Linus vs blablabla: the all-rounder and the focused rehearsal app

Linus and blablabla both answer the same line every actor has said out loud at some point: I have a selftape due and no one to read with me. Both load your script, voice the other characters, and listen for your cue. Both record a tape at the end.

They part ways on scope. Linus wants to be the whole toolkit. blablabla wants to be the one part of prep it can do better than anything else.

What Linus does

Linus is built by actors, and it is genuinely broad. It reads the other parts back to you, learns lines with you and tracks your progress, runs a loop mode for drilling, records selftapes in a built-in studio with a teleprompter, and takes voice commands so you can say "Hey Linus, record" without leaving your mark. It carries a large voice library, north of sixty options.

The biggest thing it has that blablabla does not is reach. Linus runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, and the web, with cloud storage and shareable links across all of them. If you are on Android, or you want to start a scene on your laptop and finish it on your phone, Linus is the obvious pick and blablabla is not in the running.

Pricing is tiered by how much you upload. A free tier lets you try a one-page scene of up to ten lines. Pro is $9.99 a month for twenty uploads with scenes up to a hundred lines, and Premium is $19.99 a month for longer scripts and unlimited lines.

What blablabla does differently

blablabla does less, on purpose, and spends the saved attention on the rehearsal itself. It runs on iPhone and iPad only. Within that, it gives you four modes built around how a scene actually gets learned:

• Listen, a first pass with no pressure to perform
• Read, your lines on screen while the other parts play
• Practice, speaking your lines with hints available and the scene advancing when you finish
• Perform, the dress rehearsal with the hints turned off

And it waits. Linus, like most readers, is tuned to respond quickly and keep the scene moving. blablabla is tuned to hold. During your line it stays silent for as long as you need and only speaks the next line once you are done. The app never cuts you off and never adds a word that is not on the page. That patience is the whole design, not a setting.

Working in your language

blablabla runs in every language ElevenLabs supports, and detects your scene's language on its own before tuning speech recognition to match. Linus does not advertise multi-language rehearsal; it is built around English with a choice of accents. If English is your only working language, that gap will not affect you. If you audition in Danish one week and German the next, it is the difference between a tool that fits and one that does not.

There is also a small thing that matters to anyone working classical text. blablabla carries an equivalence map for Nordic languages, so period diction is accepted as written. Ibsen's blir is not corrected to the modern bliver while you are in the middle of a speech. I built that because I needed it.

Offline and the meter

Two more practical differences. blablabla works offline once a scene's audio is cached, so a callback with no signal or a flight is not a problem. And it counts scenes you voice, not times you rehearse: two voiced scenes are free with no subscription, Pro raises the ceiling for a flat monthly price, and once a scene is voiced you can run it as many times as you want without spending anything. Linus meters by uploads and script length instead, so a long scene or a heavy week pushes you up a tier.

Neither model is wrong. They reward different habits. Linus suits an actor juggling many short scripts across devices. blablabla suits one who runs a few scenes deep, offline, in whatever language the job is in.

Pick Linus if

• You are on Android, or you want to rehearse in a web browser
• You want one app that learns lines, drills loops, reads, and tapes
• You want the largest voice library and hands-free recording commands
• You move between several scripts and devices in a week

Pick blablabla if

• You are on iPhone or iPad and want the rehearsal to come first
• You want the scene to wait while you find a beat, not push you along
• You audition in more than one language
• You rehearse offline, on trains and in waiting rooms
• You work classical text that modern recognizers misread

The honest shortlist

Linus is the broad, cross-platform toolkit, and on reach it wins outright. If you are on Android or you live in a browser, stop here and use Linus. blablabla is the focused iOS app for actors who want a patient partner, work in more than one language, and rehearse where there is no signal.

Two voiced scenes are free on blablabla, no subscription. Run a scene you know cold and see how it feels to have the reader wait for you instead of racing you to the next line.