Overview: Read any PDF aloud online for free with your browser's text-to-speech. Scanned PDFs work too (OCR). No signup, and your PDF is never uploaded.

Read PDF Aloud Online — Free

Drop in a PDF and press play. Your browser reads it aloud using the voices already on your device. Text PDFs start in seconds, scanned ones can be read with optional OCR, and your file is never uploaded.

Drop your PDF here

Text PDFs start instantly. Scanned PDFs are read with OCR (slower).

Extracting text...

Starting...

OCR runs on your device and can take several seconds per page. Your PDF is not uploaded; only the OCR engine and language data are downloaded.

Page 1 of 1
Ready

Tip: click any sentence to start reading from there.

At a glance

  • Price: free, no account needed.
  • Upload: your PDF is not uploaded. Text extraction (pdf.js) and OCR (Tesseract.js) run in your browser.
  • Scanned PDFs: supported through optional OCR, up to 30 pages per run, in English, Hindi or Gujarati.
  • Voices: the ones your browser and operating system already provide.
  • Not included: MP3 export and custom AI voices.
  • File limit: 100 MB.
  • Last updated:

How to read a PDF aloud online

  1. Add your PDF. Drag it into the box at the top of the page, or tap Select PDF.
  2. Give it a few seconds. The text is pulled out of every page inside your browser. If some pages turn out to be scans, you'll be offered OCR for those.
  3. Choose a voice and speed. Start at 1.0x. You can change speed, pitch and voice while it's playing and the change applies straight away.
  4. Press play. Click any sentence to start from there, or use the page buttons to skip ahead.

Can it read scanned PDFs?

Yes, with one catch. A scanned PDF is a set of pictures, so there's no text for a voice to read until OCR (optical character recognition) turns those pictures into words. When the tool finds pages with no selectable text, it offers to run OCR right in your browser.

On a laptop, expect a few seconds per page. Phones are slower. Clean, straight scans of printed text come out well. Blurry photos, handwriting, and pages processed with the wrong language setting don't, so choose the document's language before you start.

Is my PDF uploaded?

No. Reading the text and running OCR both happen on your device, and you can check that yourself in your browser's Network tab while you use the tool.

Two details are worth knowing. The OCR engine and its language data are downloaded from a CDN the first time you use OCR. And some browsers offer cloud voices, marked "online" in the Voice list, which may send the sentence being spoken to the browser vendor. If that matters to you, choose a voice without "online".

What this tool can't do

  • Export audio. It reads live in your browser. There's no MP3 or WAV download.
  • Sound like a studio narrator. You get your device's voices. Some are good, some are robotic, and offline ones are usually the weakest.
  • Follow complex layouts. Columns, tables and footnotes are read in the order the text was extracted, which isn't always the order your eyes would follow.
  • Read perfectly from a bad scan. OCR makes mistakes on poor-quality pages, and you will hear them.

Voices, languages and phones

It works in current versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android. Language support depends entirely on your device: for Gujarati, Hindi or anything else, a voice for that language has to be installed. If the Voice dropdown doesn't list it, add it in your device's speech settings first.

On phones, reading may pause when the screen locks or you switch apps, so keep the screen on while you listen.

Related guides and tools

How it works

PDFTeq's reader is built from three open pieces. pdf.js extracts the selectable text from each page. Tesseract.js handles OCR for scanned pages. Your browser's Web Speech API then speaks the result through the voices installed on your device. We don't run a voice model of our own.

Frequently asked questions

How do I read a PDF aloud online for free?

Open this page, drop your PDF into the box, pick a voice and press play. There's no signup, and the file isn't uploaded anywhere.

Can it read scanned PDFs?

Yes. If a page has no selectable text, you can run OCR in your browser and then listen to the result. OCR is slower than reading a normal text PDF, works best on clear scans, and needs the right document language selected.

Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?

No. Text extraction and OCR run on your device. The OCR engine and its language data are downloaded when you use OCR, and voices marked "online" in the voice list may send the spoken text to your browser's vendor. Pick a voice without "online" to keep everything local.

Can I download the audio as an MP3?

No. This tool reads live through your browser's speech engine and doesn't create an audio file.

Why do the voices look different on my phone and my computer?

The voices come from your browser and operating system, not from PDFTeq, so every device has its own list.

Can it read Gujarati, Hindi or other languages?

Only if your device has a voice for that language installed. Check the Voice dropdown, and add the language in your device's speech settings if it's missing. For scanned documents, also choose the matching OCR language.

Why did the reading stop on my phone?

Mobile browsers often pause speech when the screen locks or you switch apps. Keep the screen on and the tab open, then press play to continue from the current sentence.

How is this different from Adobe Acrobat's Read Out Loud?

Acrobat Reader's Read Out Loud is a desktop feature that needs the app installed. This tool runs in any modern browser, including on phones, and can OCR scanned pages. Both use the voices your device already has.