What's Actually Free in Velo

People search for a free speed reading app and land on one of three things: an app with ads, an app that locks its core feature after a trial, or an app that's free because your reading data is the product. Velo is a premium reader with a free tier, and this page is the plain answer to what free means, so you can decide before installing anything.

The full free list

• Focus Mode (RSVP) — one word at a time on a fixed focal point, 50 to 1,000 WPM, with optimal-recognition-point alignment and adaptive timing. Not a trial version. Not capped.
• Reader mode — the full typeset page: the book's own typography, figures, footnotes, a real table of contents, sharing one position with Focus Mode.
• Scrub — the momentum rewind between them.
• EPUB and PDF import — including the on-device pipeline that detects chapters, strips running headers, and links footnotes. TXT and Markdown too.
• Web articles — share from Safari, read cleaned-up in any mode.
• Reading stats — your real reading time and pace, measured rather than guessed.
• The intelligence dashboard — on-device Apple Intelligence analysis of your books. Free because on-device inference costs nothing to run; there's no server bill to pass on to you.
• A classics library — unlimited public-domain books included, no account, so the app is usable before you import anything.

Everything on that list works offline, and none of it involves ads or tracking. Books parse on your device; nothing is uploaded to process them.

The honest boundary

The free tier holds 3 imported books at a time. That's the entire limitation — a library cap, not a feature gate. If you're the reader with two books and an occasional PDF, Velo is simply free for you, indefinitely.

Velo Pro — $69.99/year or $8.99/month after a 7-day trial — removes the cap and adds the features that cost real money to provide: cloud sync of your library, position, highlights and notes across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, Listen with word-by-word tracking, and the optional server-side processing pass for genuinely difficult scanned PDFs.

Why this structure

A reading app's free tier tells you its business model. Ad-funded readers monetise your attention — the exact thing a focus feature exists to protect. "Free trial then paywall" apps demo well and then hold your library hostage. Velo's bet is different: the core reading experience is the product demo, permanently, and the subscription covers the things with genuine ongoing costs. No ads, no data sale, no feature that quietly stops working after 14 days.

That also means the useful comparison-shopping question isn't "which app is free" — most will cost you something, in money or attention — but "what does the free tier let me verify before paying." With Velo you can verify everything that matters: import your three hardest PDFs, read a full book in every mode, see your real reading stats, and watch the on-device analysis work. If the modes don't suit how you read, you'll know without spending anything.

If one word at a time is new to you, start with what RSVP is and what the research says — the honest version, including where the technique's pace claims fall apart.

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