Every mainstream news website these days has the option for the online news to be read to you. Wouldn’t it be great if this option extended to other aspects of your online activities, such as reading long documents or PDFs? Unlike listening, reading requires your complete attention, but what if you could get reading done while getting some annoying chores out of the way? Text-to-speech (TTS) browser extensions are one way of having an online tool to read out text from web pages, PDFs, emails, documents, and more. These extensions can work on your laptops as well as on mobile devices and tablets.

TTS extensions can also come in handy for those with visual impairments or reading difficulties. Students who have to read through countless books and research papers could benefit from TTS extensions. With many TTS extensions offering the ability to adjust pitch, speed, and the voice reading out the text, listeners can customize their experience. Here are the 10 best text-to-speech extensions across browsers such as Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Firefox.

1 Natural Reader (Chromium)

One of the best

Natural Reader is a text-to-speech extension offering up to 130 AI voices across 20 languages. You can either have the entire web page read out or select a text portion to read. You can also have emails read and ebooks as well. Natural Reader lets you adjust the speed of reading and set shortcuts. There’s an immersive reading mode that removes all the distractions on the web page and just focuses on the text to be read, much like the Reader View in some browsers. While you get a free version with AI voices that sound robotic, you can pay $19 per month or $110 annually to get access to the Plus voices that sound like natural voices. On the free tier, you can only get a five-minute taste of what the natural voices sound like.

2 Speechify (Chromium)

Includes celeb voice simulations

Speechify looks like a floating widget that offers various customization options, such as selecting the voice and adjusting reading controls. It comes with an option where you can screenshot an area that you want to read, you can even save web pages to be read later, and you can go to the Speechify account page where you can upload PDFs or ebooks to be read out. You also have the option to take a photo of the text you want to read, and Speechify will read that, too. You do have to make an account to use it, however.

The AI voices sound close to natural voices, but unfortunately, you only get a 10-minute duration of it in the free version of the extension. After 10 minutes are up, you are prompted to upgrade, where you can be charged $11.58 per month or $139 per year. The paid tier offers 30+ natural reading voices in 20+ languages, and you can also adjust reading speed up to 5x. It even has AI voices that sound similar to well-known celebrities such as Snoop Dogg or Gwyneth Paltrow.

3 uLanguage TTS (Chromium)

Simple text-to-speech reader

This text-to-speech extension also functions as a translator and can read out the source text and translated text. uLanguage supports all the languages offered by Google Translate, but there’s only a single default voice for most languages, though you can select between a male and female voice. There’s also a dictionary function present where you can look up the meanings of words. This text-to-speech translator offers a unique value proposition for language learners.

4 Text to Speech: Voice Reader TTS (Chromium)

Limited language support

Voice Reader TTS is a text-to-speech reader offering a simple user interface. You need to highlight the text you want to read and click on the speaker icon that appears under the highlighted text. You can select the pitch, speed, volume, and voice from various options. It supports 13 languages other than English, with Chinese and Spanish having more than one dialect.

5 Readme Text to Speech Online (Chromium)

Has OpenAI support

Readme Text to Speech reader is a feature-rich Chrome extension for reading text from a web page and documents uploaded to it. This extension can read from the web page directly, or you can select the text and have that portion read. The Readme extension reads web pages by highlighting the portions it’s currently reading. You can log in with your OpenAI ID and get access to the summary feature, where the Readme extension can summarize the web page you are on. In terms of customizations, you can choose the speed, pitch, volume, and different voices.

6 SpeakIt (Chromium)

Barebones extension

SpeakIt is a simple extension to help read text from web pages. It has a minimal play and stop button after you’ve selected the text that you want to read. To make any customizations, you must right-click on the extension and enter Options. Here, you can select the text-to-speech engine along with the default volume level, speaking speed, and pitch. You can also assign keyboard shortcuts to activate the SpeakIt context menu.

7 Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader (Firefox)

Best Firefox TTS extension

This is one of the Recommended Firefox browser add-ons or extensions offering text-to-speech functionality. After installing it, you can start using it immediately with its default settings. If you want to customize it, you can adjust the pitch, speed, and volume. You can have an entire web page read (which I wouldn’t recommend as it also reads any image captions it comes across), or select the text that you want to read, right-click it, and select Read Aloud. It highlights the paragraph that’s currently being read.

You can select from a range of free voices but must sign in to use the Premium voices. It also has voices for different languages, but if you try to keep a Google Translate German voice for an English text, the English will be read with a very heavy German accent. The voices do sound slightly robotic, but you can change the pitch to reduce that. You also have the option to add custom voices to this add-on.

8 Intelligent Speaker (Firefox)

Listen later

The Intelligent Speaker is an interesting text-to-speech add-on because it lets you store web pages that you may want to read later. You can even download these audio files for offline listening. It offers around 32 voices in English in accents such as the US, British, Indian, Canadian, Irish, and Australian. You also have voices for 18 foreign languages, but not as much variety. Regarding other customizations, you can adjust the speed of reading. Unfortunately, the free tier offers only an hour of listening per month, which isn’t much. Paying $6.99 monthly will get you a limit of 24 hours per month.

9 Pericles: Text to Speech Reader (Firefox)

Limited voice support

Pericles offers a simple interface that only has the play and stop buttons. It provides 7 English voices in different dialects, but no other language. In the settings, you can adjust the pitch and speed along with enabling or disabling auto-scrolling. The text that Pericles is reading out is highlighted on the web page. Alternatively, you can also select the text and make the Pericles reader read it from that point on. Pericles also offers some shortcuts to start, play/pause, and stop the text-to-speech reader.

10 Talkie (Firefox)

Simple Firefox TTS extension

Talkie is a barebones text-to-speech add-on for Firefox. You need to select the text to be read, right-click, and choose Talkie from the browser toolbar. By default, Talkie offers seven voices in English in three dialects. The settings page for Talkie has instructions to add more languages if you already have those installed on Windows. But you must purchase Talkie Premium to access features such as adjusting pitch, speed, and a large variety of voices. It has a pay-what-you-want model for the Premium version, which is good.

Outsource reading

These 10 text-to-speech extensions can free one to get the chores done in the house, help students speed through the many books that need to be read, and help those with reading disabilities. Sadly, you have to shell out money if you want more natural-sounding AI voices. So sit back, plug in your earphones, and let the text-to-speech extensions do all that mundane reading.