify.com/terms/

About

Readwise Reader

This app consolidates all your reading content, including web articles, newsletters, and PDFs, into a single, organized platform. It offers advanced highlighting, text-to-speech, and AI-powered assistance to enhance your reading workflow and knowledge retention.

Highlights
  • Consolidate web articles, newsletters, RSS, Twitter threads, PDFs, EPUBs
  • Import from Pocket, Instapaper, and Feedly
  • Advanced highlighting and annotation tools
  • Text-to-speech narration
  • AI-powered reading assistant (Ghostreader)
  • Full-text search
  • Syncs across all devices, offline access
Features
Read full description

Readwise Reader is the first read-it-later app built specifically for power readers. If you’ve ever used Instapaper or Pocket, Reader is like those except it’s built for 2024 and brings all your reading into one place including: web articles, email newsletters, RSS feeds, Twitter threads, PDFs, EPUBs and more. ______________________ “Reader has completely redesigned the read-it-later app. It’s gorgeous and blazingly fast. In many ways, it’s the Superhuman of reading — you won’t want to read anywhere else.” Rahul Vohra (Founder of Superhuman) “I spend my entire day reading, researching, & writing and Readwise is the reading tool I’ve been waiting for. The perfect complement to my writing workflow. Absolute game changer.” Packy Mccormick (Author of Not Boring) “The Readwise reading app is the first read-it-later app that enables a true workflow for serious readers. As an ex-Pocket /Instapaper power user, it's hard to imagine ever going back.” Fitz Maro (Creative Technology Lead at Pinterest) ______________________ ALL YOUR READING IN ONE PLACE Stop juggling half a dozen reading apps. Reader brings all your content into one place including: • Web articles • Email newsletters • RSS feeds • Twitter threads • PDFs • EPUBs You can even import your existing library from Pocket and Instapaper and RSS feeds from Feedly, Inoreader, Feedbin, etc. POWERFUL HIGHLIGHTING FOR POWER READERS We believe that annotations are the key to getting more out of what you read. So we’ve developed highlighting as a first-class feature inside Reader. Highlight images, links, rich text, and more. On any device. READER WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU READ We’ve reinvented the digital reading experience to apply the power of software to the printed word. This includes TEXT-TO-SPEECH (listen to any document narrated with the lifelike voice of a real human), GHOSTREADER (your integrated copilot of reading enabling you to ask questions, define terms, simplify complex language, and more), and FULL-TEXT SEARCH (find whatever you’re looking for, even if you only remember a single word). FLEXIBLE SOFTWARE TO FIT YOUR UNIQUE NEEDS Your personal interests, your professional projects, your way of doing things — they’re unique. Reader is your home base for the varied documents in your life, customizable to match the way your brain works. PDFs for work, articles for your newsletter, and ebooks for pleasure all live comfortably side-by-side. No more juggling dozens of apps. INTEGRATED WITH YOUR FAVORITE TOOLS Your annotations should flow effortlessly from your reading app into your writing tool of choice. Instead you waste hours reformatting, reorganizing, and repeating. Reader eliminates this hassle. Reader seamlessly connects to Readwise which exports to Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, Evernote, Logseq, and more READ ANYWHERE, ANYTIME Access all of your content from any of your devices with everything in sync. Even offline. Reader syncs across all platforms, including a powerful, local-first web app and iOS. You can even highlight the open web with the Reader browser extensions. ______________________ If you’re not already a Readwise subscriber, you can get a free 30-day trial with no credit card upfront. At the end of the trial, you will not be charged unless you choose to subscribe. Support: Check out readwise.io/faq or email us at hello@readwise.io Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://readwise.io/privacy

Screenshots

Speechify4 screens
Readwise Reader4 screens

Verdict

The call

Speechify and Readwise Reader both sit at 4.7 stars, but that hides the real split: 72% of Readwise Reader's written reviews are positive against 35% of Speechify's. Readwise Reader also leads on ads (none vs shown). Speechify's advantage is ratings volume (524K vs 579) and chart position (#8 vs unranked). On price, rating, update cadence and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Speechify sells 14 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per 7 days and Readwise Reader sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $8.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.7 for Speechify against 4.6 for Readwise Reader. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Speechify has 524K ratings behind it against 579, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 35% of Speechify's written reviews are positive against 72% of Readwise Reader's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 25, 2026 and September 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 7 level
Speechify versus Readwise Reader: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpeechifyReadwise Reader
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (524K ratings) — better4.6 (579 ratings)
Positive reviews35.3% of reviews72.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings524K — better579
Update frequencyWeeklyWeekly
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
Best chart rank#8 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.016.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size557 MB178 MB
Age rating4+17+
DeveloperSpeechify Inc.Readwise, Inc

