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By the toolist.ai editors. Researched from NaturalReader's own pages and hands-on tests published by others, not hands-on tested by toolist.ai. Updated October 19, 2026.

NaturalReader review: pricing, features and what testers found

NaturalReader reads documents, PDFs, web pages and ebooks aloud in AI voices on the web, on iOS and Android and in Chrome, and sells a separate AI Voice Generator for commercial voiceovers. The reader is free with basic device voices; personal plans start at $13.90 a month (Lite, $79 a year) and commercial voiceover plans at $29 a month ($198 a year).

Our take

NaturalReader suits students, people with dyslexia or low vision and anyone who wants documents, PDFs, scans and web pages read aloud on the web, on a phone and in Chrome: the reader is free with basic device voices, and paid personal plans run from Lite at $13.90 a month ($79 a year) to Pro at $25.90 ($159 a year), for private listening only. Voiceovers for videos, courses or anything shared need its separate AI Voice Generator, from $29 a month ($198 a year) for 500,000 credits, with voices from Gemini, OpenAI, Azure and ElevenLabs. In ZDNET's roundup, updated January 21, 2026, Emily Long picked NaturalReader as the best text-to-speech app overall for its free plan and simple apps, though its standard voices paced awkwardly and mispronounced some words, and she gave Speechify the better mobile app; TechRadar's Mark Pickavance, testing the 2020 version, found it a good proofreading aid but weak on names and technical words until fixed in its pronunciation editor. Neither tested the commercial voice generator. The catches: personal audio cannot be shared, even inside a school or company; commercial plans are non-refundable and spend up to 20 credits a character on ElevenLabs voices; and Lite, the cheapest plan, is not on the product page's pricing section.

Based on NaturalReader's published plans and the hands-on tests linked below, not on a test of our own.

Good for

  • Students and people with dyslexia, ADHD or low vision who want textbooks, PDFs, scanned pages and web pages read aloud with highlighting on the web, a phone and Chrome
  • Listeners on a budget: the free plan reads without limit in basic device voices, and Lite costs $79 a year ($6.58 a month) for unlimited listening in Lite AI voices and 1 million MP3 characters a month
  • Creators and training teams who want Gemini, OpenAI, Azure and ElevenLabs voices with commercial rights in one studio, from $29 a month or $198 a year

Watch out for

  • Personal and commercial are separate products with separate subscriptions. Audio from Lite, Plus, Pro and EDU plans is for the subscriber's private listening only: no YouTube, podcasts, e-learning, training videos or classroom use, even internal or non-profit, which needs the AI Voice Generator; a subscription to one does not include the other.
  • Lite, the cheapest plan, is easy to miss: the product page's pricing section shows only Free, Plus and Pro, while Lite ($13.90 a month or $79 a year) is listed in the help center and sold in the web app's upgrade screen. The US App Store sells Premium, Lite's former name, at $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year, and Plus and Pro at the web prices; the help center says app-store prices may vary by region.
  • Commercial credits do not convert to minutes: they are counted per character at 1 to 20 credits a character depending on the voice, so Starter's 500,000 monthly credits read 500,000 characters on an OpenAI or Azure voice but 25,000 on an ElevenLabs HD voice. Included credits do not roll over, and every re-generation after an edit is charged again.
  • Commercial subscriptions are non-refundable (exceptions are at NaturalSoft's discretion), so try the free account first: it plays every voice but cannot download. Personal plans bought on the website can be refunded on request within 3 days of purchase or renewal (monthly) or 7 days (yearly), never prorated after that; App Store and Google Play purchases follow the stores' own refund rules. All plans renew automatically until cancelled.
  • The free reader is tight on AI voices: 20,000 characters a day in Lite voices and 4,000 in Plus and cloned voices, with no MP3s or OCR, and ZDNET's tester found the free standard voices paced awkwardly and made pronunciation mistakes. Paid plans cap Plus and Pro listening at 500,000 characters a day, and MP3 conversion at 1 million characters a month in Lite voices plus, on Plus and Pro, another 1 million in the better voices.
  • NaturalReader's help pages disagree on details: commercial articles still refer to a 'default 6 million' monthly credit allotment, while no current plan gives a user more than 2 million (Starter 500,000, Creator 2 million, Team 2 million a user), price Gemini voices at 1 credit a character in one article and 1 to 2 in another, and allow 5 cloned voices in one and 4 in the other; for the personal reader, the cloning article allows 1 cloned voice per user and the plans article up to 2.
  • The personal library keeps uploaded documents for up to a year and audio files for up to a month, so download anything you want to keep.
  • The desktop software page still shows one-time licences from $99.50 to $199.50 with Order Now buttons, but NaturalSoft's subscription agreement, effective July 25, 2026, says new sales of the standalone software have been discontinued and existing licences get no promise of updates, new voices or support.

What NaturalReader does

Price

Free plan: The personal reader is free with no card: unlimited listening in basic device voices (not AI), 20,000 characters a day in Lite AI voices and 4,000 in Plus and cloned voices (the pricing card calls it 5 minutes a day), no MP3 downloads and no OCR. The commercial AI Voice Generator lets a free account sample every voice for up to 10,000 characters a day, but downloads need a paid plan.

