eBook Aloud
Summary
Every TTS subscription service you've tried has buried the real cost in tier math, charged you monthly for conversions you do three times a year, and handed you proprietary audio files that don't play in your audiobook app. EbookAloud strips that away: upload an epub, pick a voice, pay once per word count, get an M4B.
The workflow is a single screen: drag in a file, select from eight Kokoro voices, preview the chapter list before confirming payment, and download an M4B within the processing window. The vendor states completed files are available for 48 hours after processing — miss that window and you re-convert. No account, no subscription, no API. It handles epub, docx, html, md, and txt; PDF support is described as coming. The front and back matter detection — which strips license boilerplate and author notes before the word count is tallied — only works on epub files, so public-domain works uploaded in other formats will count every word.
Bottom line: The right call for a one-off epub-to-M4B conversion you want in Apple Books by tonight; the wrong call when you need bulk processing, a REST endpoint, or voice consistency guaranteed across a series of files.
Pricing Plans
Usage-BasedLast verified 2 weeks ago- Price
- $0.99 for up to 20,000 words
- Free Tier
- Free sample audiobook download of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Up to 20,000 words
Pay as you go conversion
- $0.99 per conversion
Up to 50,000 words
Pay as you go conversion
- $2.49 per conversion
Up to 100,000 words
Pay as you go conversion
- $3.99 per conversion
Up to 200,000 words
Pay as you go conversion
- $4.99 per conversion
Up to 300,000 words
Pay as you go conversion
- $5.99 per conversion
View full pricing on ebookaloud.com →
Pricing may have changed since last verified. Check the official site for current plans.
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Pros
Sign in to edit- Per-word pricing with a visible cost breakdown before payment, so you are never surprised by a charge the way you are with opaque subscription tiers.
- Front and back matter auto-detection on epub files strips license text and boilerplate from the word count before you confirm, which means public-domain books don't cost three times what the actual reading content would.
- No account or subscription required, so a one-off conversion carries zero ongoing cost or credential management overhead.
- Outputs standard M4B files, which means the audio drops directly into Apple Books or AudioBookshelf without format conversion or sideloading workarounds.
- Eight voice options with listenable samples before conversion, so you can match the voice to the content type rather than guessing and re-converting.
Cons
Sign in to edit- Completed files expire 48 hours after processing with no re-download option and no account to retrieve them from — lose the file in that window and you pay again for the same conversion.
- Front and back matter detection only applies to epub uploads; docx, html, md, and txt files count every word including boilerplate, which makes pricing for those formats unpredictable on documents with heavy headers or footers.
- No API and no batch mode mean any team needing more than one conversion at a time, or any developer integrating TTS into an application pipeline, has to look elsewhere — ElevenLabs, OpenAI TTS, or similar services that expose REST endpoints are the obvious next step.
- PDF files are not supported, which cuts off a common source format for the out-of-copyright material the service is explicitly built for; users with PDFs must convert to epub or another supported format before uploading.
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About
- Platforms
- Web
- API Available
- No
- Self-Hosted
- No
- Last Updated
- 2026-06-25T12:16:53.861Z
Best For
Who it's for
- Users seeking one-time ebook-to-audiobook conversions
- Readers preferring M4B format for Apple Books or AudioBookshelf
- Those wanting transparent per-word pricing without subscriptions
What it does well
- Converting personal or public-domain ebooks to listenable audiobooks
- Generating M4B files for offline playback in dedicated audiobook apps
- Processing notes, writing or out-of-copyright material into audio
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Frequently Asked Questions
- Is eBook Aloud free?
- eBook Aloud has a permanent free tier alongside paid upgrades (paid plans from $0.99 for up to 20,000 words). You can keep using a baseline version indefinitely without paying.
- Is eBook Aloud open source?
- No — eBook Aloud is a closed-source tool. Source code is not publicly available.
- When was eBook Aloud released?
- eBook Aloud was first released in 2026.
- What platforms does eBook Aloud support?
- eBook Aloud is available on: Web.
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Most ebook-to-audio tools assume you want a subscription to a platform. EbookAloud assumes you have a file and want audio. The workflow is linear: upload a supported file (epub yields the best results), choose one of eight Kokoro TTS voices, review a full chapter preview with the detected word count, confirm payment, and download the M4B. The output is a standard M4B file, which plays natively in Apple Books, AudioBookshelf, and other dedicated audiobook players.
The differentiating detail is pricing transparency combined with front and back matter detection. Public-domain texts — the ones most likely to have multi-thousand-word Project Gutenberg license appendices — can have word counts that bear no resemblance to the actual reading content. The tool’s automatic detection identifies and optionally strips that material before the price is set, so you see the real cost before any money moves. The vendor states this detection is epub-only; other formats skip it entirely.
EbookAloud fits a specific gap: occasional, personal, one-at-a-time conversions with no infrastructure overhead. It breaks outside that gap. There is no API, no self-hosted option, no batch mode, and no account system — which means no conversion history, no re-download after the 48-hour window closes, and no programmatic integration with any pipeline. Teams running content operations or developers building anything that needs TTS at the application layer will hit that wall immediately and need a different service.
The voices are drawn from the open-source Kokoro TTS project, which the vendor describes as open and reliable. Voice selection is final at conversion time — there is no post-processing, chapter-level voice switching, or narration speed control described on the page. The service accepts epub, docx, html, md, and txt; PDF is listed as not yet supported.