11 Best Text-To-Speech Software You Should Consider Trying

Text-to-speech software has come a long way since it was first introduced.

In fact, the best text-to-speech software of today is so advanced that it no longer sounds robotic, and some people even prefer it to the human voice. But those who have never used text-to-speech software might wonder why anyone would ever need such a thing.

Additionally, thanks to the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the best AI voice generators have stepped forward to the world of voice synthesis.

But first, let’s see what text-to-speech software is and why you should use it.

What is Text-To-Speech Software?

Text-to-speech (TTS) software helps you transform written text into spoken words, usually by installing a piece of software on a computer or mobile device. Think of it as a voice-over.

In other words, text-to-speech software is a technology that allows your computer to read text aloud. This may seem like a minor thing, but it is actually something of great value to many people.

Software that transforms text into speech has existed for quite a while, but the quality of such software was about as impressive as the early pinball machines.

However, today’s sophisticated software allows people who cannot read due to various disabilities to convert text from virtually any document into voice recordings.

For example, such programs will allow blind users to actually enjoy a good novel — something that wasn’t possible even 5 years ago.

With so much competition out there, I decided to join in one article what I believe is the best text-to-speech software available right now.

What is the Best Text-to-Speech Software?

1. PlayHT

PlayHT is an online text-to-speech synthesis system that uses machine learning technology to generate natural-sounding speech in 60 languages and accents.

With over 570 voices across 60 languages and accents (including a celebrity voice generator), PlayHT is the most diverse synthesis platform available on the market today. It also delivers content in a lifelike voice and a fast TTS engine to best replicate human intonation.

With simple integration, you can now have your existing text content read aloud in a natural-sounding, reasonable way. Powered by Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft, the voices on this site sound like they are from real people.

Key features

• Includes voices from Google, Amazon, Microsoft & IBM.
• Has over 570 voices across 60 languages.
• Different intonations include narratives, marketing, promo, podcast, kids, support, and converse.
• Online text-to-speech editor.
• Adjust pitch, rate, emphasis, and pauses to your liking.
• You can use the platform for commercial and broadcast use without paying royalties or licenses.
• Integrates with WordPress, where you can convert your blog posts to audio.
• Integrate real-time voice synthesis in your applications with the text-to-speech API.

Price

• Personal: $14.25/mo.
• Professional: $29.25/mo.
• Growth: $74.25/mo.
• Business: $149.25/mo.

PlayHT offers a free trial where you can preview all the available voices for free.

2. Murf

Best human-sounding voice-over generator.

Murf is a cloud-based AI-powered voice generator for text to speech that works in any browser. You can use Murf to produce high-quality audio, podcast and video voice-overs, e-learning, audiobooks, and more — all with a few clicks of the mouse.

Murf was designed to be the fastest and easiest way to get studio-quality audio from your text. You can instantly generate a complete audio file from a .txt file with one click without ever leaving your browser.

With over 120 built-in voices, Murf can create professional human-sounding voices for everything from podcast episodes and audiobooks to YouTube videos and commercials. 

Murf’s patent-pending text-to-speech technology uses artificial intelligence to generate lifelike audio from your texts in minutes.

Its powerful TTS engine will make it sound like a real person is talking in no time.

Key features

• Supports 20 languages.
• An impressive 120 voice collection of men, women, and children.
• Convert speech to text, which can later be edited or converted to AI-generated voice.
• Upload a recorded voice-over audio and transcribe it to text.
• Import audio from over 120 sites, including YouTube and Vimeo, to transcribe or edit.
• You can add free background royalty-free music to your voice-overs.
• It comes with a free grammar and punctuation assistant.
• You can add emphasis to specific words and adjust the speed and pitch of the voice.
• It allows you to edit pauses.
• Storage of up to 20GB.
• Email and chat support.

MurfStudio is one of the most incredible voice generators you can try. As a plus, all their voices can be used for commercial purposes.

Price

Murf offers three pricing plans:

• Basic. $13/mo. Allows for up to 24h of voice generation per year. Includes 60 voices from 10 languages.
• Pro. $26/mo. You can use 96h of voice generation per year and access over 120 voices in all 20 languages.
• Enterprise. $83/mo onwards. All limits are custom from here on.

