PDF to audiobook · free
PDF to Audiobook, chapter by chapter
Drop a PDF and BookAloud turns it into MP3 chapters read by a natural voice. Chapters come from the PDF's bookmarks (or “Chapter 1” style headings), page numbers and running headers are removed, and nothing is uploaded. Free for 20,000 characters a day.
- Chapters
- From PDF outline
- Cleans
- Headers · page nos.
- Output
- MP3 per chapter
- Free
- 20k chars/day
How the PDF is turned into chapters
- Bookmarks first. If the PDF has an outline (most e-books and reports do), each top-level entry becomes a chapter.
- Headings otherwise. Lines like “Chapter 4”, “Part II” or “Epilogue” start a new chapter.
- Clean reading. Repeated headers/footers and page numbers are dropped, hyphenated line breaks are joined, ligatures (fi, fl) are fixed.
- No text, no audio. Scanned PDFs (images of pages) need OCR first — BookAloud will tell you.
How long will my book be?
Speech runs at roughly 15 characters per second, so 100 pages of a typical paperback (~180,000 characters) is about 3 hours 20 minutes of audio. Each chapter shows its estimated length before you convert.
How long does converting take?
On a laptop with WebGPU (recent Chrome or Edge), BookAloud reads about 4× faster than real time — a 20-minute chapter is ready in about 5 minutes. Without WebGPU it uses the CPU and runs close to real time. Keep the tab open; finished chapters download right away.
Free vs paid
| Free | Book Pass / Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Characters | 20,000 a day (5,000 per run) | Unlimited |
| Text → MP3 | Yes | Yes |
| PDF / EPUB → chapter MP3s | Yes | Yes |
| All chapters as ZIP | Yes | Yes |
| One audiobook MP3 with chapter markers | — | Yes |
| 28 voices, speed 0.7–1.5× | Yes | Yes |
| Sign-up, watermark | None | None |
| Your files uploaded | Never | Never |
Questions
+Is there a page limit?
No page limit. The free plan converts up to 20,000 characters a day (about 11 pages); a Book Pass ($4.99, 7 days) or Pro removes the limit.
+Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. pdf.js reads the file and the voice model speaks it, both inside your browser tab.
+Can I get one MP3 for the whole book?
Pro builds one MP3 with ID3 chapter markers, which podcast and audiobook players show as chapters. Free users get every chapter as its own MP3 or a ZIP of all of them.
+Can I convert only some chapters?
Yes — untick the chapters you want to skip, like the index or references.