Review Insights · App Store
Speechify - Text to Speech PDF
Speechify Inc. · 491,076 ratings · ★ 4.7
4.7
★★★★★
491,076 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 62 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"read"
21 negative reviews mention this · 34% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Hate this!. Words were disappearing and was reading from right to left! WTH! Won’t be using this app again!" - Avril P.
2
"book"
15 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Misleading dishonest. The app cannot do what the commercial shows, pick up a random book and scan the cover and read it back to you. Each page must be scanned this is not new or exciting technology and Apple is knowingly participating and profiting off of blatan…" - phillyg007
3
"free"
15 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Misleading Advertising. They claim that lifelike voice models the are free, but all behind a paywall, including a free trial." - Diamond087
4
"books"
15 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Read before downloading. I am just so incredibly impressed to discover that this app can spread its ads across every single square inch of the internet, yet somehow, amazingly, totally by accident, manage to leave out the tiny, microscopic, miniature detail that it…" - TashaS♡
5
"money"
13 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Robotica Speech. After going through all of the set up feature in the beginning, the first page reads like a robot. Definitely does not inspire me to give them a year membership. I want it to sound like the human’s voice I chose. I cannot stand hearing robo…" - 1_Whistler_1
6
"subscription"
12 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Read before downloading. I am just so incredibly impressed to discover that this app can spread its ads across every single square inch of the internet, yet somehow, amazingly, totally by accident, manage to leave out the tiny, microscopic, miniature detail that it…" - TashaS♡
7
"reading"
9 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Hate this!. Words were disappearing and was reading from right to left! WTH! Won’t be using this app again!" - Avril P.
8
"trial"
9 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Misleading Advertising. They claim that lifelike voice models the are free, but all behind a paywall, including a free trial." - Diamond087
9
"library"
9 negative reviews mention this · 15% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Very few!. Very few of the books I wanted to scan and read are in your library! I am canceling my subscription!" - glenn5877
10
"voice"
8 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Misleading Advertising. They claim that lifelike voice models the are free, but all behind a paywall, including a free trial." - Diamond087
11
"text"
7 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unskippable setup then asks for email. I just want a simple text to speech app. It took like 10 minutes to set up, none of which was skippable, then forced me to enter an email to continue. Absolutely awful experience." - Party Escort Bot
12
"work"
7 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Total Loss. Just take $139 and throw it out the window while you’re driving along the highway you’ll have more satisfaction What a complete waste Did not work one time Zero guidance/ customer service" - PDottedSunshine
📋 All 62 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Unskippable setup then asks for email
I just want a simple text to speech app. It took like 10 minutes to set up, none of which was skippable, then forced me to enter an email to continue. Absolutely awful experience.
Total Loss
Just take $139 and throw it out the window while you’re driving along the highway you’ll have more satisfaction
What a complete waste
Did not work one time
Zero guidance/ customer service
What a complete waste
Did not work one time
Zero guidance/ customer service
Hate this!
Words were disappearing and was reading from right to left! WTH! Won’t be using this app again!
Misleading dishonest
The app cannot do what the commercial shows, pick up a random book and scan the cover and read it back to you. Each page must be scanned this is not new or exciting technology and Apple is knowingly participating and profiting off of blatant false advertising knowingly
Misleading Advertising
They claim that lifelike voice models the are free, but all behind a paywall, including a free trial.
Bad voice
I won’t let me change the voice this sucks
Overrated and Inconsistent
$100+ for a year, huh? For some reason i cant click a page anymore and go backwards in real time. What a joke.
speechify
it’s ridiculously and extremely too expensive.
Misleading
The app will read to you, but you have to buy books after gaining access to the “huge” library which cost an additional $24.99, after already paying $19.99 for the Speechify subscription. They make it seem like you just take a picture and BAM the app is reading it to you. Not the case at all. I want my money back because this is BS.
Speechify
It will only read books in their library
Disappointed
Disappointed. The ad led me to believe that I could take a photo of a book in the store and the app would “read” it to me. NOT TRUE!
I bought this app thinking I could take a photo of one of the books I have in my personal library and it would read it to me. FALSE! The app was still going to require that I buy a book from them before it would read it. SO DISAPPOINTED!!
I bought this app thinking I could take a photo of one of the books I have in my personal library and it would read it to me. FALSE! The app was still going to require that I buy a book from them before it would read it. SO DISAPPOINTED!!
