An online EPUB reader that reads to you

1. Press Choose an EPUB, or drop the file on the box. The book opens in this tab; nothing is sent anywhere.
2. Pick a chapter from Contents, or just scroll. The book is shown as plain, readable text, so the page also works as an ordinary EPUB reader.
3. Tap a sentence, or press the play button. The first time, your browser downloads the voice engine once; then the reading starts at that sentence and carries on through the chapter and into the next one.

While it reads, the sentence you are hearing is highlighted and kept in view. Tap any other sentence to jump there, pause whenever you like, and change the voice or the speed (0.5× to 2.0×) as you go. Only a sentence or two is prepared ahead of what you hear, so a 400-page novel asks no more of your browser than a single page.

• EPUB files without copy protection: books from Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks, your own exports, and anything a store sells DRM-free.
• The book's chapters, taken from its own table of contents, in the reading view's Contents list.
• Other files too: PDF, Word (.docx), Markdown, HTML and plain text. Press Open another file type, or drop the file on the tool. A PDF has its own page: read a PDF aloud online.
• 41 voices in six languages. A book in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or Hindi needs a voice in that language, which you choose under Language. You can listen to all 41 voices first.

To hear pasted text rather than a file, use the read-aloud page. To make an audio file from a short script, use the voice generator on the Kokoro TTS online page.

• Books with copy protection (DRM) will not open. That covers most books bought from the large e-book stores, and library loans.
• It does not keep the book. Close the tab and the book is gone from it; next time you open the file again, and the reading picks up where you stopped, in this browser.
• There is no audiobook file. The book is read aloud on the page, and there is no audio download.
• It shows the book's text only: no cover, no pictures, no page layout.
• Before the first chapter can be heard, the browser fetches the voice engine: 326 MB with WebGPU on a computer, 92 MB without it or on a phone. The browser keeps it, so the next book starts within seconds.
• On a phone the book opens just as quickly, but the voice is the slow part: speech is made more slowly than it plays, which leaves gaps between sentences, and the reading stops as soon as the phone locks or the tab goes to the background.

Privacy: the book is opened on your own device and is never uploaded, and your text and audio never leave your browser.

A browser tab is fine for a chapter. For the whole book there is Sandbook, an EPUB reader for iPhone and iPad that reads books aloud: it keeps a library with covers, opens each book at the paragraph where you stopped, marks each word as it is spoken, and runs on into the next chapter by itself. Everything stays on your device, and it works offline.

The app is free, with no subscription and no in-app purchase. It needs an iPhone 12 or later, or an iPad with an A14 or M1 chip or later, on iOS 18.2 or later. One limit to know before you install: real-time reading pauses when the screen locks, so to listen with the screen locked you prepare the chapter's audio first.