ElevenLabs alternatives
ElevenLabs is still the voice AI benchmark, and it leads our Voice & Audio picks. But its credit plans get expensive when you turn long scripts, courses or books into audio. These alternatives charge per character or run on your own machine, with prices from each official page.
Quick verdict
Stay on ElevenLabs if voice quality and cloning matter most. For long-form audio at scale, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech and Amazon Polly charge per character with large free tiers, and Kokoro is an open-weight model you can run yourself. If you just want to listen to long documents rather than produce audio, Speechify is the simpler tool.
Pricing at a glance
| Tool | Pricing (official) | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | Free (10k credits) / Starter $6 / Creator $22 / Pro $99 / Scale $299 per month | The best quality, cloning and dubbing |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Chirp 3 HD $30 per 1M characters (first 1M free monthly); Standard and WaveNet $4 per 1M (first 4M free) | High volume with natural voices, if you can use an API |
| Amazon Polly | Standard $4, Neural $16, Generative $30, Long-Form $100 per 1M characters | AWS users who want predictable per-character costs |
| Kokoro (open weights) | Free to self-host (Apache 2.0) | Developers who want to run TTS on their own hardware |
| Speechify | Free / Premium $29/month (billed monthly) | Listening to long docs, not producing audio |
Pricing comes from each vendor's official pages, checked Oct 19, 2026. Vendors change plans often, so confirm on their site before you buy.
ElevenLabs
Our verdict: The voice AI benchmark: voiceovers, cloning, dubbing, and voice agents.
For comparison: credits are shared across all ElevenLabs products. Free includes 10,000 credits a month, Starter $6 includes 30,000, Creator $22 includes 121,000 (about 121 minutes, per ElevenLabs' plan table), Pro $99 includes 600,000 and Scale $299 includes 1.8 million. Annual billing gives two months free. Long-form projects can outgrow a plan quickly.
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech
Google prices by character. Its Chirp 3 HD voices cost $30 per million characters after the first million each month, and the older Standard and WaveNet voices cost $4 per million after the first 4 million. You need a Google Cloud account with billing on, so it suits builders more than casual creators.
Amazon Polly
Polly also prices by character: Standard voices are $4 per million, Neural $16, Generative $30, and its Long-Form voices, built for long narration, $100. New accounts get a 12-month free tier (for example 1 million Neural or 500,000 Long-Form characters a month). Like Google, it's an API, not a studio app.
Kokoro (open weights)
Kokoro is an open-weight text-to-speech model with 82 million parameters under the Apache 2.0 license, so you can run it locally or in production at no license cost. Its model card says hosted versions sold for under $1 per million characters as of April 2025. Voice range and cloning are far narrower than ElevenLabs, and setting it up takes some technical work.
Speechify
Our verdict: Text-to-speech that reads documents, web pages and books aloud in natural voices. Big with students and busy readers.
If what you really want is to have long documents, articles or books read to you, Speechify is the easier tool. Premium includes 1,000+ natural voices in 60+ languages and up to 5x listening speed. It's a reader app, so look elsewhere if you need audio files to publish.
How to choose
Run the same 2 to 3 minute script through ElevenLabs and one per-character option, then listen on the device your audience will use. If the cheaper voice is good enough, the savings on long projects are large. Check each vendor's commercial-use terms before you publish.
See the full picks: Best for Voice & Audio · Best AI Tools for Automated YouTube
FAQ
What is the cheapest alternative to ElevenLabs for long audio?
Self-hosting the open-weight Kokoro model has no license cost. Among hosted APIs, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech and Amazon Polly both price Standard voices at $4 per million characters, and Google's Chirp 3 HD voices cost $30 per million after the first million free each month.
Is there a free ElevenLabs alternative?
Kokoro's weights are free under Apache 2.0, and Google Cloud and Amazon Polly have free tiers measured in characters. ElevenLabs itself has a free plan with 10,000 credits a month.
Is ElevenLabs still the best?
For quality, cloning and dubbing, yes, it's still in our Best for Voice & Audio picks. The alternatives win on cost for long-form audio, not on voice quality.
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