Speechify Review 2026: Free Plan, Premium and Studio Prices, and Refund Rules
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Speechify is a text to speech app that reads PDFs, web pages and books aloud, sold separately from its Studio for voiceovers and its API. Premium costs $139 a year or $29 a month on the website.
Verdict: 3.0/5 (output quality not scored). The app is rated 4.7 on Trustpilot and the App Store, but billing needs care: the 3-day trial turns into a paid plan, and refunds close 7 days after sign-up. The reader is licensed for personal use only; for business voiceovers, compare Studio, Murf and ElevenLabs.
See the free and Premium plans
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On this page: three products, free plan and trial, pricing, Studio and API, cancelling and refunds, reviews, who it suits, alternatives, score, FAQ.
Reader, Studio or API: three products, three subscriptions
Speechify sells three products, each with its own price list. Its Studio FAQ calls Studio and the Text to Speech Reader “two different subscriptions”, and the API is “billed separately from the Speechify Reader app”.
- The reader (paid plan: Premium) reads documents, PDFs, emails, web pages and books aloud on iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, Chrome and the web, with voice typing, AI summaries and AI podcasts.
- Studio, sold as an AI voice generator, is an editor for voiceovers, dubbing and avatars, paid for in credits. Unlike the reader, it comes with commercial rights on paid plans.
- The API (SpeechifyAI) sells text to speech to developers by the character, with a free tier.
Behind all three is Speechify, Inc., which gives an address in Miami, Florida, in its terms of service (updated 1 July 2025). The founder, Cliff Weitzman, writes on the homepage that he is dyslexic.
The split matters at checkout. Premium includes neither Studio nor the API, and the reader’s license covers “personal non-commercial use” only. Audio for YouTube, a course or an ad needs Studio, the API or another voice generator.
Is Speechify free? What the free plan really gives
Partly. Each product has a free tier, and each one leaves out something important:
- Reader Free: speeds up to 1.5x, voice typing and what the pricing page itself calls “10 robotic sounding voices”. Natural voices, 5x speed, Scan & Listen and AI summaries need Premium.
- Studio Free: 600 credits, about 10 minutes of voiceover or 3 minutes 20 seconds of dubbing, with no card and no end date. But “the download option is not available in the free plan”, and the plan comes with “No commercial usage rights”.
- API Free: 500,000 characters a month, no card, commercial use allowed. It is the only free tier whose audio you may publish, and it takes code.
The 3-day Premium trial: card first, charge at the end
Premium’s trial lasts “three (3) days unless a different period is stated at sign-up”, under the terms of service. Payment details go in when you start it, and unless you cancel before the end, the trial “automatically converts to a paid Subscription Plan at the then-current price”. The help page for Android is blunter: “On Day 3, you’ll be charged for the year.”
The help center advises cancelling at least 24 hours before the trial ends. MP3 downloads are left out of the trial, so you can only try the export after paying.
How much Speechify costs: plans, yearly and monthly
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reader Free | $0 | $0 | 1.5x speed, 10 robotic-sounding voices |
| Premium (reader) | $139 a year ($11.58 a month) | $29 a month | 1,000+ voices, 60+ languages, 5x speed, AI tools |
| Studio Free | $0 | $0 | 600 credits, no downloads |
| Studio Starter | $100 a year | Not shown* | 86,400 credits, about 24 hours of voiceover |
| Studio Creator | $300 a year | Not shown* | 345,600 credits, about 96 hours |
| API Free | — | $0 | 500,000 characters a month |
| API Starter, Pro, Scale | Not offered | $10, $99, $499 | 1.9M, 13.5M, 78M characters a month |
*The Studio page shows yearly prices only. Its page data still holds monthly prices of $19 and $49 with the monthly view switched off, and a help article from November 2025 still offers “both monthly and annual subscription options”.
Premium: the price depends on where you pay
A help article dated 5 August 2026 lists three prices for the same plan: $139.99 a year in the App Store, $29 a month or $139 a year on the website, and $99.99 a year in Google Play. The US App Store listing adds more Premium items, from “Premium Monthly” at $11.99 and $24.99 up to $159.99, without saying who sees which. The website’s yearly switch promises to “SAVE 60%”, and by our arithmetic it does.
Is Premium unlimited? Words and MP3 hours
Not quite, though the 2026 allowance is large. Speechify’s usage limits page, effective 30 January 2026, guarantees every Premium subscriber at least 150,000 words a month in Premium voices and, for all of 2026, “up to 1,000,000 words per month”. Extra words after 2026 “Are not guaranteed”.
MP3 downloads have their own cap: up to 50 hours a year on yearly Premium or 3 hours a month on monthly Premium, from the web app only and without the celebrity voices.