Have to pay to read to you
This is sad, you have to pay for it for it to read your book to you
Don’t get taken
I signed up because I thought it was reasonable and would make listening to books easier. After I signed up, I found out that I have to pay for most of the books that interest me. They don’t have many of the books that I want to listen to but a mechanical voice can read each page if my book after I scan it. Ridiculous! I can read faster than it takes to do this and the computer voice is grating. I can listen to better voices but will have to pay more money. I can also listen to a bunch of free books for an extra fee. So basically I got nothing for signing up. What a scam!
Horrible app
You can pick your own book to read you have pick only there’s
Cash grab
The core concept of this app is excellent, and as someone with autism, I was highly motivated to use the reading and scanning features. However, the immediate paywall after a three-day trial makes it very difficult to evaluate the app's true value before committing financially.I highly recommend that the development team considers implementing an ad-supported free tier. This would allow users who cannot afford steep subscription fees to still utilize the basic text-to-speech functionality and diverse voice options. Restricting the high-quality voice selections behind a strict paywall severely limits the user experience. I ultimately chose to uninstall the app due to these cost barriers, but I hope the developers will consider more inclusive monetization strategies in the future to make this tool accessible to everyone.
Not as advertised
Paid, none of books i scanned are in their library, going through hoops trying to get a refund. Wasn’t even a customer for 24 hours
Never worked
This never worked and I’m having a heck of a time canceling this payment.
Waste of time
Waste 10 minutes of my time asking completely irrelevant questions so they can sell my data and then doesn’t even let me use the features I just spend 10 minutes calibrating until I pay them
Doesn’t work with all e-books
The reader doesn’t work with all e-books. Verify before you buy. I signed up for a very specific purpose and was not able to make it work. Customer support tried to assist me but it still didn’t work.
Privacy
I don’t want to I mean, I’m only eight years old and I don’t know how to use this app. I’m like I don’t know how to sign in and there’s like no X for me to press I don’t know how to do it
Charges
I paid $19 for a three month trial $0.19 per day
Then you asked for
Another $26 for a three day trial “free” trial
You auto paid yourself another $19. Of which I want refunded to me
I haven’t started
I don’t like these terms
Then you asked for
Another $26 for a three day trial “free” trial
You auto paid yourself another $19. Of which I want refunded to me
I haven’t started
I don’t like these terms
Scam
Be very careful ordering this. It will give you several options, but only 1 at a time. First it says free 7 day trial, then $139 for 1 year after that. I wanted to try this as I’m a student and enjoy being able to listen to a book while getting other things done. When I downloaded it on my phone, it gave me the option of $24.99 “Text to Speech PDF” I thought amazing, I’ll only be using it for text books anyways. So I accepted the offer, was charged for it, have the receipts for it, and yet when I canceled the free 7 day trial on my MAC so I wouldn’t be charged $139, it shut it all off. It says my subscription has to be reactivated in order to use it…. Even though I have the Apple receipts saying I paid the 24.99… now it says I have to pay the $139. This seems like such a scam to me.
Don’t be lazy
First off you have to pay for it. Second why get this app when you can literally get audio books for free because I’m sorry if your going out and buying books for this your just lazy.
Scam
Why would I pay for books that I already own to be read to me. I downloaded it to help me study but none of the books are available and the ones that are you still need to purchase ? It made it seem it could read anything on demand with a shot of a cover.
Not enough value for the money
Paying over $100 for an app that constantly glitches is ridiculous. It’s always skipping over almost entire paragraphs or glitches and doesn’t read aloud or doesn’t let me select the text to read. If this was a free app I wouldn’t care but now I’m out over $100 with an app that I’m constantly having to close in and out of just to get it to work correctly. I wish I could get my money back.
Christ the healer
This site did not have the book if you are looking for biblical reading. This is not the app.
Please do not buy if you saw the ad
This app only works to read books to you if you buy them from the app- and it is in the store. It won’t read you books you already own and if it’s not in their library you have to take a picture of every page.
Yes
Yes
Nice but I can’t buy a subscription
Recorded my voice and it’s telling me to buy it subscription want to and the American voice it’s probably just sounds too much like a robot. If you’re wanting to buy a subscription this is a good app, but otherwise don’t waste your money.
Makes you pay then pay again
They say it is a free trial, but it is not. The adds say just scan any book to read but that is not true. You scan a book and get a book review from YouTube. They make you pay and then when you download the app and set it up they mdd add me you pay more to read a book. The books are only from their library.
It keeps taking 24.00 and 29.00 out of my account everyday. I can not cancel it anywhere
Takes your money
Are you serious?!!
I’m five minutes into this app and I still don’t have control over it. Whatever absolute moron decided to force you through a kindergarten style set up should be taken out and shot in the face.
