A division of the Library of Congress, the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) provides audio books to people who meet specific criteria legislated by Congress. The NLS partners with local libraries around the United States to provide services locally and also provides services to qualified individuals living abroad. Current titles and classic works are available under special provisions in the United States Copyright Law.

In addition to e-books, the Internet Archive offers free audio files, including audio poetry and audio books.

LibriVox offers more than 13,000 public domain audio books available free in many languages. The books are read by volunteers.

Audio books for some of the literature available via Gutenberg's text books section are in many languages. Gutenberg's earlier audio book recordings are either human-read or computer generated. Thousands of newer recordings are computer-read with more "lifelike speech, created with new technology as part of a Gutenberg, Microsoft, and MIT partnership.