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Best ElevenLabs Alternatives in 2026: 6 AI Voice Generators Compared on Price, Cloning and Quality

6 min readPublished Updated

Fish Audio is the best ElevenLabs alternative for most people: a large voice library, cloning with a live speaker check, open weights and an API at $15 per million bytes of English text, against $80 per million characters for Eleven v4. Cartesia suits real-time agents, Speechify has the cheapest well-ranked API, and MiniMax Audio suits cloned Chinese voices.

Disclosure

None of these six products is made by the team behind GenGrades, and none paid to be listed. They are ranked on what matters when leaving ElevenLabs: public blind-test rankings, price per character, cloning and consent, languages, commercial rights on free plans and what happens to your audio. GenGrades also has a full review of Fish Audio, linked from its card.

At a glance

Every pick, what it is best for, the cheapest paid option and the free option.

  1. 1. Fish Audio

    The closest all-round swap: voice library, cloning and a cheap API in one account

    Cheapest paid option:
    $15 a month (Plus)
    Free option:
    8,000 credits a month, up to 7 minutes

  2. 2. Cartesia

    Real-time voice agents that need the fastest first audio

    Cheapest paid option:
    $5 a month (Pro)
    Free option:
    20,000 characters a month

  3. 3. Speechify

    The cheapest well-ranked voice API, with a large free monthly allowance

    Cheapest paid option:
    $10 a month (API Starter)
    Free option:
    500,000 API characters a month, commercial use, no card

  4. 4. MiniMax Audio

    Cloned voices and long narration in Chinese, Cantonese and 40 languages

    Cheapest paid option:
    $5 a month (Starter), or $4.50 a month billed yearly
    Free option:
    10,000 credits a month, about 12 minutes

  5. 5. Murf

    Voiceovers for training videos and slides, or a one-cent API

    Cheapest paid option:
    $19 a month billed yearly (Creator, $228)
    Free option:
    10 minutes of studio voice, no downloads; $10 of API credit

  6. 6. Typecast

    Expressive character voices with avatars and video export

    Cheapest paid option:
    $5 a month (Basic), or $54 a year
    Free option:
    Unlimited generation; 3,000 lifetime download credits

The picks, in order

What each one does, what it costs and where it falls short.

  1. 1. Fish Audio

    The closest all-round swap: voice library, cloning and a cheap API in one account
    Fish Audio's pricing page on annual billing during the Drama 3 launch offer: Free with 8,000 credits a month and no commercial use, Plus at $15 a month before the first-year discount, Pro at $100.
    Fish Audio's pricing page on annual billing during the Drama 3 launch offer: Free with 8,000 credits a month and no commercial use, Plus at $15 a month before the first-year discount, Pro at $100.

    Source: fish.audiochecked

    Fish Audio is a text-to-speech and voice-cloning platform with a large public voice library, a web app, mobile apps and a pay-as-you-go API. Its S2.1 Pro model costs $15 per million bytes of text through the API, under a fifth of Eleven v4's list price, and its newest model, Drama 3, is the highest-ranked open-weights voice on Artificial Analysis's blind-test arena. You can also download Drama 3 and run it yourself.

    Cheapest paid option

    $15 a month (Plus)

    250,000 credits a month, up to 200 minutes, one professional clone and commercial use. Billed yearly it is $132 a year, about $11 a month; until November 12, 2026 new plans get 50% off the first month or first year.

    Source: fish.audiochecked

    Free option

    8,000 credits a month, up to 7 minutes

    Personal, non-commercial use only, per Fish's FAQ; up to 500 characters per generation. A separate free developer API model, s2.1-pro-free, runs under a fair-use policy.

    Source: fish.audiochecked

    Arena rank (Oct 25)

    #9 of 98 (Drama 3 Preview), the top open-weights model

    Artificial Analysis Provider Voice Arena, blind listener votes. S2.1 Pro, the default API model, is #20.

