Speechify AI Platform Review: Voice Assistant, Meeting Notes, and More

Speechify started as a simple text-to-speech app for people who wanted to listen to articles and documents instead of reading them. It was straightforward, useful, and focused. Then, in early 2026, Speechify announced a massive expansion into what it now calls a “full Voice AI Assistant platform.” The app now includes voice typing, AI podcasts, AI note-taking, an AI meeting assistant, and an AI workspace. It jumped to the number four AI assistant in the App Store, sitting alongside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

This is a significant shift in the AI productivity space. A tool that was known for one thing well is now trying to do everything. The question for users is whether a single platform can genuinely deliver across all these categories, or whether focused tools still have the edge.

According to 9to5Mac’s coverage of the launch, Speechify is positioning itself as a “voice-first alternative to ChatGPT and Gemini.” The company even added celebrity voices to make the experience more engaging. But underneath the marketing, what does the actual product deliver?

If you are looking for AI meeting notes or a reliable meeting assistant for your workflow, understanding how Speechify fits into the landscape matters. Let’s break it down.

What Speechify Now Offers

As of February 2026, Speechify’s platform includes seven major product areas:

Text-to-Speech Reader. The original product. Reads articles, PDFs, documents, and web pages aloud using AI-generated voices. This remains Speechify’s strongest feature, with support for 200+ voices across 60+ languages.

Voice AI Assistant. A conversational AI assistant you can talk to, similar to ChatGPT’s voice mode. Available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Chrome. Uses voice as the primary input and output interface.

Voice Typing (Dictation). Converts speech to text for writing emails, documents, and messages. Works across apps on Mac and mobile devices.

AI Podcasts. Converts text content (articles, documents, research papers) into podcast-style audio with multiple speakers. Similar to Google’s NotebookLM audio overviews.

AI Note-Taking. Records and transcribes meetings, lectures, and conversations with AI-generated summaries and action items.

AI Meeting Assistant. Joins virtual meetings to record, transcribe, and generate notes automatically.

AI Workspace. A central hub where all your transcripts, notes, documents, and audio content live together.

That is an enormous surface area for a single product. Each of these categories has established competitors with years of focused development.

The Jack-of-All-Trades Problem

Here is the fundamental tension. Speechify is expanding from a category where it has genuine expertise (text-to-speech) into categories where it is a newcomer (meeting transcription, note-taking, AI assistants). The question is whether it can compete with tools that have been laser-focused on each of these problems.

In the text-to-speech space, Speechify is genuinely strong. The voice quality is excellent, the reading experience is polished, and the browser extension makes it easy to listen to any web content. Pricing starts at $11.58 per month on the annual plan ($139/year), or $29 per month if you pay monthly. There is a limited free tier.

But meeting transcription is a different problem entirely. Accurate transcription requires handling overlapping speakers, accents, background noise, technical jargon, and variable audio quality. Speaker diarization needs to correctly attribute who said what. Post-meeting summaries need to identify the key decisions, action items, and follow-ups. These are hard problems that companies like Otter, Fireflies, and ScreenApp have spent years refining.

Similarly, the “AI Workspace” concept competes with Notion, Obsidian, and dozens of note-taking tools that have spent years building organizational systems, collaboration features, and integrations. Building a workspace is not just about storing files. It is about search, tagging, linking, sharing permissions, and workflow automation.

The risk for users is that Speechify’s new features work well enough to demo but fall short in daily use. A meeting assistant that misses key discussion points or a note-taking system that cannot handle complex organizational needs quickly becomes frustrating.

How Speechify Compares

Let’s look at how Speechify stacks up against focused tools in each of its new categories.

ScreenApp’s Approach

ScreenApp takes the opposite approach to Speechify. Instead of expanding into every AI category, ScreenApp focuses on the meeting and recording workflow and does it thoroughly.

When you use ScreenApp’s AI meeting assistant, the tool handles recording, transcription with speaker diarization, AI-generated summaries, and structured notes. It works directly in your browser without requiring any software installation or meeting bots that join your calls. That last point matters because many meeting assistants require a bot to join your Zoom or Google Meet call, which can be distracting and raises privacy concerns with other participants.

ScreenApp also includes screen recording, which means you can capture both the audio and visual content of a presentation, demo, or training session. The recording is automatically transcribed and indexed, making it searchable later.

The AI note taker generates structured notes from any recording, not just meetings. Lectures, interviews, podcast episodes, and brainstorming sessions all work. The notes include key points, action items, and timestamps linked back to the original recording.

This focused approach means each feature gets deeper attention. The transcription is tuned for meeting contexts. The diarization handles the specific challenges of multi-speaker conversations. The summaries understand meeting structures (agenda items, decisions, action items) rather than generating generic text summaries.

What This Means for Users

The AI productivity tool landscape is splitting into two camps: platforms that try to be everything, and focused tools that excel at specific workflows.

Speechify’s bet is that users want a single subscription that covers text-to-speech, voice assistants, meeting notes, and more. The convenience of one app is real. You do not need to manage multiple subscriptions, learn multiple interfaces, or worry about data living in different silos.

The counterargument is that each of these tasks is complex enough to warrant dedicated tooling. A meeting assistant that is 80% as good as a focused tool might sound acceptable in theory, but in practice, the 20% gap shows up in the moments that matter most: when the transcript misses a critical quote, when the summary skips an important action item, or when the diarization confuses two speakers during a heated discussion.

For most professionals, the decision comes down to priorities:

Choose Speechify if your primary need is text-to-speech and you want a voice AI assistant for general productivity tasks. The meeting and note-taking features are a bonus, not the core use case.

Choose ScreenApp if your primary need is meeting transcription, screen recording, or structured note-taking. The focused approach means better accuracy and a more refined workflow for these specific tasks.

Choose both if you need excellent text-to-speech reading alongside excellent meeting transcription. There is no rule that says you can only use one tool. Using Speechify for reading and listening alongside ScreenApp for meetings and recordings gives you the best of both approaches.

Celebrity Voices and the AI Race

One of Speechify’s more attention-grabbing moves was adding celebrity voices to its AI assistant. According to 9to5Mac, the company is using this to differentiate from ChatGPT and Gemini’s voice modes. It is a clever marketing play, but it also highlights the challenge Speechify faces.

When your differentiator is celebrity voices rather than transcription accuracy or meeting intelligence, it signals that the product is optimized for consumer engagement rather than professional productivity. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is worth understanding what you are getting.

The broader trend here is that AI companies are racing to become platforms. OpenAI started with a language model and added voice, vision, and tools. Google combined search, models, and workspace tools into Gemini. Now Speechify is doing the same thing from the text-to-speech direction.

For users, this platform consolidation has both benefits and risks. The benefit is tighter integration. The risk is that no single company can be best-in-class at everything. The tools that tend to serve professionals best are the ones that pick a workflow and optimize every detail of it.

The Pricing Question

Speechify’s pricing structure is worth examining closely. The Premium plan costs $139 per year ($11.58/month) or $29 if you pay monthly. This includes text-to-speech with premium voices, the voice AI assistant, voice typing, and basic access to the newer features.

However, some features like AI Podcasts and the full AI Workspace may have additional costs or usage limits that are not immediately clear from the pricing page. This is common with platforms that expand rapidly: the pricing structure does not always keep pace with the feature set.

By comparison, ScreenApp offers a free tier with limited minutes, and paid plans starting at $19 per month that include unlimited recordings, transcription, AI summaries, and all features. The pricing is straightforward because the feature set is focused.

Otter.ai charges $16.99 per month for its Pro plan with 1,200 monthly transcription minutes. Notion charges $10 per month for the Plus plan with AI features.

The total cost of an AI productivity stack depends on how many tools you use. If Speechify can genuinely replace three or four separate tools, the $139/year pricing is excellent value. If it only replaces one well and does the rest poorly, you end up paying for Speechify plus the focused tools you still need.

Looking Ahead

Speechify’s expansion is a signal of where the market is heading. AI tools are no longer content to serve a single use case. The technology (large language models, speech-to-text, text-to-speech) is becoming commoditized, which means companies differentiate through breadth of features, quality of experience, and ecosystem lock-in.

For users, the best strategy is to evaluate tools based on your primary workflow. If you spend most of your time in meetings, pick the best meeting tool. If you spend most of your time reading and listening, Speechify’s original strengths still shine. Do not choose a tool based on its longest feature list. Choose it based on how well it handles the task you do most often.

ScreenApp continues to focus on the recording and transcription workflow: capture everything, transcribe it accurately, summarize it intelligently, and make it searchable. That focus is deliberate. As the AI landscape gets noisier with platforms trying to do everything, the tools that do one thing exceptionally well become more valuable, not less.

Try It Yourself

If Speechify’s expansion sounds interesting, you can try the free tier on their website or through the iOS app.

If meeting transcription and recording are your priority, try ScreenApp’s meeting assistant for free. Record a meeting in your browser, get a transcript with speaker labels, and see the AI-generated summary and notes. No installation required.

FAQ

Is Speechify free to use?

Speechify has a limited free tier for text-to-speech. The full platform with premium voices, voice AI assistant, and meeting features requires the Premium plan at $139/year ($11.58/month billed annually) or $29/month.

Does Speechify replace meeting tools like Zoom?

No. Speechify’s meeting assistant records and transcribes meetings, but it is not a video conferencing tool. You still need Zoom, Google Meet, or another platform to host the actual meeting.

How does Speechify compare to ScreenApp for meetings?

ScreenApp is purpose-built for meeting recording and transcription with advanced speaker diarization, screen recording, and structured AI notes. Speechify’s meeting features are new and part of a broader platform, so they may not match the depth of a focused meeting tool.

Can Speechify transcribe in multiple languages?

Yes, Speechify supports 60+ languages for text-to-speech. The transcription and voice typing features support multiple languages, though the exact count varies by feature.

What is Speechify’s AI Workspace?

It is a central hub where your transcripts, notes, documents, and audio content are stored together. It aims to be a unified productivity space, similar to Notion but with voice-first features.

Should I use Speechify or separate focused tools?

It depends on your primary need. If text-to-speech is your main use case, Speechify is excellent. For meeting transcription specifically, a focused tool like ScreenApp typically offers better accuracy and deeper features. Many users find the best setup is combining a focused meeting tool with Speechify for reading and listening.