# CastReader vs Explain Selected

CastReader records 55,999 monthly visits with +9.8% month-over-month growth and Freemium pricing. Explain Selected records 0 monthly visits with — growth and Free pricing.

| Metric | [CastReader](https://openaitools.app/tool/castreader) | [Explain Selected](https://openaitools.app/tool/explain-selected) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://castreader.com | https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/explain-selected/mgdagfcgfpcglofdkfgaajafcmniddcc |
| Categories | AI Text-to-Speech, AI Speech Synthesis, AI Reader | AI Answer, AI Reader, AI Assistant, AI Language Learning |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | Free |
| Monthly Visits | 55,999 | 0 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +9.8% | — |
| Primary Market | United States | Global |
| Direct Visits | 19,699 | 0 |
| Review Score | 4.4 | 3.8 |
| Saved Count | 0 | 1 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Browser Extension |

## CastReader

CastReader is built for people who want to consume long-form text with their ears as well as their eyes. Once installed as a Chrome or Edge extension, or opened as an iPhone, iPad or Android app, it reads supported pages and documents aloud using natural AI voices while a word-synced highlight and auto-scroll keep your place. A public Voice Hub lets you preview real voice samples by language before committing, and playback speed ranges from standard rates up to 3x on the paid plan.

What separates it from a plain screen reader is a feature called Read & Explain. Instead of only pronouncing a dense or foreign-language paragraph, CastReader works out what it means and walks you through it in the language you know best, while an animated pen circles and underlines the relevant lines in the original text. That mix of eyes-on-page and ears-on-explanation is aimed at research papers, technical documentation, foreign-language news and other long reads where passive narration is not enough.

Sources are organised into four families: book platforms such as Kindle, WeRead, Google Play Books, Libby, Kobo and O'Reilly; articles and subscriptions including Medium, Substack, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and major newspapers; work documents and email such as Google Docs, Notion, Gmail and Google Drive; and AI conversations from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek and Kimi. CastReader also offers private voice cloning for your own documents and a developer Voice API for embedding cloned speech into applications. Free use needs no account, and payments are handled by Stripe.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. Free plan: $0 forever with 20 minutes of listening per day, standard voices up to 1.25x speed, 3 AI explains per day, and 30,000 translation characters per day when signed in. Pro: $4.99/month or $35.99/year (about $3/month, 40% saving) removing the daily listening cap, unlocking full ebooks and long PDFs, more premium voices up to 3x speed, unlimited daily explains, 120 personal-voice minutes per membership month, and 3,000,000 translation characters per month. A 3-day free trial is available; billing is via Stripe.

- **Synced read-aloud:** Natural AI voices narrate webpages, PDFs, ebooks and documents while each spoken word is highlighted and the page auto-scrolls, so you never lose your place.
- **Read & Explain:** Instead of only reading a hard passage, CastReader summarises and unpacks its meaning in the language you know best, with an animated pen marking the key lines in the original text.
- **Wide source coverage:** Works across Kindle, WeRead, Google Play Books, O'Reilly and other book platforms, news and newsletter sites, Google Docs, Notion, Gmail, plus ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek and Kimi answers.
- **Voice Hub and voice cloning:** Preview real samples of dozens of voices across many languages, and create private cloned voices that Pro members can apply to their own PDF, EPUB, Word and TXT files.
- **Developer Voice API:** A REST API for text-to-speech and private voice cloning in 10 languages, returning MP3 or WAV, priced at $8 per 1M characters for successful generations.

**Strengths:** Combines plain read-aloud with guided explanations that point back at the source text; Covers an unusually broad set of sources, from Kindle and Gmail to ChatGPT and Claude answers; Free tier is genuinely usable with no account required, and the 3-day Pro trial needs no commitment; Personal voice cloning and a pay-per-success Voice API extend it beyond a simple reader

**Limitations:** The 20-minute daily listening cap on the free plan runs out quickly for long books or PDFs; Source support and iOS previews vary by platform, browser version and content access rules; Applying a cloned voice to your own text is limited to 120 minutes per membership month even on Pro

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/castreader.md)

## Explain Selected

Explain Selected is a lightweight Chrome extension that removes the friction from looking up unfamiliar words while you read. Instead of opening a dictionary tab and scanning through a dozen senses to find the one that fits, you highlight the word or phrase in place and a purple circle appears. One click gives you the definition, the pronunciation and a plain-language explanation written for that specific context.

The distinguishing feature is contextual disambiguation. English is full of words whose meanings have almost nothing to do with each other — the extension's own example is "pounds", which can mean a unit of weight, a verb describing hitting something, or the British currency. Rather than presenting all three blindly, Explain Selected passes the surrounding sentence to ChatGPT and asks it to infer which sense is actually in play, then retrieves the corresponding Merriam-Webster entry and audio pronunciation. It also handles text that no dictionary covers well, such as current slang and narrow technical terminology.