    Source: artificialanalysis.aichecked

    API price

    $15 per 1M bytes (S2.1 Pro); Drama 3 $10 until Nov 12, then $50

    Billed per UTF-8 byte: an English letter is one byte, a Chinese or Japanese character three, so about $45 per 1M CJK characters (our arithmetic).

    Source: docs.fish.audiochecked

    Voice cloning

    Instant from about 10 seconds; professional clones from Plus

    For a professional clone the speaker reads a passage aloud live and Fish matches the voiceprint against the training audio.

    Source: fish.audiochecked

    Open weights

    Drama 3 on Hugging Face, Fish Audio Community License

    Free for commercial use while annual revenue is under US$500,000; offering it as a hosted voice service always needs a separate licence.

    Source: github.comchecked

    Good

    • API at $15 per million bytes of English text, under a fifth of Eleven v4's $80 per million characters.
    • Drama 3 is the top open-weights voice on Artificial Analysis's arena, and you can run it on your own hardware.
    • Professional clones need the speaker to read a passage live, a stronger consent check than most tools here.

    Watch out for

    • Its best model ranks #9 on Artificial Analysis's arena, below both Eleven v4 models and Cartesia.
    • Trustpilot score of 2.1 from 31 reviews, mostly about slow support, refused refunds and unstable clones.
    • The pricing page's numbers disagree: 250,000 credits at 600 to 625 credits a minute would be about 400 minutes, but the Plus card promises up to 200.

    Skip it if: you need dependable support and refunds, or your company makes over US$500,000 a year and wants to self-host Drama 3 without a paid licence.

    Fish Audio's October 13, 2026 post announcing Drama 3, the text-to-speech model whose weights it also published.
    Fish Audio's October 13, 2026 post announcing Drama 3, the text-to-speech model whose weights it also published.

    Source: fish.audiochecked

    Visit Fish AudioRead the review

  2. 2. Cartesia

    Real-time voice agents that need the fastest first audio
    Cartesia's pricing page: Free with 20K credits a month, Pro at $5 with a commercial licence and instant cloning, Startup at $49 and Scale at $299.
    Cartesia's pricing page: Free with 20K credits a month, Pro at $5 with a commercial licence and instant cloning, Startup at $49 and Scale at $299.

    Source: cartesia.aichecked

    Cartesia is a developer voice platform built for live voice agents: its Sonic 3.6 model starts speaking in under 90 milliseconds, Cartesia says, in 44 languages. It is the highest-ranked alternative on Artificial Analysis's arena, fourth of 98, behind the two Eleven v4 models and Qwen-Audio-3.1. It is an API with a web playground, not a studio for long voiceovers.

    Cheapest paid option

    $5 a month (Pro)

    100,000 credits at one credit per character, so $0.05 per 1,000 characters (our arithmetic), with instant cloning and a commercial licence. Overage is $65 per 1M on Pro and $38 on Scale.

    Source: cartesia.aichecked

    Free option

    20,000 characters a month

    About 27 minutes. No cloning and no commercial licence, and requests stop when the credits run out.

    Source: cartesia.aichecked

    Arena rank (Oct 25)

    #4 of 98 (Sonic 3.6)

    Artificial Analysis lists it at $49 per 1M characters. Cartesia's Sonic page still says ranked #1, a claim made before Eleven v4.

    Source: artificialanalysis.aichecked

    API price

    About $37 to $50 per 1M characters, by plan

    Pro $5 for 100K, Startup $49 for 1.25M, Scale $299 for 8M: $0.05, $0.039 and $0.037 per 1,000 characters (our arithmetic).

    Source: cartesia.aichecked

    Voice cloning

    Instant from 10 seconds on Pro; professional from $49

    Cartesia's terms forbid making anyone's voice available without their express permission; no verification step is described.

    Source: cartesia.aichecked

    Latency claim

    Under 90 ms to first audio

    Cartesia's own figure. It also publishes dated model snapshots so a production voice does not change underneath you.

