Speech to text software have come a long way. I’m sure none of you remember users typing to software just to convert voice to text. These days, it’s easier converting speech to text with today’s technology. Windows even has built-in speech recognition. But are these technology trustworthy?
There are plenty of sites out there that can convert speech to text, but some are not as good as others. Below is an in-depth review of the best speech to text software available.
Happy Scribe
Great for transcription and subtitles, Happy Scribe supports over 60 different languages in which you can convert your audio to text. It allows you to bring your team members, such as proofreaders and editors, into the platform and experience a seamless collaboration workflow.
Moreover, you can assign speaker names, create vocabulary and utilize their API to sync third-party tools to make the process smoother. You can be assured your transcript will be of great quality, along with proper punctuation.
Happy Scribe has a Trustpilot rating of 4.7/5 stars, which is quite brilliant for any tool. Their reviews speak for their service as well.
If you have a habit of saving articles to read them later, the Pocket app should be the app you must use. You can just share the articles with the app to save them. The Pocket app will also read the articles for you whenever you want to do so.
You just need to tap the headphone icon at the top of the home screen, and the app will start reading the article for you. The one of a kind thing in the app is that is shows a lot of articles from various publishers according to the user’s interest.
The numerous articles on Pocket belonged to the National Geographic, The Verge, Harward Business Review, and a lot more options.
Price: Premium version available for $5 per month and $45 per year
AI Reader Playstore – Android
AI Reader is a unique voice narrator designed for reading fiction books. It offers support to various file types including Docx, Html, RTF, etc., and even supports ZIP and GZ archives. The biggest shortcoming in AIReader is that it does not support PDF format.
This text-to-speech app is a great tool for readers who like listening to stories, but they’re only available in text format. It also collects statistics (of open books) and creates a top hundred authors and books list for users. This helps users decide what to read next!
Users can create four profiles with different interface settings. It also provides an option to select from different languages and voices. AI Reader is not available on the iOS app store. It’s an Android exclusive application.
Platform: Android | Costs: Free plan | Review: 4.6 ★★★★☆
Speech Central – iOS, Android
Labsii’s Speech Central is more than just a voice narration app. It allows you to explore the web, listen to headlines, and your favorite content via Bluetooth headset.
The app is created especially for visually impaired users. Its features include support for DAISY books, dyslexia-friendly fonts, and keyboard shortcuts for most commands. You may also use Speech Central on the iPhone with your headset.
Users can import articles, build their knowledge base, and create MP3 files too. It’s a great tool for daily personal use, self-development, and an excellent way to cut down your screen time or boost productivity.
Get Speech Central on iOS, Playstore, Windows 10, and your Macbook. The text-to-speech app is available for free with restrictions on the number of articles that you can add. The restrictions are removed when you upgrade to the pro version.
App Store: iOS, Playstore, Microsoft, Amazon | Costs: Free. In-app offers
Review: 4.5 ★★★★☆
T2S
If you are looking for a more attractive and modern interface, the T2S can be the best option for you. The T2S app comes with a built-in web browser, which makes it stand out from the crowd. It allows the user to access web pages without any hassle of copying, pasting, or sharing the link.
Another significant feature in the app is copy-to-speak. Under this feature, a pop-up button on the screen is shown. Whenever you copy text from any other app and tap the speak button, it will instantly start reading the text. T2S also allows you to share the saved audio with other people.
The app also comes with a compatibility mode which can be switched on from the settings if the app is not displaying the necessary notifications. The only drawback of the app is that it takes a lot of time to open an external PDF file or any external file.
Price: Premium version available for $2.00
Just Press Record
Just press record is an easy to use cloud-based, voice recorder and transcription tool that in just one tap, supports voice recording and transcription in 30 languages on iOS devices.
Just press record can be used by anyone with an iOS device to manage everything from to-do lists, to calendar, documents and emails.
Key features:
- Easy to set up and use; no need to create an account
- It offers unlimited recording time, making it a great companion for study and work
- Transcribe speech to text that is searchable, editable and sharable
- Share audio and text files with other iOS apps
- Organize and view recordings and files in a comprehensive manner
- Edit straight from the app
- Great for team collaboration if you work with multi-lingual teams
- Punctuation recognition
It works well on the Apple Watch too:
- If you don’t have your iPhone, record on your Apple watch
- Easy to use and responsive even on a small screen
- Automatic sync of recordings done on the Apple watch
- Playback for up to 12 recordings
Pricing: $4.99.
Text To Speech! – iOS
Text to Speech by Gwyn Durbridge is an excellent way to bring your text to life with words! This is one of the more popular text-to-speech apps available for both iPad and iPhone.
Text to Speech! lets users choose from 96 natural-sounding voices across 38 languages and accents. More voices are available: Go to Settings: General -> Accessibility -> Speech -> Voices. One can adjust voice parameters like rate and pitch.
A prominent feature of this app is that it does not require an internet connection. It highlights the text and speaks as you type. After conversion, users can also export audio files. However, this feature requires iOS 13 (and above) to work.
App Store: iOS | Price: Free. In-app offers | Review: 4.7 ★★★★★
Rev
Rev is not software but rather an exceptional service that houses a lot of talented transcriptionists. You’ll be charged just $1.25 per minute of your audio, and the finished transcript will be delivered within 12 hours with 99% accuracy. It saves you a lot of time because you don’t have to do anything apart from uploading the audio file.
Once your transcript is delivered, you can edit it if you wish to share it with anyone you’d like. It also integrates with Google Drive and Dropbox for faster workflow.
Rev has been praised by some great companies, such as Spotify, Forbes, and CNBC.
iSpeech – iOS, Android
iSpeech offers great features many free text-to-speech apps lack. Users can translate text by typing (in seven languages) or speaking (in eighteen languages). They can even share their favorite translations with their Facebook friends.
With iSpeech, you also have an option to convert audio to text. The app interface is easy to use. You type (or copy/paste) the text into the text box, hit the convert button, wait for a few minutes, and your audio file should be ready!
While the overall idea is pretty great, it may crash a lot and bugs can ruin the user experience. This might take some time to fix, so keep this in mind.
App Store: iOS, Android | Costs: $9.99 | Rating: 4.0 ★★★★☆
Express Scribe
Available as PRO and as well as a free version, Express Scribe is loaded with everything you’d need to transcribe audios almost effortlessly. You’d also find yourself spending way less time in the process, all thanks to their keyboard hotkeys and transcribing pedal support.https://www.youtube.com/embed/FfAqdo67Tts?feature=oembed
It allows a bunch of formats, including encrypted dictation files. You can also load audios from a CD and work on that as it loads.
Once the transcription is done, the software can automatically send it to your client if you set it that way to save you more time.
Express Scribe can be integrated with tools like Microsoft Word, FastFox Text Expander, and even text-to-speech ones out there.
SpeechTexter
As you can see, all of those apps are not very creative with the names. However, it doesn’t influence their amazing possibility to convert speech into the text! This particular app is especially good for making messages with your voice. Using Google’s backend, SpeechTexter allows you to create SMS messages.
Moreover, you can also create text notes, emails, and tweets with your voice. It has a 95% recognition accuracy rate and works in more than 60 languages. Another cool feature here is that you can even use this app with no Internet connection! However, in this case, the recognition rate will decrease.
Conclusion
There are many who want to use this software for converting text to speech. As the bulk of people are not literate enough to read, so they prefer to hear the voice instead of reading.