What changed in 2025 and 2026
Premium has held its price: archived pricing pages from June and October 2025 show the same $29 a month, or $11.58 a month billed yearly. Studio changed more. In August 2025, Starter cost $10 a month or $100 a year, and Creator $30 or $300. By November 2025 the monthly prices were $19 and $49, and by October 2026 the page listed yearly prices only.
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Studio and the API: credits, commercial rights and cloning
Studio is the part of Speechify made for content you publish. Paid plans include “Commercial usage rights”, stock music, video, images and sound effects, and exports as MP4 video, MP3 or WAV audio and a script. The pricing FAQ adds that “you own the audio output and commercial rights in perpetuity to use for your own projects”.
How Studio credits are spent
Credits are counted by the second: 1 per second of voiceover, 3 for dubbing and 30 for an avatar. Starter’s 86,400 credits therefore buy 24 hours of voiceover a year, or 8 hours of dubbing. Rendering is what costs, not exporting:
- “Any new speech generation (new script, even same voice) costs credits.”
- Volume tweaks are free, but “pitch, speed, or emotional prosody changes” are generated again and cost credits.
- Exporting unchanged audio again is free; one text block holds up to 2,000 characters.
The voice catalogue depends on the page: the AI voice generator page promises “over 1,000 AI voices in more than 60 languages”, a Studio help article from September 2026 mentions 200+ voices in 20+ languages, and the pricing FAQ lists about 20 languages. Check your language on the free plan first.
Voice cloning: gone from the Studio price list
On 7 October 2026, the Studio pricing page listed “Voice Cloning” on Starter and “No Voice Cloning” on the free plan. An archived copy from 12 October and the live page on 21 October have neither line, and the old voice cloning page now redirects to the homepage. We have no Studio account, so we can’t tell whether existing subscribers still see cloning in the editor.
Two dated events came before the change. On 27 July 2026, the Consumer Federation of America filed a complaint with the FTC and US attorneys general, alleging that Speechify made it “remarkably easy for bad actors to create convincing voice impersonations”; these are allegations, not findings. On 6 October 2026, a biometric data policy took effect, covering checks on voice owners and the deletion of voice samples. We found no statement from Speechify linking these events, and we don’t link them either.
The API: 500,000 free characters a month
SpeechifyAI bills month to month: Starter costs $10 for 1.9 million characters, Pro $99 for 13.5 million and Scale $499 for 78 million, and the monthly balance “does not roll over”. These amounts are for the Simba 3.0 and 3.2 models; the new Simba 3.5 gets half as many characters after 21 November 2026. Cloning is still offered here, on paid plans from Starter: a voice is made “from a 10-30 second clip and verified spoken consent”.
Cancelling, refunds and the trial: what the terms say
Twelve of the 20 newest one-star reviews we read are about charges and refunds; the others are about the app itself, such as book scanning and playback, or slow support. The rules below come from the refund policy, the terms and the help center, read on 21 October 2026.
- The refund window counts the trial. Requests must arrive “within 7 days from the date of the subscription (including any trial period)”. After a 3-day trial, that leaves about 4 days after the first charge, by our arithmetic.
- Outside billing errors and hacked accounts, only barely used yearly plans qualify. Charges made in error, or from an account taken over by someone else, can be refunded within the same 7 days. A yearly Premium refund needs no more than 500 HD words used, a yearly Studio refund no more than 2 minutes. “Subscriptions purchased on a Monthly, Quarterly, or Discounted basis are non-refundable”, Studio top-ups are final, and there are no partial refunds.
- App store sales are final with Speechify. For subscriptions bought in the App Store or Google Play, the policy says “the sale is final”; the help center sends App Store buyers to Apple.
- Renewal is automatic, at the current price. Plans renew for the same term “at the then-current rate”, with no pro-rated refund. Yearly subscribers should get a reminder email 15 to 45 days before renewal.
- A second email can mean a second subscription. Logging in with different credentials creates a new account, which may offer a new trial, a help article warns. Changing a plan bought on iOS means cancelling it, asking for a refund and subscribing again on the website.
- Disputes go to arbitration. The terms require mandatory arbitration with a class action waiver, under Florida law.
How to cancel, by where you paid
Cancel in the same place you subscribed: deleting the app “won’t cancel” anything, and the receipt email shows which platform you used.
- Website, card: log in at speechify.com and cancel in your account settings.
- Website, PayPal: in PayPal, open Activity, then All Transactions, choose the merchant and click Cancel.
- iPhone or iPad: cancel in the subscription settings of your Apple account.
