Growth · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I built Libris.fm – 10000+ free, human-narrated audiobooks
Hi HN, I'm the creator of Libris.fm. I've been a long-time fan of audiobooks, especially classic literature found in the public domain. I wanted a simple, dedicated app to listen to these works narrated by real people, without any distractions. Libris.fm brings together over 10,000 human-narrated audiobooks, primarily sourced from LibriVox and the Internet Archive. Key points: Completely Free: No subscriptions or paywalls. No Ads & No Tracking: Built with privacy in mind. Just the books. Human Narration: Focused specifically on volunteer-read recordings, not synthetic voices. Simple…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.
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I generated 70k audiobooks with OpenAI Text-to-Speechfree tier, from $15/mo▲140Hey HN. I’m Ivan, hacker from Ukraine. For about a year, I was working on Listenly — an app to listen to text content with OpenAI's natural-sounding text-to-speech model. At some moment, I realized that it would be cool to take all the public domain e-books and create audio versions for them. So I did it... kind-of. It would cost an immense amount of money to generate all the audio right away (OpenAI TTS costs approximately $0.84/hour of audio; 11labs, for comparison, is 10 times more expensive). So, I took a more gradual approach. I took all the metadata from the Project Gutenberg…
2024 · listenly.io · its alternatives →
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I noticed that many websites offering free audiobooks tend to have clunky search functionality, making it harder to find what you're looking for. To address this, I’ve created a site that aggregates audiobooks from multiple platforms—complete with book reviews and ratings—making it easier to discover and explore new titles. At the moment, I've included audiobooks from popular sources like Librivox, Project Gutenberg, and Lit2Go. I'm open to suggestions on additional free audiobook sources I could integrate into the site to expand the collection!
2025 · booksearch.party · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, Like many of you, I found myself discovering dozens of great posts on HN and never actually finding the time read them. I used to save every cool link to Pocket, but… well… same story — I rarely found the time to read them. So I thought it'd be great to listen to the top articles, the same way I listen to podcasts. Initially, I tried out narrating articles with latest text-to-speech synthesis from Amazon and Google, but it was still pretty bad. Especially with long form content. So I thought I'll do this with real humans, real voice actors. So I made ReadByHumans. [1] We are starting…
2017 · its alternatives →
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Outtloud▲208Create unlimited audiobooks & podcasts from your documents!
2025 · outtloud.com · its alternatives →
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Listen Monster▲164Perfectly transcribed, every time - 100% free
2023 · fast-transcriber.com · its alternatives →
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Libro.fm▲69A digital audiobook platform for independent bookstores
2019 · libro.fm · its alternatives →
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QuickPiperAudiobook locally generates an mp3 audiobook on Linux with one easy command. It can convert PDFs, epub, mobi, and many more by using ebook-convert. It uses any piper TTS model, and thus supports a wide variety of languages. I've had great success using it to read more while reducing eye strain and computer usage. I think I've probably read 30 or so books this way now over the past year. Being able to listen to any content you want in audio form free and offline while going for a walk is extremely handy. I hope it helps you as well! Cheers
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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HearIt▲81Create your own audio books from any file for free.
2020 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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I built a site that combines full-length public domain classics with short summaries inspired by Blinkist/Headway lists, so you can either listen in minutes or go deep immediately. Would love feedback on discovery pages (genres/authors/series) and what “summary vs full” UX works best.
2025 · audiobookhub.net · its alternatives →
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Lisen▲109Free Read Aloud with Cartesia Voices
Sep 2026 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
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Free Audiobooks & Podcasts App
2019 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
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Turn any article, PDF, or text into a natural-sounding podcast. Listen on the go.
2023 · playtext.app · its alternatives →
- 17AF
http://bit.ly/2qeHLev I’ve wanted to listen to my favorite articles or web novels and switch seamlessly between the audio and text so I can read, and if I want to cook or whatever else, I can continue off the audio. I could not find it anywhere, so I created one: http://bit.ly/2qeHLev. Click on the audio version, scrub the player and scroll the content to test it out. All of it is done programatically, so it works with anyone's voice. Also, it works on the mobile web so feel free to check it out on your phone. What do you guys think about my side project? I'd…
2017 · its alternatives →
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I had a bunch of ebooks with no audiobook version available. So I built an iOS app that converts EPUB files into audiobooks using text-to-speech. Two voice options: - Free on-device voices (processed locally, no server needed) - Natural cloud voices (one-time purchase per book, no subscription) Cloud conversion runs chunk by chunk. You can start listening other chapters generate in the background. Once done, the audiobook lives on your device. No account required. No subscription. You import your own EPUBs and either use device TTS for free or pay per book for the cloud voices. Nothing…
Feb 2026 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, Dima here. Super excited to launch ReadAloud! We built a Chrome extension that brings state-of-the-art text-to-speech to your browser. (for free!) The existing options forced a bad choice: the browser's built-in voices are unlistenable, and the products with good voices charge $29/month. This price made sense when quality TTS was expensive to run—it *isn't* anymore. We’re using the latest models that work on-device. All of it works on top of a super intuitive UI that never gets in the way. Here’s a quick demo: tryreadaloud.com ReadAloud is *free forever* at up to 2x speed.…
Jul 2026 · tryreadaloud.com · its alternatives →
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Read texts and docs aloud for free
May 2026 · readaloudreader.com · its alternatives →
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Turn your reading into listening
Apr 2026 · libritalk.com · its alternatives →
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2018 · audiobookreviews.com · its alternatives →
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eBook to Audiobook in Minutes, using AI Text-To-Speech
2025 · audiobookcreator.io · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →