Text to speech
Arabic text to speech for kids' stories and bedtime tales
Write or paste a story and hear it told by a calm Arabic narrator suited to small ears. For parents who want a bedtime story in Arabic, for kindergarten and early-years teachers, and for children's channels and apps that need many stories in one consistent voice.
- Modern Standard Arabic + 18 dialects
- 100 library voices
- Live demo, no sign-up
Free plan: 500͏ credits a month, MP3, personal use. Commercial rights from Starter.
See the workflowThe demo reads up to 200 characters with no sign-up. Paste one of the scripts below to hear it.
Hear it yourself
Short stories ready to try
Change the heroes' names to your children's names if you like. The first text carries full tashkeel and fits the demo at the top of the page.
Start of a bedtime story
Modern Standard Arabicكانَ يا ما كانَ، في غابةٍ بعيدةٍ خضراءَ، أرنبٌ صغيرٌ اسمُهُ فُلفُل. كانَ فُلفُل يخافُ منَ الظلامِ، إلى أن جاءتْ ليلةٌ رأى فيها نجمةً تبتسمُ لهُ.
What it says: Once upon a time, in a faraway green forest, there lived a little rabbit called Filfil. Filfil was afraid of the dark, until one night he saw a star smiling at him.
Interactive story in a home dialect
Lebanese Arabicشو رأيكن نعدّ سوا؟ واحد، تنين، تلاتة! هلّق غمّضوا عيونكن وتخيّلوا إنّو في فيل كتير كبير عم يرقص بالمطبخ. شو عم يطبخ؟ بدّي حدا يقلّي!
What it says: How about we count together? One, two, three! Now close your eyes and imagine there is a very big elephant dancing in the kitchen. What is he cooking? I want someone to tell me!
Ending of a story with a moral
Modern Standard Arabicومنذ ذلك اليوم، صار سامي يقول الصدق حتى لو كان صعبًا. فقد عرف أن الكلمة الصادقة تجعل الأصدقاء يثقون به، وأن الثقة مثل الزجاج: سهلة الكسر، صعبة الإصلاح. تصبحون على خير يا أصدقائي.
What it says: From that day on, Sami told the truth even when it was hard. He had learned that an honest word makes friends trust him, and that trust is like glass: easy to break and hard to mend. Good night, my friends.
Every recording is real Vocla output in a public library voice, published unedited.
The problem
The child wants the same story for the twentieth time
There is less Arabic audio for children than families ask for.
A mother living abroad looks for an Arabic story her son can hear in the car and finds very little, and a father back from a long day reads the story with half his voice and half his attention.
A teacher writes short stories for a letters lesson or a value she wants to teach, then reads them to twenty-five children three times a day. If they were recorded, she could play them in the listening corner and give her time to whoever needs help.
For a children's channel or an app the problem is volume: an episode every week, characters whose voices must stay the same, and a narrator who cannot change on a child who has grown attached. Recording all that with actors is beyond a small team's budget.
Why Vocla
Why Vocla for children's stories
Clear Modern Standard Arabic or the dialect of home
Simple Modern Standard Arabic builds a child's language and is understood in every country, while the family's dialect makes a story sound as if grandmother were telling it. Choose Modern Standard Arabic or one of 18 dialects, including Egyptian, Lebanese, Saudi and Moroccan.
Full tashkeel for children learning to read
Add tashkeel to the story in one click and review the changes, so the child hears each word with its correct vowels while following it in the book. The marks never count toward your credits, however many there are.
Pace and pauses sized for a child
Slow the reading and add pauses after questions and before surprises. A four-year-old needs longer than an adult to catch up with a sentence and picture the scene.
The same narrator in every story
The voice the child is used to is still the same in story fifty, with the same settings. That is what anyone publishing a series on a channel or inside an app needs.
Character voices when you want them
The text to dialogue tool puts several voices in one file, so the rabbit, the tortoise and the narrator each have their own. It is a paid-plan tool; a single narrator is available on the Free plan.
How it works
How to make an audio story
Step 1
Write for the ear, not the eye
Sentences of five to ten words, deliberate repetition of the phrase children love, and sounds written the way they are heard, like طَق طَق for a knock. Avoid long asides in the middle of a sentence.
