Text to speech pricing hides behind two very different models: a flat yearly subscription, or a balance you spend by the minute. Both can be a good deal. Which one wins depends almost entirely on how many hours you actually listen each month, not on which app has the nicer voices. Here is the math, laid out plainly, so you can pick based on your own habits instead of guessing.
The two pricing models
Subscription. You pay once a year (or once a month) and get unlimited listening for that period. Speechify Premium is about $139 a year at the time of writing. Check the vendor's pricing page for the current number, since third-party prices change. You pay the same amount whether you listen for ten minutes or a hundred hours that year.
Pay-per-minute. You buy credits and spend them only when audio is actually generated. ReadLoud works this way: a credit is one minute of freshly generated audio at 1x speed, in any voice. Replaying audio you already generated is free, because everything generated is cached. Minutes never expire, so a pack you buy in March is still good in November.
What a pack actually costs
ReadLoud sells three packs. During the open beta, packs are added at no charge while checkout is being finished, but the listed prices are what they will cost:
- Taste: 60 minutes for $9, which is $0.15 a minute
- Regular: 300 minutes for $36, which is $0.12 a minute
- Binge: 1,000 minutes for $99, which is $0.099 a minute
Everyone also gets 1 minute free with no account at all, and 20 minutes free with a free account, which just needs an email sign-in with a link or a 6-digit code, no password. That is enough to hear a real document, in a voice you actually chose, before spending anything.
Turning minutes into something you can picture
As a rough guide, 1,500 words of text works out to about 10 minutes of listening. A 300-page book is roughly 10 hours. A typical long-form article is a couple of minutes. Once you know roughly how many words you listen to in a week, you can convert that into minutes and see which pack fits.
Monthly hours vs monthly cost
This table lines up a few monthly listening habits against a flat annual subscription and against pay-per-minute pricing.
| Hours a month | Minutes a month | ReadLoud cost (buying the pack that fits) | $139/year subscription |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 60 min | $9 (one Taste pack) | $139 flat, any usage |
| 3 hours | 180 min | around $22 to $27 | $139 flat, any usage |
| 5 hours | 300 min | $36 (one Regular pack) | $139 flat, any usage |
| 8 hours | 480 min | around $48 to $58 | $139 flat, any usage |
| 10 hours | 600 min | around $60 to $72 | $139 flat, any usage |
| 15 hours | 900 min | around $90 to $108 | $139 flat, any usage |
| 20+ hours | 1,200+ min | one Binge pack covers about 16 to 17 hours, then more | $139 flat, any usage |
Because the subscription is a flat $139 a year regardless of how much you listen, the more hours you rack up, the better it looks next to buying minutes one pack at a time. ReadLoud's own rule of thumb is that the crossover lands at around 10 hours of listening a month. Below that, paying per minute is usually the cheaper path. Above it, a subscription is worth the fixed cost, and we say so plainly rather than pretend otherwise.
Why heavy listeners should keep a subscription
If you listen every day, commute with it, or use text to speech as your main way through long documents, a flat annual fee removes the need to watch a balance at all. That is a genuine advantage, and Speechify's subscription is a reasonable price at that volume. ReadLoud is not trying to be the cheaper option for everyone. It is built for the reader who listens sometimes, not every day, and does not want a recurring charge for a habit that comes and goes.
Where pay-per-minute wins
- Occasional listening. A commute a few times a week, one long report a month, a novel here and there.
- Unpredictable months. Some months you listen a lot, some months barely at all. Since minutes never expire, unused credit just waits for you.
- Trying before committing. The 20 free minutes on a free account are enough to hear your own document, read in the voice you picked, before you decide to pay anything.
- Light users who do not want a bill. No renewal date to remember, no charge to cancel later.
A few things that do not change the price
Speed does not change the cost. Listening at 2x uses the same credits as 1x, since ReadLoud charges for audio generated, not time spent listening it back. Switching voice mid-document does start a new render for the part that changed, since a different voice means new audio has to be generated, and that is charged like any other generation.
The honest tradeoff
Speechify has native phone and desktop apps, a browser extension, and can read photographed pages using OCR. ReadLoud does not have any of those right now. If you rely on those specific features, that alone can be worth $139 a year. ReadLoud's pitch is narrower and more specific: paste a link, or upload a PDF, EPUB, DOCX, or plain text file, and listen without a recurring charge, usually at a lower total cost if your listening stays under roughly ten hours a month.
Run the numbers on your own habits
The fastest way to know which model fits is to estimate your real monthly hours, honestly, not aspirationally, and check them against the table above. Then look at ReadLoud's pricing page for the current pack rates, since packs can change during the open beta.
If you are not sure yet, start with the free minutes and see how far they actually get you before buying anything.