It is aimed at people who read a lot of English online and want to keep their flow: language learners building vocabulary, professionals working through technical documents, and anyone who keeps encountering words with multiple meanings. Useful selections can be saved to a personal list for later memorization, or shared. Two practical caveats from the listing: extensions do not run in tabs that were already open when you installed it, so refresh those tabs first, and no extension works on Chrome internal pages such as the Chrome Web Store itself.

**Pricing & Plans:** Free. The extension is offered at no cost in the Chrome Web Store, with no in-app purchases listed.

- **Context-aware definitions:** ChatGPT infers which sense of a word fits the sentence you highlighted, instead of dumping every dictionary entry at once.
- **Merriam-Webster definitions and audio:** Matching dictionary entries and audio pronunciation are pulled in so you can hear as well as read the word.
- **One-click purple circle:** Select text and click the purple circle that appears — no popup windows, no copy-pasting into a separate tab.
- **Personal saved list:** Add words you want to remember to a personal list so you can review them later.
- **Share with others:** Send individual explanations to friends when a word or phrase is worth passing on.

**Strengths:** Resolves ambiguous words by using the surrounding sentence rather than guessing; Combines AI explanations with established Merriam-Webster definitions and audio; Works inline on any web page with a single click and no context switching; Saving and sharing selections make it useful for building vocabulary over time

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/explain-selected.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do CastReader and Explain Selected compare in monthly traffic?

CastReader has 55,999 monthly visits, while Explain Selected has 0. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

CastReader has a month-over-month growth rate of +9.8%; Explain Selected has —.

### How does pricing compare?

CastReader: Freemium. Freemium. Free plan: $0 forever with 20 minutes of listening per day, standard voices up to 1.25x speed, 3 AI explains per day, and 30,000 translation characters per day when signed in. Pro: $4.99/month or $35.99/year (about $3/month, 40% saving) removing the daily listening cap, unlocking full ebooks and long PDFs, more premium voices up to 3x speed, unlimited daily explains, 120 personal-voice minutes per membership month, and 3,000,000 translation characters per month. A 3-day free trial is available; billing is via Stripe. Explain Selected: Free. Free. The extension is offered at no cost in the Chrome Web Store, with no in-app purchases listed.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [Speechify](https://openaitools.app/tool/speechify) | 5,457,475 | +0.5% | Freemium | Text to speech and voice AI across every device | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/speechify.md) |
| 2 | [Language Reactor](https://openaitools.app/tool/language-reactor) | 1,878,769 | +0.6% | Freemium | Learn languages from Netflix, YouTube, and real-world texts with dual subtitles and AI | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/language-reactor.md) |
| 3 | [Luvvoice](https://openaitools.app/tool/luvvoice-free-text-to-speech) | 1,438,923 | -8.2% | Freemium | Free AI text to speech with 200+ voices in 70+ languages | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/luvvoice-free-text-to-speech.md) |
| 4 | [Peech: Text to Speech Reader](https://openaitools.app/tool/peech-text-to-speech-reader) | 353,093 | -26% | Freemium | Listen to anything. Beautifully. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/peech-text-to-speech-reader.md) |
| 5 | [Voice Out](https://openaitools.app/tool/voice-out) | 39,679 | -27.1% | Freemium | Turn any webpage, PDF, Doc or ebook into natural-sounding speech in 60+ languages | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/voice-out.md) |
| 6 | [Quiz Solver AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/quiz-solver-ai) | 35,177 | +28.6% | Freemium, Paid | AI browser extension that reads quiz questions and answers them with explanations | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/quiz-solver-ai.md) |
| 7 | [Ddict](https://openaitools.app/tool/ddict) | 32,146 | +2.4% | Freemium | Browser translation, dictionary, and AI writing assistant | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/ddict.md) |
| 8 | [Audeus: Text to Speech Reader](https://openaitools.app/tool/audeus-text-to-speech-reader) | 32,118 | -37.8% | Freemium, Free Trial | Turn PDFs, docs and web pages into natural-sounding audio you can listen to anywhere | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/audeus-text-to-speech-reader.md) |
| 9 | [GPT Reader & Transcriber](https://openaitools.app/tool/gpt-reader-a-free-ai-text-to-speech) | 29,995 | -16% | Free | Free ChatGPT-style text-to-speech and speech-to-text in your browser | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/gpt-reader-a-free-ai-text-to-speech.md) |
| 10 | [Read Aloud Reader](https://openaitools.app/tool/read-aloud-reader) | 28,361 | +87.7% | Freemium | Free browser text-to-speech with natural neural voices | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/read-aloud-reader.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/castreader-vs-explain-selected

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