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Speechify vs WellSaid Labs

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. Speechify starts at $29, WellSaid Labs at $10. Both have a free tier. Both ship a public API.

SpeechifyReads PDFs, web pages and email out loudWellSaid LabsText-to-speech built on licensed voice-actor recordings, aimed at corporate audio

Side by side

FactSpeechifyWellSaid Labs
CategoryText-to-SpeechText-to-Speech
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$29 month$10 month
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsiOS, Android, Chrome Ext, Web, macOS, APIWeb, API
CompanySpeechify Inc.WellSaid Labs, Inc.
Launched20172019
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Speechify

The most complete listen-to-anything reader on a phone, but the $29 monthly sticker is a trap — the same thing is $139 a year, and the free tier is deliberately unpleasant.

Pros

  • Handles almost any input, including scanned pages captured through the camera
  • Voices stay intelligible all the way up to 5x playback
  • One library syncs between phone, browser extension and Mac

Cons

  • Monthly billing costs about 2.5x the annual rate for the same features
  • Free tier is held to 10 robotic voices and 1.5x speed
  • Studio and the developer API are separate products on a separate domain
  • API pricing is unpublished and gated behind a sales conversation

WellSaid Labs

The reason to pick WellSaid over cheaper rivals is provenance: every voice is licensed from a named actor, which is the answer legal will want before a training video ships. The catch is that minutes are metered tightly and the useful ceiling — all languages, translation, SSO — sits behind a quoted enterprise contract.

Pros

  • Voices built in partnership with professional actors and licensed for commercial use
  • Per-line control over pronunciation, pacing and delivery in the Studio editor
  • Public API plus Adobe Express and Premiere Pro integrations
  • Shared workspaces and version management for team review

Cons

  • Free tier is 3 minutes a month and grants no commercial rights
  • Non-English languages, translation and SSO are enterprise-only
  • Allowances are consumed on download, so re-renders eat into quota

Which one fits

Choose Speechify if you need

  • Students and professionals working through long PDFs and articles by ear
  • Readers with dyslexia or low vision who need OCR capture plus playback
  • Developers who want the Simba voices without building a reader app

Choose WellSaid Labs if you need

  • Corporate training and e-learning teams that need cleared commercial rights
  • Marketing teams re-cutting narration often and wanting version history
  • Buyers who must be able to say where a synthetic voice came from

More comparisons

All WellSaid Labs alternatives →Browse all Text-to-Speech →