Evanreads
Comparisons / NaturalReader
A NaturalReader alternative for staying in the text
NaturalReader reads to you, and does it well. Evanreads is built for the opposite job — keeping you reading. An honest comparison, including where NaturalReader is the better answer.
The short answer. If what you want is to listen — good voices, on your phone, exported to audio — NaturalReader does that better than we do and has a genuinely free plan. Evanreads is for the times you need to stay in the text yourself and remember it afterwards.
These two tools are trying to do opposite things
That sounds like a line, so here is the substance behind it.
NaturalReader is a text-to-speech product. Its job is to take the reading off your eyes and put it in your ears, and it is genuinely good at that: more than 90 languages, voices you can listen to for an hour without fatigue, mobile apps, and audio files you can keep.
Evanreads exists for the times when listening is not the answer. When you have to work through a dense passage yourself, at your own pace, and be able to say afterwards what it argued. It has read-aloud, and read-aloud is useful when your eyes give out — but it is a support, not the point.
If the honest description of your problem is "I would rather listen to this", NaturalReader is the better product and you should use it.
Where NaturalReader is straightforwardly ahead
Three places, and none of them are close.
Voices. Theirs are the product and ours are a paid add-on. On our free plan you get your browser's built-in speech engine, which is serviceable and robotic. That is a real difference in kind, not a matter of degree.
Portability. Mobile apps, a Chrome extension, and audio export you can take with you. Evanreads runs in a browser and produces no file.
Reach across formats. NaturalReader's entry plan handles slide decks and spreadsheet formats alongside documents. We take PDF, DOCX and pasted text, and that is the list.
Free access is not our argument
Most comparison pages would make it. We cannot, honestly.
NaturalReader advertises a free-forever plan with no card, and it is a real one. Ours is 20 readings a month, up to 5 pages in a session, with no account needed to start. Both tools let a student find out whether they help without paying, which is the thing that actually matters, and neither of us should get credit for being unique about it.
On paid plans we are cheaper — the Student plan is $7/month with a school email address, against NaturalReader's personal plans at $79, $119 and $159 a year — but price is a weak reason to choose a tool you will use every week, and the plans are not equivalent enough for the comparison to mean much.
What Evanreads does that a reading-aloud tool does not
It keeps you in the text and moving. One line or one section at a time, the current line held in place, so there is always a definite next thing rather than a wall. This is the whole product, not a mode.
It tells you how long this will actually take. Measured against your own pace on this document. Avoidance usually starts with not knowing how much is left, and a real number is often enough to start.
It asks you what you remember. Short retrieval questions after a reading, so the gap shows up while you can still fix it. Listening to a chapter and retaining none of it is a specific and common failure, and nothing in a text-to-speech tool is designed to catch it.
It knows what you have been assigned. On paid plans a syllabus becomes a schedule of readings with dates, so the tool holds the coursework rather than you holding it.
What we do not do
No voice cloning. No audio files. No annotation on your document. No mobile apps or browser extension. No slide decks or spreadsheets. And our voices are not as good.
How to decide
- You want to listen — NaturalReader. It is better at it, and there is a free plan to try.
- You want audio you can keep, or you read on a phone all day — NaturalReader.
- You have a lot of institutional privacy paperwork to satisfy — NaturalReader's education page speaks directly to FERPA, COPPA, GDPR and New York Education Law 2-D.
- You need to actually read it, and remember it — that is ours. Free to start, no account, about a minute to know.
Side by side
| Capability | Evanreads | NaturalReader |
|---|---|---|
| Getting through the reading | ||
| Reads one line or one section at a time — The current line is held in a fixed position and you step through the reading. NaturalReader's site does not describe a focus mode of this kind, but not describing it is not the same as not having it — so we make no claim. | Yes | Not established |
| Bionic reading (bolded word openings) — Not among the features NaturalReader lists. | Yes | Not established |
| Dyslexia typeface with independent spacing controls — NaturalReader lists a dyslexia font. Evanreads adds type size, line height and letter spacing as separate controls. | Yes | Partly |
| Whether any of it sticks | ||
| Retrieval questions after a reading — 2 per reading on the free plan. Not among the features NaturalReader lists. | Yes | Not established |
| Measures your actual reading pace — Timed against how you really read this document, rather than a word count divided by an average. Not among the features NaturalReader lists. | Yes | Not established |
| Turns a syllabus into a reading schedule — Paid plans. Not among the features NaturalReader lists. | Yes | Not established |
| Getting hold of it | ||
| Works without your institution buying anything — Both, genuinely. NaturalReader advertises a free-forever plan with no card; ours is 20 readings a month, up to 5 pages per session. Free access is not a difference between us. | Yes | Yes |
| Start reading with nothing installed — Both run in a browser. NaturalReader also has mobile apps and a Chrome extension, which we do not. | Yes | Yes |
| Published accessibility conformance report — We publish a VPAT as a direct download. We looked for an equivalent from NaturalReader, including on the page written for institutional buyers, and did not find one — but not finding a document is not evidence that none exists, so we make no claim either way. | Yes | Not established |
Download the full comparison (PDF) — every capability we could verify, across Read&Write, NaturalReader and Kurzweil 3000 together, with a source for each row and the date it was checked.
What Evanreads does not do
- High-quality natural voices as standard — ours are a paid add-on, and NaturalReader's are better
- Voice cloning
- Exporting a reading as an audio file
- Annotation on the document itself
- Native mobile apps and a browser extension
- Slide deck and spreadsheet formats
- Pronunciation editing
Sources
Evanreads is a web app — the interactive reader needs JavaScript, but everything on this page is readable without it.
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