5 Ways to Convert Text to Speech with Download – Unlimited Words

Have you ever needed to convert text to speech, but didn’t have the time or money to record it? Or maybe you had a lot of text that you wanted to turn into audio but didn’t want to spend hours doing it? Well, today I’m going to show you how to use 5 free text-to-speech applications to convert text into audio and save it as MP3.

These programs can be used on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, etc. You can choose one of them to create audio files of text that are ready to be listened to without any further editing.

Free Online Text-to-MP3

TTSmp3 is an online text-to-speech application that helps you read the text and download the audio as MP3 on your phone, tablet, or computer.  You can also use TTSmp3 to listen to the text, and read books and newspapers. Online TTSMP3 is available for English, Spanish, German, French, etc. 

Since it is an online tool, you don’t need to download or install anything. Once you get to the web tool page, you can input your text and click read to listen to the speech. In addition, there is a Download as MP3 button next to it in case you want to convert text to MP3. 

There are more than 20 supported voice languages and more neural voices for you to choose. I really like the customization you can make while generating speech with TTSmp3. You can add a break, emphasize words, adjust speed, adjust pitch, whisper, and switch between speakers within the text. 

I recommend you click the AI Voices to get more natural sound. However, there is a 3000-character input limit for non-registered users. If you want to convert more text to speech, you can register for premium access. Also, there is display Ads on the website. 

Azure Text to Speech Demo

Microsoft’s text-to-speech tool offers more than 330 neural voices across 129 languages and variants. You can also select the speaking style, role play, language skills, speaking speed, and pitch parameters. What’s more, you can try unlimited words for free. 

If you don’t want to sign in with your Microsoft account, you can go to Azure Text to Speech Demo page. From there, you can use the lite version of Audio Content Creation tool to convert text to speech. You can adjust the words, and modify the speaking style, breaks, pronunciation, and prosody. 

When your text is ready, click the Play button to listen to the results audion. If you are satisfied, click the Download button above it to download the speech audio file.

Watson Text to Speech [Free API]

Watson Text to Speech allows you to create human-like sounds from written text, interacting with people in many languages and tones. The synthesized audio is returned with little latency by the service. To achieve smooth and genuine voices, the audio employs proper cadence and intonation for its language and dialect. 

For 11 languages, you can choose from a choice of male and female voices. Although some of them only supply one sort of voice, most languages provide both. Deep Neural Networks are used to forecast the acoustic properties of the required speech in neural voices. 

For the Watson Text to Speech Demo, you can convert as many words as you want to speech. On the Demo page, you can select language, dialect, adjust speed, pitch, and play voice. However, there is no download button. If you need to save the speech as an audio file, you can use a browser developer tools to download the audio. This goes the same with Google’s Text to Speech tool. 

The free API access allows you to convert 10,000 characters per month. For premium users,  you may also collaborate with IBM to train a new voice for your unique use case and target market. 

Free Text to Speech App for Android

Besides the online Text to Speech tools, Android users can also use a dedicated app to read text for free. For that, I recommend Neural Reader which allows you to convert text to speech and download as MP3. It has an artificial neural network particularly developed for natural text processing.

You can free download it from Google Play Store and start to try it as a guest without an account. Guest users can test only 100 words to see how it works. To use the text to speech feature, you can tap the plus icon in the middle bottom. From there, you can choose to read images, read file, read web articles, read text, or dictation. 

In settings, you can choose the language, text size, speed, and voice that reads your text to you. 

Text to Speech Shortcut for iOS

Based on the Watson Text to Speech free API, I have created a shortcut for iPhone and iPad to convert text to speech. The Shortcuts app is pre-installed on your iPhone or iPad so no additional app is needed. You can just open this link in Safari to import the shortcut. 

If you have never imported any shortcuts, you may need to go to Settings > Shortcuts to allow untrusted shortcuts. Any shortcuts outside of the Shortcuts Gallary are considered untrusted according to Apple, so no worries. 

Since this shortcut relies on the Watson Text to Speech API, you should get the API and enter your API in the shortcut for it to work. You can refer to the video below to see how this shortcut works. When you run the shortcut with input text, it will bring the speech audio as the result. You can play the audio or tap the Share button to save the audio to Files. 

Conclusion

That’s how you can convert text to speech and download the audio as MP3 for free. The Watson Text to Speech Demo will save audio as M4A. All of these 5 tools are free. Some of them provide premium features with more customization.

Now, it’s your choice. Which of these tools are you going to try first? If I miss something, let me know in the comments.