Doomreader
Free audiobooks: 3,000+ classics read aloud, free
Pride and Prejudice, Dracula, The Odyssey and more than 3,000 other classics, free to listen to in Doomreader. One thing to say plainly first: these are not narrated recordings. Your phone's or computer's own voice reads the book's text aloud as you go, with the sentence being read highlighted, so you can listen, follow along, or switch back to reading at the same place.
There is no sign-up and no trial. Open a book, tap the headphones, and it starts. If you would rather hear something closer to a person reading, natural AI voices are there too, paid with AI credits.
How listening works
Every free book in Doomreader opens as a feed of short posts, one screen at a time. Tap the headphones and the voice starts at the post on screen, moving the feed on by itself as it reads. Pause, go back a post or skip ahead from the bar at the bottom, and pick a speed from 0.75x to 2x. Your place is kept the same way whether you read or listen, so a chapter heard on the walk home carries on from the right line when you pick the book up in bed.
The voice is the best one your device has for the book's language, picked for you, and you can choose another under Aa. Reading with your device's voices costs nothing, and none of the book's text is sent to us.
The most searched classics, ready to play
These are the free classics people look for most. Each opens its page at the Listen section, or straight in the app.
Natural AI voices, with credits
For a long listen, a device voice can sound flat. Doomreader also has natural voices made with Google's Gemini: four for each of its seven languages, two female and two male, chosen under Aa while a book is open. They are paid with AI credits, 1 credit for each 150 words read aloud, counted by words, so listening at 2x costs the same as 1x. A paragraph you have already heard plays again free from your device.
Credits are bought once on the purchase page, not as a subscription, and anyone can buy them, with or without Pro. You sign in to use them. With a natural voice, each paragraph's text is sent to our server to make its audio, and the audio is kept so the same paragraph in the same voice is never made twice.
Books to listen to in seven languages
Besides English, the free books include Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Hindi and Indonesian classics, from Don Quijote and Dom Casmurro to Premchand's stories. A device voice reads a book only if the device has a voice for its language: most phones and computers come with the big European languages, and some need a Hindi or Indonesian voice added in their settings. The natural voices speak all seven. How the books come to be free is on our page about public domain books.
Is this a real audiobook?
Not in the sense of a recording. An audiobook from a publisher, or from LibriVox, is a person reading the whole book into a microphone. Doomreader reads the text itself, live, which is why every book in the catalogue can be listened to, at any speed, with the words in front of you. The trade is the performance: a voice actor gives characters voices and timing that no reading voice does.
If a human narrator matters to you, LibriVox is a volunteer project that has recorded thousands of public domain books, free to download. Many people use both: a narrated recording for a favourite, and Doomreader for everything else, and for the times they want to read a page rather than hear it.
Your own books, too
The same voices read any EPUB or PDF you open in Doomreader, free, from a novel you bought without DRM to a report for work. See how to read a PDF or EPUB aloud. And when you want to listen to a book you are reading on paper elsewhere, the free copy here is often the quickest way to hear a chapter.