    Source: cartesia.aichecked

    Good

    • Ranked #4 of 98 on Artificial Analysis's arena, the best placing of any non-ElevenLabs product here.
    • Built for live agents: under 90 ms to first audio by Cartesia's figures, streaming and dated model snapshots.
    • A cheap start: $5 a month buys 100,000 characters, instant cloning and a commercial licence.

    Watch out for

    • No long-form editor, dubbing or audiobook tools: it is an API for developers.
    • Its terms let Cartesia train on your inputs and outputs unless you opt out with a form.
    • Its 'ranked #1' and 'beats ElevenLabs' claims were measured against Eleven v3, before v4 launched.

    Skip it if: you make audiobooks, dubbed videos or long voiceovers in an editor rather than through code.

    Cartesia's Sonic page still carries a 'Ranked #1 in Speech Arena' badge; on October 25, 2026 Artificial Analysis ranked Sonic 3.6 fourth.
    Cartesia's Sonic page still carries a 'Ranked #1 in Speech Arena' badge; on October 25, 2026 Artificial Analysis ranked Sonic 3.6 fourth.

    Source: cartesia.aichecked

    Visit Cartesia

  3. 3. Speechify

    The cheapest well-ranked voice API, with a large free monthly allowance
    SpeechifyAI's API pricing page: from $6 per 1M characters, 500K free characters a month, billed separately from the Speechify Reader app.
    SpeechifyAI's API pricing page: from $6 per 1M characters, 500K free characters a month, billed separately from the Speechify Reader app.

    Source: speechify.aichecked

    Speechify is best known as a reading app, but it also sells a developer text-to-speech API, SpeechifyAI, and a voiceover editor, Speechify Studio, each billed separately. The API is the part that replaces ElevenLabs: $6 to $10 per million characters, 500,000 free characters a month, and Simba 3.2, which ranks #10 on Artificial Analysis's arena and has the second-highest score on Vapi's index of cloned voices.

    Cheapest paid option

    $10 a month (API Starter)

    Simba 3.0 and 3.2 bill $10, $8 and $6 per 1M characters on Starter, Pro ($99) and Scale ($499). Simba 3.5 lists at twice that and is billed at the same rates until November 21, 2026.

    Source: speechify.aichecked

    Free option

    500,000 API characters a month, commercial use, no card

    For Simba 3.5 the free amount drops to 250,000 after November 21, 2026. The free tier pauses until next month when used up; cloning needs a paid plan.

    Source: speechify.aichecked

    Arena rank (Oct 25)

    #10 of 98 (Simba 3.2)

    Simba 3.2 was #1 in July 2026. On Vapi's provisional index of cloned voices it scores 97, one point behind Eleven v3.

    Source: artificialanalysis.aichecked

    API price

    $6 to $10 per 1M characters

    Starter $10, Pro $8, Scale $6 per 1M for Simba 3.0 and 3.2.

    Source: speechify.aichecked

    Voice cloning

    Paid API plans, with a spoken consent check

    The API rejects a clone when the consent phrase or the speaker does not match.

    Source: docs.speechify.aichecked

    Languages

    48 on Simba 3.5 (from Oct 21, 2026); Simba 3.2 is English only

    Simba 3.5 has no published arena rank yet.

    Source: speechify.aichecked

    Good

    • The cheapest per-character API among well-ranked voices: $6 to $10 per million characters.
    • 500,000 free API characters a month, and the free tier allows commercial use.
    • Trustpilot 4.7 from 7,221 reviews, though most are about the reading app.

    Watch out for

    • Three products with three bills: a Reader subscription does not include API use, and Studio is sold yearly only.
    • Its best-ranked model, Simba 3.2, is English only; the multilingual Simba 3.5 has no public rank yet.
    • Simba 3.2 fell from #1 in July to #10 in October on Artificial Analysis's arena.