Step 2
Decide the age, then the length
A story for a three-year-old needs about three minutes, roughly three thousand characters, and one for a seven-year-old six to eight minutes. Split anything longer into two episodes.
Step 3
Add tashkeel and choose the narrator
Add tashkeel to the whole story, then try two or three voices on the first passage and, if you can, ask the child which one they like. They are the listener, and their opinion is more reliable than yours.
Step 4
Generate and listen with a child's ear
Hear the whole story through. If a passage sounds rushed, add a pause or split the sentence, and if the voice gets a character's name wrong, add it to the pronunciation dictionary and regenerate that passage.
Step 5
Download the file and use it where you like
Download the MP3 and play it from your phone at bedtime or in the classroom listening corner. If you publish on a channel or in an app, lay the file over the illustrations in your video editor or upload it to your app yourself.
Listen to the voices
Voices that fit this job
Public voices from the library whose style suits this work. Play a sample or open a voice for details.
Text to speech in the matching dialects
Cost
What does a children's story cost?
Children's stories are short, which makes them one of the lightest uses of credits: a four-minute story is about four thousand characters, and each thousand characters uses between 800 and 1,200 credits depending on the model. The Free plan gives you 500͏ credits every month for personal use, such as stories for your own children at home in a single narrator's voice.
Publishing on a channel that earns money, or inside an app or a product that is sold, is commercial use and starts with the Starter plan at $4.99 a month; paid plans also include the text to dialogue tool for character voices. If you produce weekly episodes, the Professional plan gives you 80,000 credits a month.
Compare plansThe numbers
Quick maths
Worked example: a 5-minute script is about 4,000 to 6,000 credits.
- Free plan: 500͏ credits a month for text to speech, with MP3 downloads, for personal use only.
- Text to speech uses 800 to 1,200 credits per 1,000 characters, depending on the model. 1,000 characters is about one spoken minute, and tashkeel marks are never counted.
- Commercial usage rights and WAV export start with Starter: $4.99 a month with 5,000 credits.
Figures use the current plans and default credit rates. The exact cost is always shown in the app before you confirm.
Questions people ask
Is there a free tool that turns a written story into Arabic audio?
Yes. In Vocla you can try 200 characters on this page without an account, and a free account then gives you a monthly credit allowance with MP3 downloads. That covers personal use, such as stories for your children at home. Commercial publishing and multiple character voices need a paid plan.
How do I give each character in the story a different voice?
With the text to dialogue tool: you write the story as parts, assign each part a voice from the library, and the story comes out as one file with several voices. The tool is available on paid plans. On the Free plan you can use one narrator who tells every part, the way someone reading from a book does.
Is Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect better for kids' stories?
Both work, and each has its purpose. Simple Modern Standard Arabic with tashkeel builds vocabulary and prepares a child for reading, and it suits content published for more than one country. A dialect feels closer at bedtime and helps children growing up abroad hear the way their family speaks.
Can I publish the stories on a kids' YouTube channel?
Yes, on the Starter plan or higher if the channel earns money or belongs to a business, because the Free plan does not include commercial usage rights. You download the audio, lay it over your illustrations in a video editor and upload the video yourself, following the platform's own rules for children's content.
Can the story be in my voice, or grandma's?
You can clone your own voice from the Starter plan, so stories are told in your voice even when you are away. Grandma's voice, or any family member's, needs their written permission and a sample of their speech: at least ten seconds of clear talking, and ideally one to two minutes.
How long should a story be for a child?
Two to four minutes for children under four, and five to eight minutes for ages five to eight. Since a thousand characters is about a minute, a three-thousand-character story suits the youngest. One generation holds up to 10,000 characters, so most stories are generated in a single pass.
Go deeper
- The tool: Text to speechTurn scripts into lifelike Arabic speech
- Plans and pricesWhat each plan includes, side by side
- Voice libraryPlay real samples by dialect
- Arabic Kids Stories Audio with AI Narration: From Script to Bedtime-Ready FileRead the guide
- Arabic Text to Speech With Emotion: How to Get Excitement, Calm or SorrowRead the guide
- How to Create a Two-Voice Dialogue with AI, Mixed into One FileRead the guide
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One consistent narrator for every lesson, updated whenever the content changes.
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Give your content a voice today
Start free with 500͏ credits every month. No card required.
- 500͏ free credits every month
- No card required
- Arabic and English interface