The Great Gatsby Audiobook, Free

Yes, and it's newer than you might think. Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925, and under US copyright law the book stayed protected for 95 years, entering the public domain on January 1, 2021. That's why it's free on Project Gutenberg now in a way the 19th-century classics on this list have been for much longer. LoudReader has it built into the free catalog already, so there's no file to find. You can hear a sample of the opening on the Great Gatsby catalog page before you open the app.

It sounds like a computer reading Nick Carraway's narration clearly and steadily, not like a film adaptation's voiceover. LoudReader generates the audio on your device with natural offline voices, and it will not vary its delivery for the glitter of Gatsby's parties or the flatness of the valley of ashes the way a skilled actor would. What it gives you is the full text, read at a consistent pace, with the current word highlighted on screen so your eyes and ears stay together. If a performed reading matters more to you than the price, a commercial audiobook edition is the better fit. If you want the whole novel narrated for free today, this is that.

1. Download LoudReader from the App Store on your iPhone or Mac. Free, no account.
2. Open the built-in Project Gutenberg catalog and search the title, or go straight to the The Great Gatsby page to hear the sample first.
3. Tap the book. It downloads once, then plays offline from then on.
4. Press play. LoudReader saves your exact place every time.

Free listening on The Great Gatsby is unlimited, no word quota. Premium adds playback speed from 0.3x to 3.0x, a sleep timer, and every other voice in the app, none of which you need to finish this particular book.

Around 5.5 hours, based on the novel's roughly 51,100 words. That's a word-count estimate, not a measured recording time, the same figure shown on the book's own catalog page. It's the shortest title in this whole free-classics roundup, easily finished in one long drive or two or three commutes.

For the wider case for free public-domain listening and how the built-in catalog works, see Project Gutenberg audiobooks.