- Android: open your subscriptions in Google Play, pick the plan and tap Cancel subscription.
After you cancel, Premium stays active until the next billing date, or until the trial ends. The terms also let you ask support for help with cancelling by email.
Ratings and reviews: Trustpilot, app stores and Reddit
| Where | Rating | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| Trustpilot | 4.7 of 5 | 7,201 reviews |
| App Store, US | 4.7 of 5 | 527K ratings |
| Google Play, US | 4.0 of 5 | 283K reviews |
| Chrome Web Store | 4.5 of 5 | 22.7K ratings |
| G2 | 4.4 of 5 | 50 reviews over 7 product listings |
Behind the average: 83% five-star and 8% one-star reviews, with company replies to 91% of the negative ones. The site’s AI summary of 2,757 reviews praises support and mentions “ambiguous experiences with subscription services”.
The one-star reviews from August to October 2026 that we read describe:
- a renewal charged after the subscription was cancelled (9 October 2026);
- unexpected charges of £124.99 and $139 (7 October and 23 September 2026);
- refunds refused (12 September and 26 August 2026);
- a second subscription the reviewer didn’t know about (18 September 2026);
- slow support, with one reviewer still waiting after six days (5 October 2026);
- app problems: pages scanned one by one, playback pauses and a voice update that broke Slovenian (September 2026).
Praise goes mostly to the support staff. Of the 20 five-star reviews on the first page of Trustpilot’s five-star filter on 21 October 2026, all praise support, 11 name a staff member and 4 mention a refund; three mention the product itself.
An App Store review dated 30 August (no year shown) calls $139 a year “a lot of money” but says the app has helped with graduate school readings. On Google Play, a review from 2 August 2025, marked helpful by 880 people, says Kindle books were read with large gaps and out of order: “very frustrating for something 100 bucks a year”. In another review, a student asks for monthly billing instead of $100 up front (13 October 2025).
Reddit was harder to read. On 21 October 2026, a US Google search for “speechify review” showed an r/audiobooks thread with 230+ comments near the top, its title containing “nightmare I wasted my money on”. We could not open the thread itself, so we quote only words from its title.
Is Speechify worth it? Who it suits and who should skip it
It can be, for the job it was built for: listening to a lot of text every day. In 2026, $139 a year covers up to a million words a month on a phone, in Chrome and on Windows. Because refunds are narrow, a wrong purchase is hard to undo, so decide during the trial.
A good fit:
- Students and readers with dyslexia who listen to PDFs, articles and books daily and will still use the app after the first week.
- People who switch devices: one Premium plan covers iOS, Android, Chrome and Windows.
- Buyers who pay once a year and note the renewal date. The pricing page showed no student price on 21 October 2026, and Google Play’s $99.99 was the lowest yearly price we found, though Speechify doesn’t refund Google Play purchases.
Skip it if:
- You need audio for YouTube, ads, courses or clients. The reader’s license is personal, so that work needs Studio or another voice generator.
- You want month-to-month billing in Studio, which lists yearly plans only. Premium’s $29 monthly plan is sold on the website and works in the Android app too.
- You want to clone your own voice in a ready-made editor, which Studio no longer lists.
- You tend to forget trials, given the Android warning that the year is charged on day 3.
- You listen only now and then: a free reader, Speechify’s own or a rival’s, may be enough.
Speechify alternatives for reading and for business voiceovers
For business voiceovers: Murf and ElevenLabs
On yearly billing, Studio is the cheapest per hour of the three: $100 buys about 24 hours of speech, against $228 for 24 hours on Murf Creator. The other two offer what Studio no longer shows: monthly billing, plus instant voice cloning on the $6 ElevenLabs Starter plan. Murf also re-renders the same text in another voice, pitch or speed for free, while Studio charges credits.
| Entry plan | Speechify Studio Starter | Murf Creator | ElevenLabs Starter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $100 a year | $228 a year, or $29 a month | $60 a year, or $6 a month |
| Speech included | About 24 hours a year | 24 hours a year (2 a month if monthly) | About 30 minutes a month |
| How usage is counted | Credits: 1 per second of voiceover | Hours of rendered speech | Credits: about 1 per character |
| Voices and languages | 1,000+ voices, 60+ languages (pages differ) | 200+ voices, 35+ languages (pages differ) | 74 languages; 10 slots for your own voices |
| Free tier | About 10 minutes, no downloads | 10 minutes once, no downloads | About 10 minutes a month, attribution required |
| Voice cloning | Not listed since 12 October 2026 | Enterprise only | Instant cloning included |
| Commercial rights | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Refunds | Yearly plan: 7 days, up to 2 minutes used | Within 24 hours, under 10 minutes used | Within 14 days, no credits used |
| Trustpilot | 4.7 (7,201, whole company) | 4.6 (186) | 3.0 (1,194) |
Murf suits teams that narrate courses and explainers through the year: yearly plans hand over all 24 hours at once, re-renders of the same text are free, and Canva is built into Creator. The catch is a refund window of 24 hours; our Murf AI review has the details.