Customer experience

Speechify

All ratings524,410 ratings
Positive91.8%
Neutral3.4%
Negative4.7%
Written reviews5,850 reviews
Positive35.3%
Neutral8.1%
Negative56.6%

Readwise Reader

All ratings579 ratings
Positive88.9%
Neutral4.3%
Negative6.7%
Written reviews275 reviews
Positive72.0%
Neutral11.3%
Negative16.7%

User reviews

Speechify

From 524K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Efficient text-to-speech
  • 👍 Diverse voice options
  • 🤖 Realistic AI narration
  • 💡 Helpful for dyslexic/ADHD users
  • 🤓 Improved reading comprehension

Room to improve

  • 💰 Expensive subscription
  • 🔇 Inconsistent voice quality
  • 🐛 Frequent bugs and glitches
  • 🔀 Unreliable page navigation
  • 🚫 Restrictive word limits on premium voices

Readwise Reader

From 579 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Fantastic reading experience
  • 👍 Seamless integration with Readwise
  • 🎨 Beautiful and intuitive UI
  • 📚 All-in-one reading solution
  • 🔍 Powerful search and organization

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Occasional crashes and performance issues
  • 🔍 Cluttered interface for some users
  • 💰 Expensive subscription model
  • 🖥️ Lack of iPad-specific features
  • 📚 Missing basic reader features (e.g., bookmarks)

Bugs and requests

Speechify

Reported bugs

5 issues
  • Frequent app crashes
  • Text syncing issues
  • Incorrect word pronunciations
  • Inconsistent highlighting/pacing
  • Unexpected voice switches

Requested features

6 requests
  • Ability to edit/annotate text
  • Improved PDF/document handling
  • More affordable subscription options
  • Seamless integration with ebooks/websites
  • Automatic removal of citations/formatting
Show 1 more
  • Expanded language support

Readwise Reader

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Inconsistent sync between devices
  • Unreliable RSS feed updates
  • Frequent crashes on iPad
  • Issues with resuming reading position

Requested features

5 requests
  • Improved PDF and ebook support
  • Customizable reading themes and layouts
  • Better integration with note-taking apps
  • Reading progress and statistics tracking
  • Bulk management of saved items

In-app purchases

14 purchases

Speechify

Subscriptions12
  • $160 Donation No HD voices$9.997 Days
  • Premium Monthly$11.991 Month
  • Premium Monthly$24.991 Month
Show 9 more
  • Dyslexia Donation3 Days trial$29.991 Year
  • Premium$55.991 Year
  • Premium3 Days trial$79.991 Year
  • Premium Yearly$99.991 Year
  • Premium3 Days trial2 variants$139.991 Year
  • Premium1 Month trial$139.991 Year
  • Speechify Premium7 Days trial$139.991 Year
  • Speechify Premium3 Days trial$159.991 Year
  • Audiobooks + Speechify TTS3 Days trial$249.991 Year
One-time2
  • Speechify Library$14.99
  • Speechify Library$24.99
4 purchases

Readwise Reader

Subscriptions4
  • Reader Monthly Plan$8.991 Month
  • Reader Monthly$12.991 Month
  • Reader Annual Plan$95.901 Year
Show 1 more
  • Reader Yearly$119.991 Year

Questions

Is Speechify free?
Speechify is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Readwise Reader free?
Readwise Reader is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Speechify or Readwise Reader?
Speechify is rated higher. Speechify averages 4.7 out of 5 from 524K ratings, while Readwise Reader averages 4.6 from 579 ratings.
Do Speechify or Readwise Reader have ads?
Speechify shows ads; Readwise Reader does not.
Which is updated more often, Speechify or Readwise Reader?
Speechify ships an update weekly, and Readwise Reader weekly. Most recently, Speechify was updated on September 25, 2026 and Readwise Reader on September 24, 2026.

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