Most "best text to speech app" lists are written for someone shopping for their first audiobook subscription, and most of them rank ten apps that do slightly different jobs as though they were racehorses. This one is for people who already have a shelf, or a Drive folder, and simply want to hear what is on it. We make one of these apps, so read the last category with that in mind.
Four things, and none of them is the number of voices. Whether it reads the files you actually have. Whether it keeps playing when the screen locks. Whether it remembers your place properly. And whether there is a wait between deciding to listen and listening.
Voice count is the specification everyone advertises and almost nobody uses. You will pick one voice in the first ten minutes and keep it for a year.
Cloud-voice reading apps such as Speechify, ElevenReader and Voice Dream Reader generate natural narration on their servers, usually on a subscription. They tend to sound excellent and handle a wide range of formats. The trade-offs are the connection, the queue, and the fact that your text goes to their servers.
Free apps built on your phone's own voice, like @Voice Aloud Reader, cost nothing and read a great many formats. They sound like your phone, because they are using your phone's voice. Advanced users can install a better engine, though that is a project rather than a setting.
Store-first reading apps like Google Play Books and Apple Books are bookstores first, with reading aloud added as a secondary layer. Convenient if you buy there, with the catch that on store titles the feature depends on what the publisher enabled.
On-device natural-voice apps built for books you already own are the newer and smaller category PhonoLeaf sits in. Connect a library you already have, get a natural voice generated on the phone, and no upload. The trade-off is honest: they read books you own rather than selling you new ones.
No. PhonoLeaf has no store. It reads DRM-free EPUB files you already own, connected from a Google Drive folder.
No. PhonoLeaf generates speech from EPUB text. It is not a player for pre-recorded audiobook files.
Yes. A free 7-day trial with full access, then $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year.
There are detailed, feature-by-feature comparison pages for Speechify, Voice Dream Reader, ElevenReader, NaturalReader, Google Play Books and @Voice.
Seven days free, no card to start, and your own books.