Alternative
Paper2Audio makes research papers listenable. Lyraboo makes novels sound like audiobooks — every character in their own voice, in a player that works like a music app.
Written by the Lyraboo team. Facts about Paper2Audio come from its own website, checked in October 2026.
Paper2Audio is a text-to-speech app for documents, on the web, Android and iPhone, with Chrome, Firefox and Edge extensions. It reads paper PDFs, PDF books, EPUBs, web articles and Word files; cuts footnotes, references and page headings; and explains tables, figures and maths with short summaries instead of reading them out symbol by symbol. The free plan gives 56 hours of listening a week with no ads, and downloaded audio plays offline in the apps. For research and study reading it is one of the best tools there is.
| Lyraboo | Paper2Audio | |
|---|---|---|
| Made for | Novels and other books | Papers, textbooks, documents |
| Character voices | Automatic — each line attributed to its speaker | One voice you choose |
| Tables, maths, references | Read as text | Summarised or skipped |
| Files | EPUB, PDF, TXT | PDF, EPUB, Word, web articles and more |
| Platforms | Android | Web, Android, iPhone, browser extensions |
| Offline | No | Downloaded audio, in the apps |
| Free plan | 1 hour a month | 56 hours a week |
Choose Paper2Audio for papers, textbooks and anything full of citations and equations — or if you need iPhone, the web or offline listening. Choose Lyraboo when the PDF or EPUB is a story and you want to hear it as a full-cast audiobook on Android. Every PDF app side by side: the best apps to turn a PDF into an audiobook. Studying from PDFs in Lyraboo? See listening to textbooks and study PDFs.
Paper2Audio is a trademark of its owner. Lyraboo is an independent app and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Paper2Audio. This comparison reflects publicly available product information.
The things people notice in the first chapter — and the reasons they stay.
Lyraboo’s AI finds every character in the book and casts a distinct voice for each — automatically, for every book. You always know who is speaking, and dialogue sounds like a real conversation instead of one narrator doing all the parts. Most reading and text-to-speech apps use one voice for everything.
Under the player, the book scrolls with the voice the way song lyrics do in Spotify: words light up as they are spoken, each line shows who says it, and tapping any word jumps there.
Chapters, speed from 0.25× to 3×, background playback with lock-screen controls, and it picks up exactly where you stopped.
Pick an EPUB, PDF or TXT and there is nothing to set up: the first chapter is ready in about one to two minutes, and the rest generate while you listen.
Novels, fanfiction and web-serial exports, indie ebooks, study PDFs — plus over 1,000 English classics already in the app.
One free hour of listening every month, no card needed. Hours are spent once per chapter — replaying is always free.
For novels and other story-driven books, Lyraboo is built for it: every character gets their own AI voice, automatically, and the book plays like a full-cast audiobook. For research papers, textbooks and documents with tables, references and maths, Paper2Audio is the better choice — that is what it is designed for.
Paper2Audio offers several natural voices to choose from and reads the document in the one you pick. Lyraboo works out which character says each line and keeps a distinct voice for each of them through the whole book.
Both have free plans. Paper2Audio’s is generous: 56 hours of listening a week. Lyraboo’s is one hour a month, because every chapter is generated with a full cast of AI voices; subscriptions add more hours.
Yes, and many people would: Paper2Audio for the articles and textbooks, Lyraboo for the novels.
Upload a book you own and let the app turn it into a multi-voice audiobook automatically.