Turn Any PDF Into a Study Podcast

It reads the text of your PDF, writes a script that explains the main ideas as a conversation, and voices it with AI. In Scholarly a host, an expert guest, and a producer talk through the document, and the episode comes with chapters, a synced transcript, and a Sources tab listing the PDF. It explains rather than reading word for word; for a verbatim read-aloud, use PDF to audio.

Upload the PDF, then choose a style (Conversational, Exam Prep, or Deep Dive), a target length, and a language. Scholarly creates an episode in which a host, an expert guest, and a producer explain the key concepts, with chapters and a synced transcript. Free episodes are about 2 minutes; paid plans set a target up to 60 minutes. Every plan can stream and share the episode, and paid plans can download the MP3.

Yes. Scholarly's free plan turns one PDF (up to 8 MB, the first 32 pages) into one episode of about 2 minutes that you can stream and share by link. The catch: it uses the one lifetime AI Creation Credit shared across Scholarly, the credit does not reset, and MP3 downloads need a paid plan. Premium ($30/mo or $180/yr in the US) includes 15 AI Creation Credits each week. No credit card is required to start.

Yes, as review. A PDF episode works best for a chapter, paper, or slide deck you have already read once: listen on a commute or walk, then test yourself with flashcards or a quiz made from the same PDF. It is weaker for equation- or diagram-heavy pages, and the free episode is about 2 minutes, so reviewing a full chapter needs a paid plan.

Yes. Scholarly podcasts are cited: each episode lists the sources it was built from in its Sources tab. For a PDF episode that is the PDF itself, plus any other files you combined with it, so you can open the original and check anything that sounds off.

No. Scholarly extracts the key concepts and explains them through a conversation between a host, an expert guest, and a producer, focusing on definitions, mechanisms, and the distinctions that matter. If you want a PDF read aloud word for word, use PDF to audio instead.

Free episodes are about 2 minutes. On Premium and Laureate you set a target from 5 to 60 minutes in 5-minute steps, with 15 minutes as the default; the target guides the script, so the final runtime can vary. A target over 15 minutes costs 1 extra AI Creation Credit, and over 30 minutes 2 extra.

Yes. For papers, the hosts walk through the research question, method, findings, and limitations in plain language, which is often the fastest way to decide whether a paper deserves a close read.

Lecture slides work very well because they already highlight what the instructor considers important. Text-based PDFs give the best results; scanned pages work when the text is clearly legible. PDFs are processed up to 1,000 pages on Premium (3,000 on Laureate), and you can combine multiple files into a single episode.

English episodes are voiced from a catalogue of 10 voices, and episodes in other languages from a catalogue of 30 multilingual voices. You can pick the guest's voice or let Scholarly choose; the host and producer are cast from the same catalogue, and each speaker is named after its voice. The language picker offers 71 output languages and regional variants, and the episode does not have to be in the same language as the source.

Both turn your sources into an AI conversation. Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) Audio Overviews use two hosts (one speaker in the Brief format), offer Deep Dive, Brief, Critique, and Debate formats in 80+ languages with Shorter, Default, and Longer lengths (Longer is English only), include an English voice join-in mode, and let you download the audio. Scholarly uses a host, an expert guest, and a producer, lets you pick the guest's voice, sets a paid target length up to 60 minutes, and adds chapters, a searchable transcript, timestamped Producer Notes with researched links, and a chapter-slide video. Scholarly episodes are cited: each one lists the sources it was built from in its Sources tab. Scholarly downloads need a paid plan, and its language picker has 71 options.

Yes, on a paid plan. Premium and Laureate can download the episode as an MP3 for podcast apps, or as an MP4 of the synchronised chapter-slide video. Every plan, including Free, can stream the episode in Scholarly and share it by view link.