rongo · te reo Māori, "to hear" BYOK · v2.0

Hear the page,not the machinery.

Highlight any text on any website and listen in premium AI voices — paid for with your own API keys. Serverless, no account, and not a single word of your reading leaves your machine.

Free forever to read aloud Zero data collection Manifest V3
the-signal.io/essays/the-quiet-hum
Field Notes

The quiet hum of distributed systems

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a data center at three in the morning. Not the absence of sound — the machines never truly rest — but the absence of intention. The day's traffic has thinned to a trickle, and the systems settle into a rhythm that feels almost meditative.

Read aloud
Summarise
~$0.04
0:08 / 0:22
ElevenLabs·Aria · 642 ch ~$0.19
Bring your own keys

One extension. Every voice you already pay for.

Rongo never resells synthesis or takes a cut. Drop in a key and you're billed by the provider at their rate — or use the built-in offline engine for nothing.

ElevenLabs$0.30 / 1k
OpenAI$15 / 1M
Google Gemini$16 / 1M
Native enginefree
How it works

Three seconds from highlight to heard.

No copy-paste, no separate app, no dashboard. Rongo lives in the margin of whatever you're reading and only shows up when you ask.

STEP 01

Highlight, or hover

Select any text and a Play widget fades in by your cursor. Or just hover a paragraph — Rongo outlines the reading scope and offers to read it, no selection needed.

STEP 02

See the price first

Before a single character is sent, you see a live ~$ estimate and the raw character count. Over your cap, the badge turns terracotta and asks before it spends.

STEP 03

Listen anywhere

The widget becomes a compact player — play, pause, scrub, stop. On Pro, words light up in karaoke as they're spoken, right on the page you're reading.

Everything it does

Built like a reading tool, priced like a calculator.

Highlight & play

Select text on any page and hear it instantly in a premium voice — or right-click for a quick native read.

Paragraph hover read

Hover any block of text and a play icon appears with the reading scope outlined — zero selection required.

Switch providers live

Swap between ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Google Gemini and the offline engine — with per-provider voice, speed and pitch.

Cost estimate & caps

A live ~$ estimate before playback, a high-cost confirmation gate, and an optional monthly spend cap.

native engine · always $0.00

Karaoke highlighting Pro

Words on the page light up in sync as they're spoken, using ElevenLabs character alignment.

Summarise & comprehend Pro

A second action: an English comprehension summary, an optional Polish translation, each playable on demand.

Local cache & History

Audio, summaries and translations are cached in your browser's IndexedDB and merged into one History row per source.

Keys never leave you

API keys live in chrome.storage.local — never synced, never proxied, never seen by us.

Spend tracking

A running, lifetime estimated total per provider — and for ElevenLabs, the authoritative characters-used and next invoice.

~$3.21 estimated · 84k chars
Serverless by design

Your keys. Your bill.
Your words stay yours.

Rongo has no backend. Requests go straight from your browser to the provider you chose. There is no account, no telemetry, and nothing to breach — because there's nowhere for your data to sit.

No proxy, no middleman

We never see your text or your keys. Synthesis is a direct call you can verify in the network tab.

You're billed at cost

The provider charges your account directly at their published rate. Rongo takes nothing per character, ever.

Works offline, free

The native Web Speech engine needs no key and no connection — and it never costs a cent.

Data flowno server in the path
Your browser
selection + your key, in local storage
Rongo extension
chunks text, estimates cost, signs the call
on-device
TTS provider
returns audio, bills your account
Rongo's servers
there are none
never
Pricing

Read aloud is free forever.
Pro is paid once.

No subscription. One license, yours for good. (You still pay your own providers for premium synthesis — Rongo just unlocks the software.)

Free
$0forever

Everything you need to listen to the web, with your own keys or the offline engine.

  • Highlight & play, paragraph hover read
  • All providers + free native engine
  • Cost estimates, caps & spend tracking
  • Local cache & History
  • Summarise, Translation & Karaoke
Add to Chrome — free
Rongo ProLaunch price
$15$19one-time

A single license — validated locally, no call home — that unlocks the comprehension layer for good.

  • Everything in Free, and:
  • Summarise & comprehend any page
  • On-demand translation + playback
  • Karaoke word-sync highlighting
  • Lifetime updates · no subscription
Get Rongo Pro — $15

Stop reading.
Start listening.

Add Rongo to Chrome, drop in a key, highlight a sentence. You'll hear the difference in about three seconds.