How this works, and why it's free with no limits
This uses your browser's own built-in text-to-speech engine - the Web Speech API - rather than sending your text to a paid cloud voice service. That's why it's instant, has no usage limit, and never requires an account, but it also means the available voices depend entirely on what your browser and operating system provide, rather than a curated set this site controls. Chrome, Edge, and Safari generally offer several voices across many languages, though the exact list varies by device and installed language packs.
Speed and pitch controls
The speed slider ranges from 0.5x (half speed, useful for careful proofreading by ear) up to 2x (double speed, useful for quickly skimming through a long passage). The pitch slider adjusts how high or low the selected voice sounds without changing its speed, letting you fine-tune the same base voice to sound more natural for your specific text.
Nothing you type ever leaves your device
Because the speech synthesis happens entirely inside your own browser's engine, the text you paste in is never transmitted to any server - there's no upload step at all. This also means the conversion happens instantly with no processing delay, since there's no round trip to wait on.
Common uses
Proofreading your own writing by ear (hearing mistakes your eyes skip over is a well-known editing trick), previewing how a script or voiceover line will sound before recording it properly, or simply having a page of text read aloud while you do something else.