# coldRead vs Linus: Your Own Voice or AI Voices? > coldRead plays back lines you record yourself, offline on Apple devices; Linus reads the other parts with AI voices of real actors on phones and the web. We judged both, plus Counterpart and Offbook, on the same six questions, with prices checked in November 2026. Our pick for most actors is Offbook. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/blog/coldread-vs-linus - Published: 2026-11-04 - Last updated: 2026-11-04 The short answer: coldRead and Linus both give you a scene partner that waits for your line, but the partner is a different thing in each. In coldRead it's you. You record every line of the scene, and the app plays the next one when you say the last word of yours. In Linus it's a cast of AI voices of real actors, on your phone, tablet, or in a browser. Our pick for most actors is a third app, where realistic voices read every other role and the app listens while you say your line and cues the next one when it hears you finish. Picture the night the sides land: three pages, a callback tomorrow, nobody free to read with you. Which app you open decides how the next hour goes. One asks you to record the other character before you can rehearse; the other reads the other parts with AI voices. We judged coldRead and Linus, plus Counterpart (which offers both approaches) and Offbook, our pick, on the same six questions, with prices checked in November 2026. ## How We Compared Them A [scene partner app](https://www.offbook.com/scene-partner-ai) earns its place when you still reach for it on the twentieth run. These six questions decide whether you will. - **Who reads the other parts?** Your own recordings, a friend's, or computer voices. - **How does it know it's your turn?** A cue word, a tap, or listening for you to finish. - **How does your script get in?** Typing, dictation, or importing a file. - **What memorization tools does it have?** Hidden lines, first letters, looping, a teleprompter. - **Where does it run?** Apple devices only, Android too, or a browser. - **What does it cost?** What is free, what a short trial or pass costs, and the monthly price. ## The Four Apps at a Glance | App | Other parts read by | Your turn | Script in | Memory tools | Runs on | Price (US) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Offbook | Realistic voices for every role but yours | Listens and cues the next line when you finish; Strict, Lenient, or Manual | PDF, PNG, JPEG, or TXT; up to 50 pages a scene, 150 with the page picker | Hide your lines or the whole script, first-letter cues, teleprompter, scene looping | Rehearse on a laptop; listen on your phone | 7-day free trial; Starter $9.99/month, annual from $7.99/month | | coldRead | Your own recordings, or audio a friend sends | Plays the next line when you say the last word of yours | Typed or dictated; no PDF import | Teleprompter during your lines | iPhone, iPad, Apple silicon Mac; Apple Watch remote | Free up to 8 lines; 1-week trial; $10.99 for 1 month | | Linus | AI voices of real actors | Waits for your cue; tap-to-advance option | Not stated by Linus | Loop sections, hide lines, first-letter prompts, scrolling teleprompter | iPhone, iPad, Android, and web | Free 1-page scene of up to 10 lines; 3-day pass $1.99; Pro $9.99/month | | Counterpart | Your recording, a friend's, or AI text-to-speech | Listens for a cue word (the last word of your line by default) | PDF, including scanned pages | Hide your lines, scenes on repeat, flashcards | iPhone, iPad, Mac | Free download with in-app purchases; Studio $6.99/month | ## Each App on the Same Six Questions ### Offbook Our pick starts from the script you already have. Upload a PDF, a photo of the pages (PNG or JPEG), or a text file, and it sorts the pages into roles and lines. One scene holds up to 50 pages or about 10,000 words, and the page picker splits up to 150 source pages into 10 scenes, so a full-length play fits. Pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character. Free and Starter cast from 12 voices; Pro and Premium cast from a larger catalog. When you rehearse, it plays the other lines, listens through your microphone while you say yours, and plays the next cue when it hears you finish. You can also press Enter or say "next line" to move on. Strict matching holds you close to the script, Lenient has a 0-100 slider, and Manual never moves on by itself. For memorizing, hide your own lines, hide the whole script for a final test, or swap your lines for the first 1-8 letters of each word. The teleprompter highlights each word as you say it, and scene looping restarts the scene automatically when it ends. You rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere, with listen mode playing the whole scene aloud. **Price:** Starter is $9.99 a month, Pro $14.99, and Premium $29.99, with annual billing from $7.99 a month. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial, and students and educators get 50% off with a valid .edu email. **Best for:** actors who want a reader that hears them finish, with nothing to record, for anything from one page of sides to a full play. ### coldRead [coldRead](https://coldreadapp.com/) is built around your own voice. You record every line of the scene, the other characters' included, or import audio a friend recorded. When you say the last word of your line, it plays the next one. There is no PDF import: text goes in by typing or dictation. A teleprompter shows your line while it's your turn, and the app records video self-tapes with a self-timer. It needs no internet, email, or sign-up, and your recordings and its speech recognition stay on the device. It runs on iPhone, iPad, and Apple silicon Macs, with an Apple Watch remote. **Price:** free for scripts up to 8 lines, with a 1-week free trial of unlimited access. Unlimited is $10.99 for 1 month, $26.99 for 3 months, or $83.99 for a year on the [US App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/coldread/id1264354117). **Best for:** short sides on Apple devices, when you'd rather hear your own reading than a computer voice. ### Linus [Linus](https://getlinus.app/) reads the other parts with AI voices of real actors, who are paid when you rehearse with their voice. It waits for your cue, or you can tap to move on, and it works in 32+ languages. You can loop sections, hide your lines, and switch to first-letter prompts. It has a teleprompter that scrolls as you go, and you can record takes, edit them, and save your favorites. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, and as a web app. Its Pro plan lists Linus Cloud and shareable links. **Price:** the free tier covers a 1-page scene with up to 10 lines. On its [pricing page](https://getlinus.app/pricing), a 3-day pass is $1.99, Pro is $9.99 a month, and Premium is $19.99 a month. **Best for:** actors who want AI voices on an Android phone. ### Counterpart Counterpart offers both approaches. The reader can be your own recording, a friend's recording (friends record from a browser, no account needed), or AI text-to-speech. It listens for a cue word, the last word of your line by default. It imports PDFs, including scanned or watermarked sides, and sorts your dialogue, other characters' lines, and stage directions. You can hide your lines, run scenes on repeat, use flashcards, and record a self-tape while it reads. It runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. **Price:** a free download with in-app purchases; Counterpart Studio is $6.99 a month or $58.99 a year on the App Store. **Best for:** Apple users who want a friend's real voice on the other part without sharing a room. ## Your Voice or a Cast of Voices This is the difference to settle first, because everything else follows from it. With coldRead, the scene partner is a recording of you, so setup grows with every line the other character has. With Linus, AI voices of real actors read the other parts. The case for your own voice is narrower than it looks. A [University of Waterloo study](https://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/study-finds-reading-information-aloud-yourself-improves) of 95 people compared four ways to learn text: reading silently, hearing someone else read, hearing a recording of yourself, and reading aloud in real time. Reading aloud yourself, right then, beat hearing your own recording. The benefit came from saying the words and hearing yourself say them together. So the memory boost is in saying your own lines out loud, every run, whichever app reads the cues. The study didn't test recorded cues, so there's no evidence that recording the other character in your own voice adds to it. What the cues need is to come in on time and sound like someone talking to you. The acting coach Joseph Pearlman's [advice on self-tape readers](https://josephpearlman.com/articles/2018/7/30/why-your-reader-can-make-or-break-your-self-tape-auditions) gives a useful standard: a good reader is invested in the scene but restrained, because the emphasis is on you. A monotone reader, he writes, makes a weaker tape, and different voices for each character are distracting and pull attention away from you. Hold your own recordings and any app's voices to that same bar. **Tip:** if you record cues yourself, read the other character the way a good reader would: present and simple, never performing. You'll be listening to that reading fifty times. ## How Each App Knows It's Your Turn Timing is where a line app feels like a partner or like a tape. If the next line arrives early, you rush. If it never comes, you stop acting and start waiting. coldRead waits for one word, the last word of your line. Counterpart does the same by default. That makes your line endings matter: if you paraphrase the last few words, the cue may not come. Learn the end of each speech as firmly as the start. Our guide to [picking up cues](https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-pick-up-cues) has drills for exactly that. Linus waits for your cue and also lets you tap to move on, which helps when you want a long pause. Our pick listens while you say your line and cues the next one when it hears you finish, or after a silence of 1 to 6 seconds if you set it. Strict mode suits the last week before an audition, Lenient while the words are still settling, and Manual when you want to hold a beat and press Enter. ## Getting Your Script In Setup is the hidden cost of any line app. If it takes an hour to get a scene in, you won't do it the night the sides arrive. coldRead has no PDF import: you type or dictate the text, then record the lines. That's quick for an 8-line co-star scene and slow for a ten-page scene with a long monologue in it. Counterpart takes PDFs, scanned pages included, and analyzes up to 10 pages at a time. Linus doesn't say on its site how scripts get in. Before you start any long role, our free [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter) tells you how many lines you have to learn, which also tells you how long recording them would take. ## Memorization Tools That Make You Recall The tools worth paying for are the ones that make you pull a line out of memory rather than read it again. Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed why, in a study [summarized by the APS](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/test-enhanced-learning). Students who tested themselves read the material about 3.4 times and recalled 61% a week later. Students who kept rereading read it about 14.2 times and recalled 40%, and felt more confident. For an actor, that's the case for **hidden lines**. Linus can hide your lines and show first-letter prompts. Counterpart hides lines and has flashcards. coldRead's teleprompter shows your line while it's your turn, which helps early on, before you want the line gone. You can try first-letter cues on any text with our free [first-letter memorizer](https://www.offbook.com/tools/first-letter-memorizer). Don't drill the words as a string of sounds, though. Helga and Tony Noice found that actors learn lines by working out what they mean for the character, which [the APS Observer described](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/to-be-or-or-um-line) as active experiencing. Their work also found that lines learned with a fitting movement, such as crossing the stage, were remembered better. So walk the blocking while the app reads your cues, whichever app it is. ## Devices and Price Devices split coldRead and Linus cleanly. coldRead is Apple only (iPhone, iPad, Apple silicon Mac, with a Watch remote) and works with no internet at all, which is handy in a dressing room with no signal. Linus runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, and the web, so it's the one of the two that works on an Android phone. On price, the free tiers are close in size: coldRead's stops at 8 lines, Linus's at a 1-page scene of up to 10 lines. coldRead offers a 1-week free trial; Linus sells a 3-day pass for $1.99. After that, coldRead's Unlimited is $10.99 for 1 month, and Linus Pro is $9.99 a month. Our pick's paid plans have no monthly cap on the number of scripts; generated voice audio has a monthly allowance of 50,000 characters on Starter, 100,000 on Pro, and 200,000 on Premium. If you're weighing a switch from either app, our [coldRead comparison](https://www.offbook.com/coldread-alternative) and [Linus comparison](https://www.offbook.com/linus-alternative) go point by point. For each app next to another reader, read [Counterpart vs coldRead](https://www.offbook.com/blog/counterpart-vs-coldread) and [Linus vs Counterpart](https://www.offbook.com/blog/linus-vs-counterpart). ## Get More Out of Any Scene Partner App An app is only the reader. The schedule is yours, and a few habits make every run count. - Hide your lines from the first day you roughly know the scene. Getting a line wrong and checking it is the retrieval practice that makes it stick. - Say every line out loud, at the volume and energy you'll use in the room. - Run the scene in the evening and again the next morning. In a [study reported by the APS](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/sleep-makes-relearning-faster-and-longer-lasting.html), people who slept between two sessions needed about half as many tries to relearn a word list as people who stayed awake, and remembered more a week later. - Write the character's intention in the margin before you drill a speech, so you learn what each line is for. - Do one run a day on your feet, moving the way you will on stage or on camera. Pick a scene from our [library of public-domain plays](https://www.offbook.com/plays) or a speech from the [monologue collection](https://www.offbook.com/monologues) to practice on, or try one of the classic scenes in our free [run lines online](https://www.offbook.com/tools/run-lines-online) tool, which reads the other part and waits for your line, with no account. ## Questions Actors Ask ### What is the difference between coldRead and Linus? The reader. coldRead plays back lines you record yourself (or a friend's audio), has no PDF import, runs on Apple devices, and needs no internet. Linus reads the other parts with AI voices of real actors, works in 32+ languages, and runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, and the web. ### Which is cheaper, coldRead or Linus? To try a reader that waits for your line without paying, our run lines online tool has classic scenes and needs no account; for your own script, every plan of our pick starts with a 7-day free trial. Between the two, coldRead is free up to 8 lines with a 1-week trial, then $10.99 for 1 month. Linus is free for a 1-page scene of up to 10 lines, sells a 3-day pass for $1.99, and Pro is $9.99 a month. ### Do coldRead and Linus work on a laptop? coldRead runs on Apple silicon Macs as well as iPhone and iPad. Linus has a web app alongside its iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. Our pick is built for the laptop: you rehearse out loud with cues in a laptop or desktop browser, on Mac or Windows, and on a phone you listen to your scenes, with playback that keeps going with the screen locked. The iPhone app is coming soon. ### Can coldRead and Linus record a self-tape? coldRead records video self-tapes with a self-timer, though its reader is your own recording rather than an AI voice. Linus has a scrolling teleprompter and lets you record, edit, and save takes. Counterpart records a self-tape while it reads. For the rest of the setup, see our guide to [finding a self-tape reader](https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-find-a-self-tape-reader). ## The Verdict Our pick for most actors is Offbook. Realistic voices read every role but yours, so there's nothing to record before your first run. It listens while you say your line and cues the next one when it hears you finish, with Strict, Lenient, or Manual matching for how word-perfect you need to be. And it takes the script as a PDF, a photo, or a text file, from one page of sides to a full-length play split into scenes. Between the two apps compared here, the choice comes down to who reads the cues and where you practice. coldRead plays back your own recordings, offline on Apple devices, and is free up to 8 lines. Linus reads with AI voices of real actors on phones and the web, and sells a 3-day pass. For more apps judged the same way, see our guide to the [best AI scene partner apps](https://www.offbook.com/blog/best-ai-scene-partner-apps). Offbook is made by the team behind this blog. Prices as of November 2026.