    Skip it if: you want ElevenLabs' all-in-one studio with monthly billing: Speechify splits the editor, the reader and the API into separate products.

    SpeechifyAI's text-to-speech API page, with a sample request to Simba 3.2 and the free tier's terms: 500K characters, commercial use, no card.
    SpeechifyAI's text-to-speech API page, with a sample request to Simba 3.2 and the free tier's terms: 500K characters, commercial use, no card.

    Source: speechify.aichecked

    Visit Speechify

  4. 4. MiniMax Audio

    Cloned voices and long narration in Chinese, Cantonese and 40 languages
    MiniMax Audio's plans on monthly billing: Free with 10k credits (about 12 minutes of the HD model), Starter at $5 for 100k credits and Creator at $15.
    MiniMax Audio's plans on monthly billing: Free with 10k credits (about 12 minutes of the HD model), Starter at $5 for 100k credits and Creator at $15.

    Source: minimax.iochecked

    MiniMax Audio is MiniMax's speech app and API, built on its Speech 2.8 models: text to speech, voice cloning from about 10 seconds of audio, voice design and music in one account. On Vapi's provisional index of cloned voices it scores 93, ahead of Fish Audio, while on Artificial Analysis's arena, which judges each provider's own stock voices, Speech 2.8 HD is #24. Its API takes up to a million characters in one request.

    Cheapest paid option

    $5 a month (Starter), or $4.50 a month billed yearly

    100,000 credits, about 120 minutes of the HD model, 10 voice slots and commercial use. One English letter is one credit; a Chinese or Japanese character is two.

    Source: minimax.iochecked

    Free option

    10,000 credits a month, about 12 minutes

    Personal use only, crediting MiniMax; commercial use needs Starter or above, per the FAQ on the plans page. 3 voice slots.

    Source: minimax.iochecked

    Arena rank (Oct 25)

    #24 of 98 (Speech 2.8 HD)

    It was #5 in a May 2026 snapshot. Speech 2.8 Turbo is #27.

    Source: artificialanalysis.aichecked

    API price

    $100 per 1M characters (HD), $60 (Turbo)

    Above Eleven v4's $80. Rapid voice cloning costs $1.50 per voice on the API.

    Source: platform.minimax.iochecked

    Voice cloning

    From about 10 seconds of audio

    No verification step is described; the app terms forbid impersonation.

    Source: minimax.iochecked

    Your content

    MiniMax takes a perpetual licence to use and monetise it

    The privacy policy does not say whether your audio trains models and describes no opt-out.

    Source: minimax.iochecked

    Good

    • Scores 93 on Vapi's index of cloned voices, ahead of Fish Audio's S2.1 Pro.
    • $5 a month for about two hours of HD speech with commercial rights.
    • Covers Cantonese among 40 API languages, and one async request can take up to a million characters.

    Watch out for

    • Ranks #24 on Artificial Analysis's arena today, down from #5 in a May snapshot.
    • The API costs more per character than Eleven v4: $100 per million for HD.
    • Its terms take a perpetual licence to use and monetise what you upload or generate.

    Skip it if: you need the most natural stock English voices, or you will not grant a provider a broad licence to your content.

    MiniMax Audio's web app before sign-in: the text-to-speech editor with the speech-2.8-hd model selected.
    MiniMax Audio's web app before sign-in: the text-to-speech editor with the speech-2.8-hd model selected.

    Source: minimax.iochecked

    Visit MiniMax Audio

  5. 5. Murf

    Voiceovers for training videos and slides, or a one-cent API
    Murf's pricing page, API tab: a free trial with $10 of API credit, and pay-as-you-go Falcon 2.1 at $0.01 per 1,000 characters.
    Murf's pricing page, API tab: a free trial with $10 of API credit, and pay-as-you-go Falcon 2.1 at $0.01 per 1,000 characters.

