Matter vs Speechify

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R2] Matter 5/5 · US Essential: I’m a longtime read-later app user, from Feedly to Reeder to Instapaper and beyond. I’ve been using matter since it launched a few years ago, and it’s surpassed them all. I love its ability to redirect newletters so my mailbox stays clean. It allows me to save, favorite, and highlight my favorite articles and newsletters. Its AI “readers” are the most natural and “listenable” I’ve exper
2. [R8] Matter 4/5 · US Pretty good, missing a few things: A widget for unread articles would be a game changer, or the option to buy once. I just can’t justify paying monthly.
3. [R11] Matter 5/5 · US Best way to convert content to audio: Great product that allows me to save news articles from multiple sources, and provide text to voice playback from a saved queue. Saving works great with paywalled articles, but the caveat is that if you are on ios, the paywalled article must be brought up in Safari to allow the full article to have text to voice playback. For desktop systems, the Chrome exte
4. [R62] Speechify 4/5 · US Great Resource: It’s a great way to listen to books while your busy doing other things. The only negative point is the pronunciation of words is not always accurate and that can be frustrating at times. For example, when the book says “I” and the app reads it as “The First”. It’s not consistently reading it that way but when it does, I’ve learned to ignore it. It’s worth it though.
5. [R3] Matter 3/5 · US Great concept, mediocre execution: I love the concept of the app, but it falls far short of being your go-to reading app. It’s very difficult to get PDFs or text emails into the app. Sometimes the emails are in your queue quickly, and sometimes they don’t show up at all. The browser extension sometimes pulls in the article, and sometimes it only creates a browser link, which is no better than a
6. [R6] Matter 3/5 · US Good App, Bad Support: I like what this app has to offer, but I don’t have anything nice to say about the support. I’ve opened multiple tickets with the support team via the Slack channel available via the app and I’ve heard nothing in weeks.
7. [R70] Speechify 1/5 · US Charges: I paid $19 for a three month trial $0.19 per day Then you asked for Another $26 for a three day trial “free” trial You auto paid yourself another $19. Of which I want refunded to me I haven’t started I don’t like these terms
8. [R115] Speechify 1/5 · US Horrendous: Absolutely awful. The setup process is horribly long and the default voice sounds like a robot.
9. [R19] Matter 1/5 · US Used to be great: I used to use this app all the time. Now, despite paying for a subscription, the app doesn’t recognize I’ve paid. This feels like fraud.
10. [R43] Matter 1/5 · US Buggy, Cancelled my $80yr.: Sadly, I cannot invest $80 a year on something that is this buggy. I cancelled my yearly subscription. I can forgive most of the bugs, but… NOT creating my YouTube transcripts so that I can read them? that’s a deal breaker. It’s the main reason I signed up. If you ever fix this, I may return. BUGS: ❌ YouTube transcript not working (16-17 hours) later. Though it sa
11. [R119] Speechify 2/5 · US Useful, but disappointing: This app is incredibly useful and I really enjoyed the trial experience. As soon as the trial was up and I paid for premium, the quality of the AI reading declined drastically. It skips words and lines regularly, and sometimes it changes voices, slurs, and garbles things. Still useful, but a bit frustrating.
12. [R82] Speechify 1/5 · US Not enough value for the money: Paying over $100 for an app that constantly glitches is ridiculous. It’s always skipping over almost entire paragraphs or glitches and doesn’t read aloud or doesn’t let me select the text to read. If this was a free app I wouldn’t care but now I’m out over $100 with an app that I’m constantly having to close in and out of just to get it to work correctly. I wish I c
13. [R27] Matter 3/5 · US There is no free plan: After the 7-day free trial the options are: $79.99/year $14.99/month It’s a pretty ok app, but I don’t like the lack of transparency or documentation.
14. [R49] Matter 1/5 · US Sneaky and too expensive: The app makes you go through the whole setup process before informing you of the astronomical price of $15 a month. Or $7 if you want to pay for the year upfront of $80. I don’t even pay that much for video streaming services. Oh sure, they give you a free trial but that is just another form of predatory practices. They give you a free trial but you have to remember to
15. [R73] Speechify 1/5 · US Scam: Be very careful ordering this. It will give you several options, but only 1 at a time. First it says free 7 day trial, then $139 for 1 year after that. I wanted to try this as I’m a student and enjoy being able to listen to a book while getting other things done. When I downloaded it on my phone, it gave me the option of $24.99 “Text to Speech PDF” I thought amazing, I’ll only be using it f
16. [R95] Speechify 2/5 · US Way expensive: Very expensive
17. [R9] Matter 3/5 · US Let down by unresponsive Customer Support (update): They finally responded. It seems you need to write a bad review for the to pay attention which is a shame. New version is nice, and Matter is probably still the best app to organize your reading, but some key features have gone for no good reason (they confirmed it). A good example is the ability for bulk delete both in your inbox and archive.
18. [R64] Speechify 1/5 · US Doesn’t work with all e-books: The reader doesn’t work with all e-books. Verify before you buy. I signed up for a very specific purpose and was not able to make it work. Customer support tried to assist me but it still didn’t work.
19. [R117] Speechify 1/5 · US Service or lack of: It seem their AI bot can’t get it together can’t talk to anyone live and they just keep treating their same answer Don’t waste your money now Im hoping I can fix the fact they have my credit card and don’t appear to show anywhere how to remove it
20. [R39] Matter 1/5 · US No free option, $80 read it later app: Really annoyed by these psychological and statistically optimal onboarding procedures that ask you a million questions and make you create an account before they reveal that there is only a limited 7 day trial before you’re paying. I’m so over wasting my time with these apps that are so confident in themselves that they think there’s no way you’re not going t
21. [R45] Matter 1/5 · US Description does not match - Not free: Disappointed that they say you can either have a free subscription or a premium subscription. It is supposed free for 7 days before you are charged a monthly service. Sorry. Not for me. Either have a free subscription or be open and honest upfront that it is free for 7 days but then you will be charged. I could have not wasted my time.