Compare · Text-to-speech reader
Aethel Audio vs Speechify
Speechify is one of the best-known text-to-speech readers: it reads web pages, documents and books, scans printed pages with your phone camera, and is popular for listening at high speed. Aethel is a specialist. It reads technical books and papers with the notation spoken as maths, describes figures and tables, and adds explanations and review cards. Speechify covers more kinds of input; Aethel goes deeper on technical reading.
Last reviewed 6 October 2026. Speechify is a product of Speechify; this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Speechify. Something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.
Side by side
What it is
Speechify: A general text-to-speech reader for documents, web pages and books
Aethel: A study reader for technical books and research papers
Input
Speechify: Documents, web pages via a browser extension, and camera scans of printed pages
Aethel: EPUB, text-based PDF, plain text and arXiv links; no OCR for scanned pages yet
Equations
Speechify: General-purpose narration; equation handling isn't a documented focus
Aethel: Notation read as maths, with the printed formula on screen
Figures and tables
Speechify: Focus is on narrating the text
Aethel: Spoken description where the text cites them
Listening speed
Speechify: Known for very fast listening
Aethel: 0.8× to 2.5×, in fine steps
Study tools
Speechify: Focus is on listening
Aethel: Ask about a passage, worked examples, review cards, translation into 17 languages
Price
Speechify: See Speechify's current prices
Aethel: Free: 5 books and 1 hour of narration. Pro Reader $14.99/month (6 h, standard voices). Pro $49/month (12 h, ElevenLabs voices). Yearly plans save about two months. All plans
Choose Speechify if…
- • You want to listen to web pages and emails, not just books.
- • You need to scan printed pages with your phone.
- • You listen mainly to prose and like very high speeds.
Choose Aethel if…
- • Your reading is maths, statistics, engineering, ML or finance.
- • You want explanations and review built into the reader.
- • You read papers from arXiv.
Test it on your hardest page
The fairest comparison is your own material. Import the same maths-heavy chapter into both and listen to a page with equations. Here is what Aethel says for a classic:
Attention(Q, K, V) = softmax(QKᵀ / √dₖ)V
Aethel says
Attention of Q, K, V equals softmax of the quantity QK transpose over the square root of d sub k, times V
Vaswani et al., “Attention Is All You Need”, NeurIPS 2017, equation 1
Questions
Does Aethel have a browser extension?
Not yet. Aethel imports whole books and papers: upload a file or paste an arXiv or public-catalogue link.
Does Aethel read scanned textbooks?
Not yet. The PDF needs selectable text. Speechify's camera scanning is the better option for printed pages today.
Other comparisons
Hear your own book this way.
Free to start: five books and an hour of narration, no card needed.