You can also try all the Basic plan features for a $9 one-time pack that gives you 30 minutes of voice generation.

The best part?

Murf has a Free Trial where you can try all their 120+ voices with a 10-minute voice generation limitation.

3. Notevibes

Trusted by over 25,000 customers, Notevibes is one of the best text-to-speech software on the market today. They have over 201 voices ranging from men, women to children’s voices in 25 languages you can choose from.

You can use Notevibes to convert text to voice and make videos with natural-sounding voices that sound like humans.

All the intellectual rights of the audio you create with Notevibes belong to you. So you can use it for commercial purposes on YouTube, airports, broadcasting, government, education, and more.

Notevibes is based on the latest cutting-edge speech synthesis technology, which can synthesize any target words with high precision, high speed, and natural sounding.

Key features

• You can edit pauses as you like.
• Change pitch and speed.
• Adjust volume and emphasis on specific words.
• Export all your audio to MP3 or WAV.
• With their high-fidelity speech synthesis, you have exclusive access to a voice synthesizer from DeepMind.
• Backups for 14 days, so you never lose your work.
• Use Notevibes’ realistic voices for IVR (interactive voice response). Your customers won’t need to interact with a robotic-type voice over the phone.

Price

Notevibes offers their customers three pricing plans:

• Personal Pack. $9/mo. 
• Commercial Pack. $90/mo.
• Corporate Pack. $4000/yr.

Each increasing pack has additional features and fewer limitations, as you would imagine.

You can also pay as you go and refill your pack as you need. This one-time payment refill option starts at $59 per 300,000 characters.

4. Speechelo

Speechelo is a revolutionary new cloud-based text-to-speech app that instantly transforms any text into a 100% human-sounding voice-over.

Blaster Suite, the company behind Speechelo, offers internet marketing tools to boost your traffic and conversions. Speechelo is only one of them.

With Speechelo, you can create amazing videos, advertisements, movies, and even cartoons. This is perfect for YouTube videos, vloggers, marketers, and anyone who needs to add a touch of “human” to their projects.

At the moment, Speechelo supports over 100 voices in 23 languages.

Key features

With Speechelo, you’ll get:

• An amazing collection of over 100 natural-sounding voices.
• AI online text editor will add the punctuation marks to your text when needed to make the speech sound natural.
• Breathing sounds and pauses, or you can let the software decide.
• Different voice tones, from serious to joyful.
• Choose the speed and pitch of the voice.

Price

Unlike most text-to-speech software available, Speechelo is available for a one-time payment of only $47 with a 60-day money-back guarantee. You’ll also get free updates when they’re released. 

However, this basic version only supports 30 languages and has limitations. To get all the features, you need to secure their upsell:

• Pro. $47 every 3 months. Includes over 100 voices, background stock music, dialogue-type voice-overs, commercial projects, and more.

Nonetheless, you also have a 60-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it out without any risk.

5. iSpring Suite Max

iSpring Suite Max is an authoring toolkit for trainers and course developers.

It allows users to create slide-based courses, quizzes, dialog simulations, screencasts, video lectures, and other interactive learning materials in order to present training material or learning content to a large audience.

Alongside their impressive set of features, they also include text-to-speech, so you don’t have to record your own voice.

Key features

With iSpring Suite Max, you can:

• Select the tone and timbre of your chosen voice.
• Choose from 52 languages.
• Edit and trim the text and audio inside the application.
• Transform text into audio for a video tutorial.

While this software is not exclusive to text-to-speech, it can be very handy if you intend to create courses, tutorials, or other types of videos. This is so because it includes a video editor and many more features that you would need to purchase separately.

Price

iSpring Suite Max is available for $970/yr. Besides the text-to-speech software, you also get a content library with over 68,000 templates and characters, an online space for teamwork, and technical support 24/7. 

However, one thing to notice is that there’s a limit of 500k characters every 30 days that can be converted to speech, although they intend to increase it over time.

6. NaturalReader

NaturalReader is a text-to-speech solution available in multiple formats, each with its own set of features and pricing:

• NaturalReader Online
• NaturalReader Software
• NaturalReader Commercial
• NaturalReader WebReader
• NaturalReader EDU

NaturalReader Online 

NaturalReader Online lets you listen to PDFs, Docs, and most text documents anywhere at any time. Using their Chrome extension, you can listen to your emails, Google Docs, news, articles directly from the browser.