Try Murf free: 10 minutes, no card
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ElevenLabs suits creators who want their own voice: instant cloning comes with Starter, after you confirm that you have the right and consent to clone the voice. Our ElevenLabs review covers its credits and refunds, and the ElevenLabs vs Murf comparison sets the two side by side, minute by minute.
Compare ElevenLabs plans with instant cloning
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For reading: ElevenReader and NaturalReader
ElevenReader, the reading app from ElevenLabs, has a free plan with 10 hours of text to audio a month. Ultra costs $11 a month, or $8.25 a month billed yearly ($99 a year, by our arithmetic), for unlimited listening to your own files, up to 24 hours a day, with a 3-day free trial.
NaturalReader’s personal plans start at $13.90 a month or $79 a year (Lite), for personal use only; its commercial version starts at $29 a month, or $198 a year. On 21 October 2026, its Trustpilot score was 1.5 from 59 reviews, and its help center gives refund windows of 3 days for monthly plans and 7 for yearly ones, for personal plans bought on its website.
More voice tools, sorted by price and limits, are in our guide to ElevenLabs alternatives and on the voice reviews hub.
Our score: 3.0 out of 5, and how we checked
We score every tool on six weighted criteria, explained on our How we test page. We have no Speechify account, so output quality is not scored, and the total is the weighted average of the other five.
| Criterion | Weight | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price for real work | 25% | 3 | Reader pricier than two rival readers; Studio cheapest per hour; monthly 2.5 times yearly |
| Output quality | 25% | Not scored | No account yet |
| Limits and fine print | 15% | 3 | 1M words a month in 2026; MP3 caps; personal-use license; vendor figures disagree |
| Billing and reputation | 15% | 3 | Trial converts; 7-day refund window; store sales final; Trustpilot 4.7 |
| Support and learning | 10% | 3 | Large help center that contradicts itself; support praised, slow replies in complaints |
| Maturity of AI features | 10% | 3 | Reader AI tools and Studio dubbing live; cloning only in the API |
The math: 0.25 × 3 + 0.15 × 3 + 0.15 × 3 + 0.10 × 3 + 0.10 × 3 = 2.25. Divided by 0.75, the total weight of the scored criteria, that gives 3.0. On our scale, 3.0 to 3.9 means good for specific cases: read the limits first.
On 21 October 2026 we read the three pricing pages, the terms, the refund, usage and biometric policies, 16 help center articles, the app store listings and archived pricing pages from 2025 and 2026. We have not heard the voices in an account of our own, so this review doesn’t judge how they sound. We will re-check prices within 90 days.
Frequently asked questions
For Premium, yes: $29 a month on the website, against $139 a year on yearly billing. Under the refund policy, monthly plans can’t be refunded. The help center lists only a yearly price for Google Play ($99.99), and the Studio page showed yearly plans only in October 2026. The API is the reverse: monthly plans, no annual option.
Only in a narrow window. Requests must reach support within 7 days of signing up, trial included. Charges made in error or from a hacked account qualify; otherwise only yearly plans with no more than 500 HD words used (reader) or 2 minutes (Studio) do. Monthly, quarterly and discounted plans are non-refundable, and App Store or Google Play purchases fall under Apple’s or Google’s own rules.
Not from the reader. Its license is for personal, non-commercial use, and the terms warn that audio made “for resale or public distribution” without a Studio license can get an account suspended. Paid Studio plans include commercial rights, and the API allows commercial use even on its free tier.
It is a commercial service run by Speechify, Inc., with an address in Miami, Florida, and ratings of 4.7 on Trustpilot and the App Store. Studio claims SOC 2 Type II compliance, a vendor statement we have not verified. The practical risks are about billing: an automatic trial conversion, short refund windows and mandatory arbitration.
Yes, unless you cancel in time. You add payment details to start the 3-day Premium trial, and it turns into a paid plan at the current price when it ends; the Android help page says the year is charged on day 3. Cancel at least 24 hours before the end, in the same place you signed up.
Not on its price list. The Studio pricing page showed voice cloning on 7 October 2026 and no longer did by 12 October, and the old cloning page redirects to the homepage. The developer API still offers cloning on paid plans from $10 a month, using a 10 to 30 second clip and verified spoken consent.