Frequently Asked Questions

Parlecto transforms any book or document into a conversational, narrated experience. Upload a PDF, EPUB, DOCX, or TXT file, ask it questions and get answers grounded in the actual text, and listen to it narrated with character-aware voices.

PDF, EPUB, DOCX, and TXT. Files must be DRM-free. Maximum upload size is 50 MB on Free tier and 200 MB on Pro.

Audiobook mode reads your book faithfully, word-for-word, like a professional audiobook narrator — with natural pacing, pauses, and emphasis. Available on all tiers. Storyteller mode (Pro+) uses AI to transform each chapter into natural spoken storytelling — smoother transitions, plays converted to narrative, dialogue read with flowing context. The meaning stays faithful to the original, but the words are adapted for listening rather than reading. Uses 15% more quota to cover the AI rewrite cost.

Parlecto uses OpenAI's gpt-4o-mini-tts model, which understands what it's reading and delivers natural pacing, pauses, and emphasis like a professional narrator.

Every answer is grounded in passages retrieved from your uploaded book. Answers include citation references so you can verify them against the original text. We describe our answers as "grounded and cited" — not "hallucination-free," because no AI system can guarantee that.

Researcher: strict citation mode, no speculation. Book Fan: casual discussion with light interpretation. Student: Socratic tutoring with follow-up questions. Accessibility: simplified language, voice-first, short answers.

A Premium feature that lets you have a real-time voice conversation about your book. You speak questions aloud and the AI responds with answers grounded in the book's text, in under a second.

Parlecto supports 33 languages for Q&A and narration, including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, and many more. On the Free tier, you can ask questions and receive answers in any supported language. On Pro, you can also translate and narrate books in a different language than the original.

Free tier: $0/month — 2 active books, 60 minutes of narration, Book Fan profile. Pro: $9.90/month — 10 active books, 300 minutes of narration, all 4 profiles, character voices, export. Premium: $29.90/month (coming soon) — 40 active books, 820 minutes of narration, plus Voice Discussion and custom voice cloning.

Narration is measured in characters and displayed in minutes (roughly 1,100 characters = 1 minute of audio). Free: 60 minutes/month (60,000 characters). Pro: 300 minutes/month (~5 hours, 330,000 characters). Premium: 820 minutes/month (~14 hours, 900,000 characters). Limits reset monthly.

Each tier has a cap on active books to keep storage and pre-generation costs sustainable. Free: 2 books. Pro: 10 books. Premium: 40 books. You can archive or delete books to free up slots on any tier.

On Pro and Premium, every chapter is rendered to audio at upload time so you can tap play and start listening instantly — no waiting, no buffering. On Free, audio is generated on-demand per chapter to keep costs down.

You can still chat with your books and read them — only new audio generation is paused until your limit resets at the start of the next month. Already-generated audio remains playable.

Yes. Cancel anytime from your profile page. Your subscription continues until the end of the current billing period. After that, your account reverts to the Free tier.

The Free tier is permanently free with no credit card required. For Voice Discussion (Premium), every user gets one free conversation to try the feature before upgrading.

Your uploaded source file is deleted after processing. We retain derived text chunks (what the Q&A searches) and vector embeddings, scoped to your account with row-level security so only you can access them.

Yes. We process only the minimum data necessary, delete source files after processing, serve all traffic over HTTPS, rely on our hosting providers (Supabase, Cloudflare R2) for encryption at rest, and provide data deletion on request. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Yes. Contact hello@parlecto.com and we will delete your account, all associated books, embeddings, conversations, and usage data within 30 days.

Only you. All data is isolated per user via Row Level Security at the database level. No other user, and no Parlecto employee, can access your books or conversations.