Readly Open the reader →

Free · No account · Works on your phone

Your eyes are
the slow part.
Readly brings the words to them.

One word at a time, at a fixed point, at the pace you choose. Paste text, drop a PDF or EPUB, or paste a link.

Start reading, it's free → See how it works

Nothing to install. Your text stays in your browser.

A desk lamp lighting a single highlighted word on a line of text
400 wpm · 1 / 46
Reading

The highlighted letter never moves. That's the whole trick. Space plays and pauses in the real reader.

Three steps, ten seconds.

No setup, no tutorial. The reader opens ready to read.

A page, a book and a link drifting into a slot
Step 1

Give it text

Paste, drop a PDF or EPUB, or paste a link.

A speed dial with a single highlighted tick
Step 2

Pick a pace

Start around 300 wpm and nudge up when it feels easy.

A large play button with soft ripples
Step 3

Press play

Tap on a phone, Space on a laptop.

Why one word at a time works.

Reading is quick eye jumps between short stops. RSVP removes the jumps and keeps the stops.

NORMAL READING · 5 FIXATIONS, 4 JUMPS The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog READLY · 1 FIXATION, 0 JUMPS brown
Each jump is time your eyes spend not reading.
238 wpm
Average adult reading speed. Brysbaert, 2019
10–15 %
Eye movements that go back to re-read. Rayner et al., 2016
1 point
Where your eyes stay in Readly: the highlighted letter never moves.

Honest part: comprehension drops if you sprint. Pick a comfortable pace and raise it as it gets easy.

Read what you already have.

Parsed on your device, so a 400-page PDF never leaves your laptop.

A clipboard with three text lines Now

Pasted text

Anything you can select and copy.

A document whose header strip dissolves into dots New

PDF

Headers, footnotes and page numbers stripped.

An open book with a ribbon bookmark New

EPUB

Real chapters, pauses where the author did.

A chain link merging into a newspaper column New

Article link

Paste the address of a blog post, news article or Wikipedia page.

Files are parsed in your browser and never uploaded. An article link is fetched by our server once. Nothing is kept unless you save it to your library, which comes with accounts.

Made for a hand and a thumb.

The reader is used on the sofa and on the train. Controls that came straight from reader feedback.

  • Tap Tap to play, tap to pauseOn a phone you can also hold to read and release to stop. Both live in Settings.
  • Space Keyboard on a laptopSpace plays and pauses, arrow keys step through words and nudge the speed by 25 wpm.
  • ← 10 Go back a few wordsMissed one? Jump back ten words, not to the start of the paragraph.
  • Aa Fixed focus letterThe highlighted letter is always in the same spot, whatever the word length. Big text, custom colour, or none at all.

Five reading themes

Read Night
Read Light
Read Dark
Read Sepia
Read Contrast

Text size from small to enormous, punctuation pauses you can tune, and a progress bar you can drag to any point in the text.

Beta · built from your notes

You wrote the roadmap.

Everything on the right shipped because someone asked for it in the reader. Version 2.0 is that list, finished. Now tell us what version 3 should be.

Article links, custom speeds up to 1200 wpm, bigger text and a draggable progress bar came from the same notes.

15 notes and 42 votes so far.

Leave feedback Answer a few questions

Read here regularly? The questions take two minutes, no account and no email needed, and they decide what we build next — and what stays free. Leave an address only if you want the new features first, for free, in exchange for telling us how they went.

  • 34 votes

    Reading PDFs

    · shipped

  • 5 asked

    Tap to play, no holding

    · shipped

  • 2 reported

    A focus letter that stays still

    · fixed

  • 2 asked

    EPUB books, chapter by chapter

    · shipped

Coming with a free account.

The reader stays free without signing in. An account is for the things that need to remember you.

A small bookshelf with four books and a reading lamp

  • Your library

    — every article, PDF and book you loaded, on every device.

  • Pick up where you stopped

    — close the tab on page 212, reopen at the same word.

  • AI clean-up and recaps

    — a messy PDF stripped to its text; early access for beta readers.

Tell us which of these you would pay for — that answer decides the order they arrive in.

Questions readers ask.

Is it really free?

Yes — text, PDFs, EPUBs and article links cost nothing and need no account. The reader itself stays free.

Will I understand what I read this fast?

At a comfortable pace, yes; most people settle between 350 and 500 wpm for articles. Stepping back to re-read is one tap.

Does it work on my phone?

Yes — it is a web page, so it runs on iPhone, Android, iPad and any laptop. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app.

What happens to my text?

Pasted text and files stay in your browser; only an article link is fetched by our server, and nothing is stored. Nothing about you sits on our servers except the feedback you choose to send.

Is Readly open source?

Not at the moment. It is a one-developer project shaped by the votes readers leave inside the app.

Ready when you are

Read your next article in half the time.

Open the reader →

One email when the next big feature lands. Nothing else.