Frequently asked questions

Install the Chrome extension, select text on any page or open the sidepanel, and press play. Readox reads the text aloud with word-by-word highlighting so you can follow along.

Yes. The free plan includes browser-native voices, PDF reading, OCR for images, word highlighting, keyboard shortcuts, and unlimited reading. Pro adds premium English voices and 100 AI summaries for $72/year or $9/month.

Readox is fully supported on Google Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge. We would like to support other Chromium-based browsers (like Arc and Vivaldi) in the future — functionality may be partially supported today. If you have any questions about this, let us know.

No. The free plan works without signing in or creating an account. You only need a Google account if you upgrade to Pro.

Both. Select text on any page and press play to hear just that selection, or open the sidepanel with no selection to read the entire page.

Readox highlights individual words as they are spoken — not just one sentence at a time like other extensions. You can click any word in the transcript to jump to that position.

Play/pause, skip to the next or previous sentence, seek forward and back, adjustable speed from 0.75x to 2x, and a waveform scrubber to jump anywhere in the text.

Configurable browser shortcuts for play, pause, and stop let you control playback without leaving the page. Set them up in your browser's extension shortcuts after installing.

Yes. Readox automatically detects PDFs opened in your browser and extracts the text for reading. Included free.

Yes. If a PDF contains scanned pages instead of selectable text, Readox automatically extracts text from each page using on-device OCR. Works for both free and Pro users.

Formulas, footnotes, headers, and footers are automatically skipped by default so they don't interrupt playback. You can fine-tune these settings after installing. PDF support is actively improving — complex documents may still have rough edges. If something reads incorrectly, email us at contact@readox.ai and we'll look into it.

Drag an image onto the sidepanel, paste a screenshot, or use the file picker — Readox extracts the text and reads it aloud. Everything runs on your device. Included free.

JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG up to 10 MB. OCR supports seven language packs: English, Latin (French, German, Spanish, and more), Cyrillic, Korean, Chinese/Japanese, Thai, and Greek. Premium voices are currently English-only.

Yes. Screenshots, photos of documents, whiteboards, signs — anything with readable text. Copy an image to your clipboard and paste it directly into the sidepanel.

28 natural-sounding English voices that run entirely on your device. No cloud servers, unlimited premium voice usage, and no per-word fees.

Night and day. Premium voices sound natural and expressive. Browser voices are functional but robotic. The best way to hear the difference is to try them.

No. Premium voices run fully on your device. Your text never leaves your browser. This means unlimited usage and it works offline after the initial model download.

The voice selector in the sidepanel plays a sample for each voice so you can hear it before selecting. Pick by accent and style.

Toggle Summarize mode on, press play, and hear a summary instead of the full text. Works with text selections, full pages, and scanned images.

Yes. Choose the summary length and tone to match how you want to hear it. Customize in settings after upgrading.

No. Summaries are cached for one hour. If you summarize the same text with the same settings again, the cached result is returned and does not count toward your usage.

If you sign in for Pro, we collect your email, account information needed to identify your subscription, usage counters for cloud features like AI summaries, and any optional pronunciation feedback you choose to submit. We may also record anonymous model download counts.

Text-to-speech and OCR run on your device, so your read-aloud text stays private and does not leave your browser for those features. If you choose to submit optional pronunciation feedback, limited feedback-related information may be sent to our servers to help improve the service. Summarization sends text to our API to generate the summary. We do not store the original source text for summarization, but the generated summary and a content hash may be cached on our server for up to one hour so repeats are faster. See our privacy policy for details.

Stripe handles all billing and payment processing. We never see or store your card details.

$72/year or $9/month. The annual plan works out to $6/month billed yearly. See the pricing page for a full feature comparison.

Yes. Cancel from the account menu in the extension. Your Pro access continues until the end of your current billing period.

The free plan is fully functional with browser voices, PDF reading, OCR, word highlighting, and keyboard shortcuts — no time limit. Pro adds premium English voices and 100 AI summaries.

Some sites use unusual layouts or dynamic content that can make text extraction tricky. Try selecting the text manually and pressing play. If you're still having issues, email us the URL at contact@readox.ai and we'll look into it.

Readox is fully supported on Google Chrome, Brave, and Microsoft Edge. Other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Arc may have partial support — for example, Vivaldi doesn't fully support Chrome's Side Panel API, which can cause a blank panel. As a workaround on Vivaldi, click the Readox icon in the left sidebar instead. If you run into issues on any browser, let us know.

Email us at contact@readox.ai. We read and respond to everything.