Literally the worst setup to any program I’ve ever encountered
Literally the worst setup to any program I’ve ever encountered
Misleading Advertising
BEWARE! You can’t just take a photo of a book to get the app to read it to you! You can only hear titles already in their library OR scan an entire book into a pdf OR photograph every single page! There is supposed to be a way to use the library app Libby to get Speechify to read you electronic books you check out from the library. I haven’t figured out how to do this yet. I will not be renewing this app and am mad I fell for their deceptive marketing campaign!
Make it the same as the windows app
The windows app is just what I need for writing but I wish the iPhone version was the same. Sometimes I write from my phone when I have an idea but I’m too sick to type it all out.
I don’t like it.
Yo también tengo dislexia y creo que mi hijo también. Me encantaría que elllos pudieran tener esta aplicación en sus teléfonos. Pero no se el precio, podía ser muy caro para mis posibilidades.
Deceptive advertising
It said “any book anytime anywhere”….NOPE. Just mainstream current books.
Wow
WAY TOO EXPENSIVE!
Horrendous
Absolutely awful. The setup process is horribly long and the default voice sounds like a robot.
Service or lack of
It seem their AI bot can’t get it together can’t talk to anyone live and they just keep treating their same answer
Don’t waste your money now Im hoping I can fix the fact they have my credit card and don’t appear to show anywhere how to remove it
Don’t waste your money now Im hoping I can fix the fact they have my credit card and don’t appear to show anywhere how to remove it
Don’t get!!!
Doesn’t work and won’t let you cancel service!
I hate the CS. I need a refund.
(All this in one day) I decided to purchase through apple. My Speechify account is saying it’s not paid. I tried to reach out to customer service multiple times and I kept getting the same representative. Unresponsive. I wanted to fix it but now I just want it to refund me and never get it again. I NEED A REFUND.
Poor quality, non-refundable
I wanted to try this in order to make reading easier for college courses. The only trial for the features I was interested in was only 3 days and required an annual subscription and I couldn't risk getting charged $140 if I missed the cancellation window, which I was worried about because I never received a confirmation email when I set up my account (red flag). I chose to do a monthly subscription without a trial, and I was so incredibly disappointed in the quality of the service. It skipped over entire lines of text, could not pronounce words correctly, and was unable to correctly read acronyms or abbreviations even for common professional titles.
I immediately requested a refund. After a lot of back and forth just trying to locate my account in their system I was informed that my subscription was non-refundable. They then offered me half off an annual subscription. Why on earth would I want to pay more money for a product that doesn't even work properly, after requesting a refund??
Don't waste your time with this app. And be very very careful about reading the terms if you subscribe.
I immediately requested a refund. After a lot of back and forth just trying to locate my account in their system I was informed that my subscription was non-refundable. They then offered me half off an annual subscription. Why on earth would I want to pay more money for a product that doesn't even work properly, after requesting a refund??
Don't waste your time with this app. And be very very careful about reading the terms if you subscribe.
They took my money
I only paid for a month subscription and they randomly charged me for 139 on my card for a year subscription when I only committed for a month subscription
Do not get this app
I got the app subscribed for the free trial and I was told it would be 2 dollars a month after the free trial only for them to turn around and charge me 139 for a yearly subscription this is disgusting business practice not to mention I’m visually impaired and I’m sure a lot of other users who are visually impaired have been scammed in the exact same way DO NOT GET THIS APP
The Free Version is TRASH
if you want to download this app for free, DO NOT!! At first it fills your screen withs adds to buy the app, and its so expensive. ONE YEAR cost $140!!!!! And when you use the free version it has only 46 ai generated, not even human sounding, voices that actually distracted me and i had to re-read those ten pages of my book again!! DO NOT download unless you need a way to WASTE money!!!!
Trap
Doesn't show up on apple subscriptions list and must manually email to end subscription
Not free
Not free what a joke
Deceiving ad
“Totally free” is what got me. After answering 100 questions and some multiple times it turns out that it’s not free, ever. Also what they show in ad “scan book cover and read the book” is a lie as well. Plus you gotta buy the book.
Total scam.
Total scam.
Save you money
This app is the worst. Good luck getting it to read most things, I if you do get it to read anything, be prepared for it to constantly skip words. Could be the worst app purchase ever.
139 bucks and you can’t correct the pronunciation
I have a doc with lots of words from non-English languages. There’s no way to correct them in app
+ 12 more in the clipboard copy
Sentiment summary
92%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
5%
Negative (1-2★)