Runs on your machine · Nothing uploaded
Turn a book you already own into an audiobook.
A speech model runs in this tab and reads the book out loud, a sentence at a time, on your own hardware. You get a chaptered M4B at the end. The file never leaves your computer.
Local narration unit
Idle
Drop an EPUB here
M4B
With chapters
0
Bytes uploaded
11
Voices
Read aloud in this tab. Never uploaded. Here's why that's true.
book.epub
- —
- Chapters
- —
- Audio
- —
- On this machine
- —
- Output
Reading the book…
—
Close the tab if you want. We keep your place, and picking the same file again carries on from where it stopped.
Paused
Your place is kept.
Your audiobook is ready
Getting it onto a phone
- iPhone. AirDrop it, or copy it into the Books app. Chapters and your position work straight away.
- Android. Copy it across and open it in Smart AudioBook Player, Voice or Listen.
- Plex or Audiobookshelf. Drop it in the library folder.
That didn't work
- Output
- M4B
- Uploaded
- 0 bytes
- Accounts
- None
Chapters, cover, resumes where you left off
There is no server to upload to
Nothing to sign up for, nothing kept
How it works
- 01
Pick an EPUB
Drop the file on the page. It goes from your disk straight into the tab. No upload, no queue, nothing waiting on a server.
- 02
We strip out the furniture
An EPUB is a bundle of web pages, and plenty of what sits in one should never be read aloud. Page numbers, footnote markers, running heads, the contents page, the copyright notice. All of it goes, so what you hear is the book rather than the scaffolding around it.
- 03
Your machine reads it
A speech model runs in the tab, a sentence at a time, on the processor your machine already has. This is the slowest step and it is still about ten times faster than the audio it makes. Close the tab whenever you like. It keeps your place.
- 04
Download and listen
You get an M4B with chapter marks and the book's own cover art, or a folder of tagged MP3s if you prefer one file per chapter. Apple Books, Smart AudioBook Player, BookPlayer and Plex all take them.
Why this takes hours
A ten-hour book takes about an hour here, on an ordinary laptop. No graphics card needed. Longer without one.
Anything that returns the same audiobook four minutes after you upload it is running on hardware you aren't paying for. Your book is on their server while that happens, and it stays there for as long as they care to keep it.
We time your machine on a few paragraphs before you commit, so the number you see is a real one rather than a spinner. Shut the tab whenever you want. It keeps your place.
Common questions
Is my book uploaded anywhere?
No. The voice runs inside your browser tab and reads the file straight off your disk. If you'd rather check than take our word for it, open devtools, watch the Network tab, and convert something. Once the voice itself has downloaded, the network goes quiet and stays quiet.
How long does it actually take?
About an hour for a ten-hour book, on an ordinary laptop. It runs roughly ten times faster than the audio it produces, and it does that on the processor you already have — no graphics card involved. We time your machine on a few paragraphs first and show you the real number before you commit to anything, and you can shut the tab and come back later.
Why does it take an hour when other converters take minutes?
Because your computer is doing the work rather than somebody's server. Anything that hands you a ten-hour audiobook four minutes after you upload it has your book sitting in a datacentre, and a copy of it stays there. An hour of your laptop working quietly in a background tab is the whole price of that not happening.
What does it sound like?
A good synthetic narrator. The rhythm of a sentence comes out right, the emphasis usually lands, and nothing about it makes you wince. It is not an actor. There are no character voices, and dialogue-heavy fiction still belongs to human narrators. Non-fiction and plain prose come out well.
M4B or MP3?
M4B if your player takes it, which most audiobook apps do. One file, chapter marks, and it remembers where you got to. Pick the MP3 folder for a car stereo, an older player, or a media server that prefers one file per chapter.
Do I need a fast computer?
No, and you do not need a graphics card. The voice runs on an ordinary processor and still finishes a ten-hour book in about an hour. A faster machine is quicker, an older one slower, and we measure yours on a few paragraphs and tell you the number before you start rather than after.