Compare · Voice Aloud Reader
A free, offline Voice Aloud Reader alternative for iPhone and iPad
Sandbook is a free Voice Aloud Reader alternative for iPhone and iPad. Its 41 natural voices run on the device, with no in-app purchases and no account. Voice Aloud Reader is free to download and sells Pro, Premium Voices and OCR packs from $0.99 to $9.99 on the US App Store. It covers far more languages than Sandbook does. Here is a fair comparison of both.
iOS 18.2 or later · iPhone 12 or later · iPad with A14 or M1 · No account
In short
What is a free, offline alternative to Voice Aloud Reader on iPhone?
Sandbook is a free iPhone and iPad app that makes speech on the device, with no in-app purchases, no account and no character cap. Voice Aloud Reader is a free download that sells Pro version ($8.99), Pro + Premium Voices 1m ($9.99) and OCR packs on the US App Store. Voice Aloud Reader wins on breadth: 32 listed text-to-speech languages, iOS 17 support and 18,000+ ratings. Sandbook has 41 voices in six languages and needs iOS 18.2 on an iPhone 12 or later. Its real-time reading pauses when the screen locks.
Last verified October 7, 2026
The short version
Voice Aloud Reader is a long-running iPhone and iPad reader from Codeesteem. It reads documents, e-books, web pages and, through the camera, printed books, in a long list of languages, with pitch, volume and speed controls. The download is free, and Pro, Premium Voices and OCR packs are sold inside the app.
Sandbook is a single iPhone and iPad app with the whole speech model inside it. It bundles Kokoro-82M, an open-weight neural voice model, and runs every sentence on the device's GPU: 41 voices in six languages, no account, nothing to buy, and no server doing the speaking.
Its listing does not say where Voice Aloud Reader's voices are generated or whether it works offline, so this page does not guess. Where the listing is silent, the table says so, with the date we checked.
Where Voice Aloud Reader wins
- Languages. 32 text-to-speech languages are named in the listing (its headline says 40), including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German and Russian. Sandbook has six.
- Older iPhones. It needs iOS 17. Sandbook needs an iPhone 12 or later on iOS 18.2; if your phone is older, here is what still works.
- A smaller download. About 78 MB, against Sandbook's roughly 281 MB, which includes the whole speech model.
- More document types. Its vendor site lists DOC and Pages, which Sandbook does not open.
- Your place on more than one device. An update note describes saving your reading position across devices. Sandbook keeps everything on one device.
- Track record. On the App Store since 2019, with 18,822 US ratings averaging 4.6.
- Pitch and volume controls, as well as speed.
What Sandbook does better
- Free with nothing to buy. No Pro tier, no voice pack, no OCR pack. Free text to speech with no cap.
- Works in airplane mode, including text you have never opened before, because the model runs on the phone.
- No account, no ads and no tracking; your books stay on your device.
- Word-by-word highlighting inside a tinted current paragraph, so you can follow along.
- Each book remembers its own voice and speed, and opens where you stopped.
You can hear Sandbook's voices in your browser before installing, so the switch is decided by ear.
Compare
| Sandbook | Voice Aloud Reader | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. No in-app purchase, no subscription, no character or minute cap. | Free download with in-app purchases (US iOS App Store): Pro version $8.99, Pro + Premium Voices 1m $9.99, Premium OCR 100 $0.99, Premium OCR 800 $1.99. No billing period is stated. |
| Where speech is generated | On your iPhone or iPad, on the GPU, every time. | Not stated on its listing (checked October 7, 2026). |
| Works offline | Yes, completely, including synthesis of text you have never opened before. | Not stated on its listing (checked October 7, 2026). |
| Account required | No. There is no sign-in screen anywhere in the app. | Not stated on its listing (checked October 7, 2026). An update note describes saving the last reading position across devices; the listing does not say how. |
| Voices | 41, all bundled, all free, one quality tier for everyone. | "Listen in different voices"; the listing gives no count. A Premium Voices in-app purchase is sold. |
| Languages | 6: US and UK English (28 voices), Spanish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Hindi. 41 voices in all. | 32 text-to-speech languages listed by name, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German and Russian. The listing's headline says 40. |
| Listening with the screen locked | Only a chapter prepared ahead of time. Real-time reading pauses when the screen locks. | Not stated on its listing (checked October 7, 2026). If listening with the screen off matters to you, check before you switch. |
| Formats | EPUB, PDF, Word (.docx), TXT, RTF, Markdown, HTML, web pages, camera scans and photos, typed or pasted text. | PDF, EPUB, DOC, DOCX, Pages and web pages, according to the vendor's site. |
| Platforms | iPhone and iPad. iOS 18.2 or later; iPhone 12 or later, or an iPad with an A14 or M1 chip or later. | iPhone and iPad on iOS 17.0 or later. |
| Audio export | M4A, from the Reader tab (typed or pasted text). No whole-book export. | Not stated on its listing (checked October 7, 2026). |
| OCR / scanning | Camera scans and photos, recognized on the device. Image-only PDF files are not recognized. | Yes, for printed books. OCR packs of 100 and 800 are sold in-app; the listing does not say whether any OCR is free. |
| Privacy | Books, text and voices stay on the device and are never uploaded. No account, no ads, no tracking. | App Store privacy label: not stated on its listing (checked October 7, 2026). |
Free offline alternatives to Voice Aloud Reader on iPhone, ranked
Apps that cost nothing to use in some real form and generate their speech on the phone rather than on a server. Sandbook publishes this list, so it is labeled. Voice Aloud Reader is not in it because its listing does not state where its speech is generated.
