What free text to speech for dyslexia can you use in 2026?

Yes, you can get free text to speech for dyslexia. Speechify's free plan reads PDFs, web pages and Google Docs aloud with 10 standard voices at up to 1.5x, on your phone, your laptop and in the browser, and the web app reads scanned PDFs too. Natural voices, speeds up to 4.5x and an unlimited library come with Premium. Windows and phones also have free built-in readers, and they're covered below. We make Speechify. Prices and free limits were checked on speechify.com/pricing on 2 November 2026, and competitor limits come from their own pages.

Reading assignments and handouts at school

If a class runs on Google Classroom, most assignments open as Google Docs, and that's where the built-in free readers fall short. Immersive Reader doesn't open inside a Google Doc, and Docs has no read aloud button of its own. The Speechify Chrome extension reads Google Docs on the free plan. Open the doc, click the Speechify icon and press play. The same browser extension reads the school portal, a web article and a PDF opened in a tab. The files a student adds also show up in the phone app for reading at home.

Microsoft Immersive Reader is free inside Edge, Word, OneNote and Teams. In Word it sits under View, Immersive Reader. In Edge, press F9 or click the book icon in the address bar. It has line focus (one, three or five lines), a syllable splitter and a picture dictionary, and Text preferences changes text size, spacing, font and background colour. It works on content inside those Microsoft apps, keeps no library of readings and can't scan a page. On a Chromebook, Select-to-speak (Settings, Accessibility) reads selected text on any page, but it has no library and no saved place.

Scanned handouts are the other problem. When a teacher scans a worksheet to PDF, the file is a picture of text with no text layer underneath. Edge Read Aloud and Immersive Reader have nothing to read, so they go silent. To check a file, try to highlight a single word with the cursor. If you can't, it's a scan. Upload it at app.speechify.com, where the web app runs text recognition (OCR) on scanned PDFs, and press play. You can also scan pages with your phone camera in the Speechify app. The free plan holds up to 5 files, scans included; Premium is unlimited.

IEP and 504 plans commonly list text to speech as an accommodation, often alongside audiobooks and extended time. If a plan includes it, ask the school which tool it licenses and have it set up on the student's own device. Read&Write for Google Chrome and Learning Ally (human-read audiobooks) are mostly paid licences that schools buy, and Voice Dream Reader is a paid app. Speechify can run alongside any of them, in the browser and on the phone.

Long emails and reports at work

Edge Read Aloud is free in the Edge browser. Select text, right-click and choose Read aloud, or press Ctrl+Shift+U. It reads PDFs opened in Edge if they have a text layer, and it doesn't work outside Edge. Adobe Acrobat's Read Out Loud is free and uses your computer's system voice.

Reports are where these readers go wrong. A reader with no skipping reads running headers, page numbers and footnotes wherever they land. So a sentence that breaks across two pages comes out with "Quarterly review, page 12" in the middle of it. Speechify's Auto-Skip Content leaves out headers, footers, citations, footnotes, tables, formulas and URLs. It's free and on by default in the iPhone and Android apps, the web app has it too, and the Chrome extension doesn't. Premium adds 1000+ natural voices in 60+ languages and speeds up to 4.5x, about 900 words a minute. Premium costs $29 a month, or $139 billed yearly, which works out to about $11.58 a month (see pricing).

Who can skip Premium? If you read along at normal speed and your reading is mostly emails and web pages, the free plan handles it. Premium is worth $139 a year if you listen at 2x and above, or if you keep more than 5 files in your library.

On the free plan, the extension reads Gmail or Outlook in the tab you already have open, and the apps keep PDFs and DOCX files in one library across your laptop and phone. NaturalReader's free web app reads documents and web pages, and its free plan includes a limited allowance of its premium voices. Its pricing page has the exact numbers. On its dyslexia page, NaturalReader lists word-by-word highlighting and a dyslexia font option among its dyslexia text to speech features. Speechify adds phone apps, camera scanning and one library that follows you from a Mac to an iPhone.

One point for work files: when you upload a document to any cloud reading app, Speechify included, the file goes to that service. Check your employer's policy before you upload confidential reports.

Reading at home on a phone

On iPhone and iPad, Speak Screen is under Settings, Accessibility, Spoken Content. Once it's on, swipe down from the top of any screen with two fingers. On Android, turn on Select to Speak under Settings, Accessibility, then tap its icon and drag over the text. Both use the system voice. Neither keeps a library or remembers where you stopped in a 30-page PDF.

The Speechify app for iPhone and Android keeps a child's class PDFs, a letter from school and a saved article in one library that syncs with the laptop.

For books, Libby and Hoopla lend audiobooks free with a library card. Kindle's Assistive Reader reads inside the Kindle app with the device's own text-to-speech voice, and Audible narration plays on books that have it. ElevenReader's free allowance includes natural voices for 10 hours a month. Speechify keeps the rest of the pile (PDFs, web pages, and Google Docs through the extension) in one library across devices.

When hearing the words isn't enough

Word highlighting lets a reader follow along. When the voice and the lit-up word move together, someone who loses the line can find it again by looking for the highlight, without starting the paragraph over. Speechify highlights each word as it reads on the free plan.

Speed works in both directions. Speechify's free plan runs from 0.4x to 1.5x. The slow end suits reading along with a worksheet one line at a time. Premium goes up to 4.5x, which is for listening without the text in front of you.

To read a printed page, such as a worksheet or a book with no digital copy, scan it in the Speechify app on your phone. Open the camera from your library, point it at the page, and Speechify pulls out the text and reads it. Camera scanning works on the free plan. The free plan holds up to 5 files, scans included; Premium is unlimited.

Fewer words on screen helps too. Immersive Reader's line focus hides everything on the page except the lines you're reading. Auto-Skip Content does the same job in the audio. It's free and on by default in the phone apps, so a research PDF reads each sentence straight through, without "figure 3" or a citation in brackets in the middle.

Free tools side by side

Our dyslexia apps guide covers paid assistive technology for dyslexia support, including Learning Ally and Voice Dream Reader, plus writing tools.

Questions people ask