PlanBilled monthlyBilled yearly, per monthIncludes
Personal Free free free The reader on web, iOS, Android and Chrome with no card: unlimited listening in Free (device) voices, 20,000 characters a day in Lite voices and 4,000 in Plus and cloned voices, limited ReadAI, annotations and the pronunciation editor (the pricing card also lists voice cloning); no MP3 downloads or OCR; personal use only
Personal Lite $13.90 $6.58 $13.90 billed monthly or $79 billed yearly; formerly called Premium. Unlimited listening in Lite AI voices, 1 million MP3 characters a month in Lite voices, OCR, AI Smart Filter, annotations and ReadAI features; no Plus or Pro voices and no voice cloning; personal use only
Personal Plus $20.90 $9.92 $20.90 billed monthly or $119 billed yearly. Everything in Lite plus 500,000 characters a day of listening in Plus and cloned voices, 1 million MP3 characters a month in Lite voices and another 1 million shared by Plus and cloned voices, cloning of up to 2 voices and full ReadAI; personal use only
Personal Pro $25.90 $13.25 $25.90 billed monthly or $159 billed yearly. Everything in Plus, with the daily 500,000 characters and monthly 1 million MP3 characters shared by Plus, cloned and Pro voices: HD Gemini and OpenAI voices with Reading Styles prompts for tone, emotion and accent; personal use only
Personal EDU (group) not listed not listed Billed yearly only, for schools: Plus EDU from $299 a year for 5 users to $1,500 for 50 (then from $25 a user a year), Lite EDU from $599 a year for 50 users to $3,300 for 2,000, and Lite site licences from $3,300 a year; admin tools and a shared class library, with a 30-day free trial; audio still for private listening only
Commercial Free free free AI Voice Generator free account with no card: sample every voice and feature for up to 10,000 characters a day; downloading audio needs a paid plan
Commercial Starter $29 $16.50 $29 billed monthly or $198 billed yearly, one user: 500,000 credits a month (1 to 20 per character depending on the voice), commercial licence, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure and ElevenLabs voices, prompt control, 90+ languages, voice cloning, AI Script Assistant, pronunciation editor and MP3 or WAV downloads at 44.1 kHz
Commercial Creator $49 $24.75 $49 billed monthly or $297 billed yearly, one user: 2 million credits a month and everything in Starter
Commercial Team $33 $16 Per user, at least 2 users: $33 a user billed monthly or $192 a user billed yearly ($384 a year for two); 2 million credits a user a month, pooled across the team (4 million for two), a shared library and team management; everything in Starter

Prices last checked: 2026-10-19 on NaturalReader's pricing page. Full breakdown: NaturalReader pricing.

Price history

No price change since we first recorded these prices on October 19, 2026. We re-check them every week and list each change here.

What hands-on testers found

We have not tested NaturalReader ourselves. These are the published tests we found that used it hands-on, newest first; follow the links for the full reviews.

ZDNET · Emily Long · updated January 21, 2026

What they tested: NaturalReader's personal web and mobile apps among the text-to-speech tools in her roundup, trying several voices on each with a short script, uploaded files and web links; picked as the best text-to-speech app overall. The article does not date the test, does not say she used the paid voices, and does not cover the commercial AI Voice Generator; ZDNET links NaturalReader through an affiliate link.

  • She picked it as the best choice for most people: a free plan with standard voices and no time or character limits, roughly 100 languages and a simple interface on the web, iOS and Android, plus a Chrome extension; she gives paid voices and audio downloads as $21 a month or $119 a year.
  • The free standard voices sounded less natural than rivals': in her testing they paced awkwardly and made some pronunciation mistakes, which custom pronunciation rules can fix.
  • She found Speechify a close second with the best mobile experience of the tools she tried, and ElevenLabs and Speechify had some of the most realistic voices; she says only that NaturalReader's paid voices may sound more realistic than its standard ones.

TechRadar · Mark Pickavance · October 26, 2020

What they tested: The 2020 NaturalReader online and desktop apps: pasting and loading documents, switching voices and accents, and the pronunciation editor; he also describes its WebReader website widget and gives the commercial licence's price without testing it. The review does not narrate its test in the first person and its screenshots come from NaturalReader, but it reports where the voices went wrong. It predates today's AI and LLM voices, ReadAI and the current plans and prices; TechRadar's text-to-speech roundups, updated in January and February 2026, still rank NaturalReader first and link to this review. The review links to NaturalReader plainly, not through an affiliate link.

  • The interface is point and shoot: paste or drag in text or load a document, then pick a voice and speed; he suggests typing 'oregano' and switching between UK and US English voices to hear the accents differ.
  • Names, technical words and historical texts tripped it up, though the pronunciation editor fixes them for next time; he rated it a better proofreading aid than Word's built-in reader, since a mangled sentence is easier to hear than to see.
  • Its voices were so common in YouTube videos that voiceovers could sound familiar; he wanted subtly varied voices and regional accents, and listed 'can sound stilted' among the cons.

Their score: 4.5 out of 5

What users say

Test result

toolist.ai has not run its own test of NaturalReader; the findings above come from the published tests linked. See how we research and test.

Best voice tools · NaturalReader pricing

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Sources