The Count of Monte Cristo Audiobook, Free

Start with the sample. The book's catalog page plays a rendered clip of the opening so you can hear the voice before you commit fifty-plus hours to it. The full listen happens inside the LoudReader app: the entire Gutenberg edition of The Count of Monte Cristo is already built into the catalog, so nothing needs downloading separately. Search the title, tap it, press play.

The honest part, stated plainly: what you hear is a computer voice reading Alexandre Dumas's actual words, generated on your device. It is not a recording of a professional narrator. For a book this famous, performed recordings exist through audiobook stores and library apps like Libby, and if a dramatized performance across fifty hours is what you specifically want, look there. If you want the whole novel playing today, free, with no waiting list and no per-book cost, this is the faster route.

Even and consistent across the whole novel, which is one of the quiet advantages of a book this long. LoudReader's voices are natural offline voices built to read continuous prose at a steady pace, without acting out characters or building dramatic tension for a scene. Dumas wrote a plot-driven, chapter-by-chapter serial, and prose that propels itself works reasonably well with a voice that just reads it clearly. What it doesn't give you is a distinct voice for Edmond Dantès, the Abbé Faria, or the Parisian society Dantès returns to torment. That is a genuine trade, not a small one, and it is worth knowing before you start.

The free tier gives you one voice with unlimited listening. LoudReader Premium opens all 23 narrators, including 11 English voices, so you can try a few and settle on the one you want to spend fifty hours with. Premium also unlocks playback speed from 0.3x to 3.0x, which matters more here than on a short book: nudging the speed up even modestly turns a long project into a genuinely manageable one.

1. Download LoudReader from the App Store on iPhone or Mac. Free, no account required.
2. Open the built-in Project Gutenberg catalog inside the app and search “Count of Monte Cristo.” It is one of the 70,000+ titles already there.
3. Tap the book, then press play. The text loads once and plays fully offline afterward, with each word highlighted as it is read, and your place is saved automatically.
4. Treat it as a long-term listen, not a weekend project. At around 51.5 hours, a chapter or two on a commute adds up faster than it feels like it should.

Alexandre Dumas serialized the novel between 1844 and 1846. Edmond Dantès, a young sailor days from his wedding, is falsely denounced by jealous rivals and imprisoned without trial in the island fortress of the Château d'If. Years into his sentence, a fellow prisoner gives him an education and the location of a fortune, and the rest of the book is what Dantès does with both once he escapes. It was written as a serial and every chapter still moves like one, plot turn after plot turn, which is exactly why the length rarely drags.

If you want the broader case for turning public-domain doorstops into listens, or a look at other long titles in the catalog, best audiobook app for classics covers that ground. This article stays narrow: it is about getting this specific book playing today.