Sandbook(the app this site is about)
Free with no in-app purchase and no cap: all 41 Kokoro-82M voices (28 in US and UK English, plus Spanish, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Hindi) from first launch; EPUB, PDF, web pages and camera scans with word-by-word highlighting; no account. Real-time reading pauses when the screen locks (prepared chapters play locked), it has 6 voice languages, fewer than some multilingual readers, and no iCloud sync or whole-book export.
Free with no In-App Purchases row on its listing, reading PDF, EPUB, DOCX, web pages and camera scans in 31 languages, and its own site says the audio is generated on your device. It never names the speech engine.
EPUB and PDF turned into audiobooks with word-level read-along, background playback and a sleep timer, on a choice of three on-device engines. Free covers three books and three voices; the rest is $4.99/month or $33.99/year.
Already on the phone, free, and on-device once an Enhanced Quality voice has downloaded — worth trying before installing anything. It reads what is on screen: no library, no EPUB or PDF importer, and no reading position kept per file.
Ranked on four things in this order: what it costs with nothing held back, whether speech is generated on the device with no connection, voice quality, and what the app does with a book once it is open. Only apps whose own pages establish both the price and the on-device synthesis are listed.
Questions about switching from Voice Aloud Reader
Is Voice Aloud Reader on iPhone the same app as @Voice Aloud Reader on Android?
No. The iPhone app called Voice Aloud Reader is published by Marcin Olawski (Codeesteem). @Voice Aloud Reader on Android is made by Hyperionics, a different developer, which describes it as an app for Android phones and tablets. Features, prices and settings differ, so a review of one does not describe the other. This page compares Sandbook with the iPhone app.
Is Voice Aloud Reader free?
The download is free. On the US App Store it sells Pro version $8.99, Pro + Premium Voices 1m $9.99, Premium OCR 100 $0.99, Premium OCR 800 $1.99 (checked October 7, 2026). The listing does not say what Pro unlocks or whether the $9.99 item renews. Sandbook has no in-app purchase of any kind: all 41 voices and every feature are there from the first launch.
Can I listen with the screen locked?
Partly. Sandbook's real-time reading pauses when the screen locks, because the speech model holds GPU memory while it runs. You can prepare a chapter's audio ahead of time and that chapter then plays with the screen locked, but a whole book will not play on in your pocket. Voice Aloud Reader's listing does not state whether it plays with the screen off (checked October 7, 2026), so if that is the feature you are switching for, confirm it before you uninstall anything.
Can I move my books from Voice Aloud Reader to Sandbook?
Not directly: there is no import or sync between the two apps. Open the original DRM-free files from the Files app instead (EPUB, PDF, Word .docx, TXT, RTF, Markdown or HTML), or paste a web link. .doc and Pages files need converting first.
How we compared
Every figure on this page comes from Voice Aloud Reader’s own public pages — the listing on the US App Store, the pricing page and the privacy policy — read on October 7, 2026. Prices, limits and features change without notice: where this page and the other app disagree, believe the other app.
Sandbook publishes this comparison, so read it as our argument rather than a neutral review. Everything in the Sandbook column is what the app does today, and you can check all of it in the app itself.
Sources
The iPhone app only. Its App Store privacy label could not be read on the US storefront on the day we checked, so the table does not quote one.
- Voice Aloud Reader — US App Store listing (id1446876360) · checked October 7, 2026
- Apple iTunes Search API — lookup for id1446876360 (US) · checked October 7, 2026
- Codeesteem — codeesteem.com · checked October 7, 2026
Try it alongside Voice Aloud Reader
Voice Aloud Reader covers more languages and older iPhones. Sandbook is the narrow, free alternative: one app with 41 voices in six languages, a speech model that runs on your phone, and nothing to buy.
iOS 18.2 or later · iPhone 12 or later · iPad with A14 or M1