You can listen to scanned documents and even images with its OCR technology.

Key features

• Over 100 natural voices from 16 different languages.
• Designed to help dyslexic readers.
• It works on mobile and desktop.
• You can improve or correct the pronunciation of any word in any language.
• Adjust reading margins to skip headers and footers.

Price

• Free.
• Premium. $9.99/mo.
• Plus. $19/mo.

NaturalReader Software

NaturalReader Software is a downloadable text-to-speech software for personal and professional use. It reads text aloud, highlights the words as it speaks, and converts written text into audio files for portable devices. 

With this software, you can listen to Microsoft Word files, web pages, PDF files, and email messages.

NaturalReader’s vast array of voices and languages makes it ideal for anyone who needs to understand written content in many different languages. It’s an excellent application for dyslexic readers and people interested in learning foreign languages.

Using NaturalReader by itself is free of charge; however, if you need an add-on application for converting text into audio files, a separate license agreement applies.

Key features

• Convert any document or text into human-like voices.
• It supports Docx, PDF, and text files.
• It can read from scanned documents and screenshots thanks to OCR technology.
• Adjust reading margins to skip from reading headers and footers.
• You can manually change the pronunciation of a word.
• Supports both Mac and Windows.

Price

• Free. 
• Personal. $99.50 one-time fee.
• Professional. $129.50 one-time fee.
• Ultimate. $199.50 one-time fee.

NaturalReader Commercial

With NaturalReader Commercial, you can easily create voice-overs licensed to be used on YouTube, eLearning platforms, or any other public use.

As of this writing, it includes 176 different voices from 27 languages.

Key features

• Drag and drop your text to rearrange it and select different voices and speeds to those segments.
• You can improve and correct the pronunciation of any given word. 
• Edit pauses and adjust speed, emphasis, and tone.
• Use the downloaded audio commercially on YouTube videos, broadcasts, training videos, or other commercial projects.

Price

• Free.
• Single Plan. $49/mo.
• Team Plan. Starting at $59/mo for 2 members, the price increases to $239/mo for 20 members.

Natural Reader WebReader

NaturalReader WebReader is a text-to-speech widget that you can add to your website to increase web viewers and engagement.

Key features

• Automatically skips your website menus and other irrelevant information.
• It highlights both the current segment and the word being read aloud.
• It supports WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, and more.
• Includes 61 voices from 18 different languages.
• Lightweight widget supported in most browsers.

Price

• Free. 2,000 unique pageviews per day.
• Pro. $99.90/mo. 10,000 unique pageviews per day.
• Organization. $199.90/mo. 30,000 unique pageviews per day.

Natural Reader EDU

NaturalReader EDU is a text-to-speech solution for schools that supports students with learning difficulties, improving productivity.

Key features

• OCR technology lets you listen to printed books and scanned files, including images.
• Includes a Chrome extension that enables you to listen to webpages and Google Docs.
• Export text to MP3 for personal use.
• Contains 58 different voices from 8 languages.
• Designed for dyslexic readers.

Price

• Free.
• Group License.
• Site License.

All NaturalReader’s tools have a free plan. Needless to say, they have limitations, although they’re a good starting point to try the software.

7. LOVO

LOVO AI is a new web-based text-to-speech application. All of the voices are generated using AI and are powered by the latest neural network models.

Their AI-based deepfake technology gives a state-of-the-art performance in near real-time, opening new possibilities for eLearning, marketing videos, audiobooks, and video games.

You can select from a wide range of languages and voices that can be used to create natural-sounding audio or computer-generated speech.

One of LOVO’s top features is the DIY Voice Cloning, where you record some prompts with your own voice and let the software create a clone. This is great if you don’t have the time to record long projects but want to use your voice to do it.

Key features

• LOVO can be used for e-Learning, marketing, documentary, games, explainer video, audiobooks, news & animations.
• Over 180 voices in 33 languages.
• Create your customized voice skin with mind-blowing voice cloning technology.
• Integrate voices into your products with voiceover API.

Price

LOVO Studio offers a Personal plan for $17.49 and a Freelancer plan for $49.99.

LOVO API for developers has a subscription of $45 per month or $0.04 per overage call.

If you want to take advantage of their powerful AI voice software, LOVO offers a free trial for LOVO Studio and LOVO API.

8. Linguatec Voice Reader Home

Linguatec Voice Reader Home is a text-to-speech software for private users.

It converts any kind of text into sound files which can be used as audiobooks or podcasts, on the go on mobile phones, or whenever you are too busy to read or simply want to relax your eyes.

It’s now available with improved and amazingly natural-sounding voices and offers an enormous selection of languages and voices.

Voice Reader Home 15 reads aloud website content, texts from any application such as MS Word, Excel, PDF documents, and ebooks in various formats.

Key features

• Available in 67 voices.
• Intuitive editor where you can change speed, volume, and pitch.
• Supports .TXT, .RTF, .DOCX, .DOC, .HTM, .HTML, .MHT, .EPUB, .PDF, .ODT.
• You can export audio files as MP3 and WAV.
• Available only for Windows. 

Price

Linguatec Voice Reader Home is available for €49. However, if you need to publish audio files, they offer Voice Reader Studio, as you can see next.

9. Linguatec Voice Reader Studio

The Voice Reader Studio 15 is the perfect text-to-speech solution for private users and companies.

It transforms text into audio and is the perfect companion for those who demand professional-quality computer-generated speech in the office, at school, when working, when on the road, or at home.

With natural sounding voices, a pronunciation editor, and support for 45 languages, you can improve your ability to communicate quickly and effectively wherever you are. The voices are based on extensive studio recordings of professional voice-over artists to guarantee excellent sound quality.

Key features

• Available in 45 languages.
• The pronunciation editor will help you change the pronunciation of any term with the phonetic alphabet.
• You can assign certain languages to individual words.
• Add voice markups to change speakers, vocal range, loudness, and more.
• Supports most text file formats like .PDF, .DOCX, .HTML, .RTF, EPUB, and many more.
• Convert text to audio in MP3 and WAV formats.
• MS Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint integrations.
• Available only in Windows.

Price

Linguatec Voice Reader Studio costs €499 for a single license.

What is the Best Free Text-to-Speech Software?

As an alternative to paid text-to-speech software (most of them have free plans with limitations), there’s also some free text-to-speech software you can try.

This section lists the best text-to-speech software available on the market right now.

1. Wideo Text-To-Speech

Wideo Text-To-Speech is one of the best text-to-speech software available on the market. 

Wideo automatically transforms written text into voice messages and brings them to life. It’s great for podcasts, audiobooks, video tutorials and any other kind of content that would benefit from a human touch.

Although Wideo is an online video maker, it offers a text-to-speech solution free of charge. Basically, the software integrates with Google text-to-speech API, so the quality is not top-notch as most paid text-to-speech solutions.

Wideo Text-To-Speech provides over 160 different voices from more than 30 languages.

The platform is straightforward to use: you paste your text, and with a click of a button, you can preview the audio file. You can also adjust the voice-over speed and then download it as an MP3 file.

There’s one limitation, though. You can only use up to 2000 characters per day.

2. Balabolka

Balabolka is rated as one of the best free text-to-speech software you can download and install on your computer. Currently, it’s only available for Windows.

This software can read clipboard contents, extract text from documents and customize font and background color.

Using Microsoft Speech API (SAPI), Balabolka allows you to alter the rate and pitch of the voice. Besides, you can also improve the quality of the speech articulation by applying a substitution list. 

For additional voices (and quality), they mention third-party TTS engines that you can purchase individually.

Conclusion

While many text-to-speech tools are available for different uses, the best text-to-speech software can create seamless human voice-overs almost indistinguishable from a real voice-over. 

Because AI improves every year, so do these programs. Not to mention that if you need to convert your speech to text, you can even look for dictation software.

Will humans be replaced by machines in what comes to voice-overs? I don’t think so. There are so many nuances to the human language that a machine simply cannot simulate.

However, text-to-speech software can be very useful for people who need a voice and don’t have the budget for a real voice actor.

I hope you found this list of the best text-to-speech software useful.