    Source: murf.aichecked

    Murf is a voiceover studio for e-learning, presentations and videos, with pronunciation controls and a Canva add-on, plus a separate API for real-time voice agents. Its Falcon 2.1 API costs $0.01 per 1,000 characters, among the cheapest here, and Falcon 2 ranks #26 on Artificial Analysis's arena; its studio-quality Gen2 model ranks #82.

    Cheapest paid option

    $19 a month billed yearly (Creator, $228)

    24 hours of voice generation a year, about two hours a month, with downloads and commercial rights: about $0.16 a minute (our arithmetic). Business is $66 a month billed yearly, 96 hours a year.

    Source: murf.aichecked

    Free option

    10 minutes of studio voice, no downloads; $10 of API credit

    The free studio plan has no commercial rights. The API trial needs no card.

    Source: murf.aichecked

    Arena rank (Oct 25)

    #26 of 98 (Falcon 2); Gen2 #82

    Source: artificialanalysis.aichecked

    API price

    $0.01 per 1,000 characters (Falcon 2.1)

    That is $10 per 1M. Murf's Falcon 2 page gives the same price as 1 cent a minute; Gen2 costs $0.03 per 1,000 characters.

    Source: murf.aichecked

    Voice cloning

    Enterprise plans only

    Professional voice cloning is listed under Enterprise. Murf's terms require a speaker's explicit written consent.

    Source: murf.aichecked

    Languages

    35+ on the API, 30+ in the studio

    Source: murf.aichecked

    Good

    • Falcon 2.1 costs $0.01 per 1,000 characters, an eighth of Eleven v4's API price.
    • A mature studio for training videos and slides, with pronunciation controls, a Canva add-on and PowerPoint on Business.
    • Trustpilot 4.6 from 186 reviews.

    Watch out for

    • Studio minutes cost more: about two hours a month for $19, roughly $0.16 a minute.
    • No self-serve voice cloning: it is an Enterprise feature.
    • The studio-quality Gen2 model ranks #82 of 98 on Artificial Analysis's arena.

    Skip it if: you clone voices yourself or need many hours of narration a month on a small budget.

    Murf's Falcon 2 page, which gives the model's price as 1 cent per minute and its time to first audio as under 100 ms.
    Murf's Falcon 2 page, which gives the model's price as 1 cent per minute and its time to first audio as under 100 ms.

    Source: murf.aichecked

    Visit Murf

  6. 6. Typecast

    Expressive character voices with avatars and video export
    Typecast's studio plans on monthly billing: Free, Basic at $5, Plus at $19, Pro at $29 and Business at $69. Generating and playing audio is free; downloads use credits.
    Typecast's studio plans on monthly billing: Free, Basic at $5, Plus at $19, Pro at $29 and Business at $69. Generating and playing audio is free; downloads use credits.

    Source: typecast.aichecked

    Typecast is a Korean AI voice studio with more than 600 character voices, emotion presets such as whisper and low tone, and Smart Emotion, which reads the context to choose a delivery. Generating and playing audio is unlimited on every plan; credits are spent only on downloads. Its maker, Neosapience, listed on KOSDAQ in September 2026.

    Cheapest paid option

    $5 a month (Basic), or $54 a year

    30,000 download credits, about 35 minutes, all voices at 44.1 kHz, one instant clone and a commercial licence. Smart Emotion controls start on Pro at $29.

    Source: typecast.aichecked

    Free option

    Unlimited generation; 3,000 lifetime download credits

    About 5 minutes of downloads in total, trial voices only, and attribution is required on everything downloaded free.

    Source: typecast.aichecked

    Arena rank (Oct 25)

    Not in the 98-model table; arena Elo 1100

    Artificial Analysis shows an Elo for SSFM 3.0 on its model page but no rank.

    Source: artificialanalysis.aichecked

    API price

    $75 per 1M characters (Lite, $15 for 200,000)

    Billed separately from the studio; free API audio cannot be used commercially.

    Source: typecast.aichecked

    Voice cloning

    Instant from a 5-second sample, from Basic

    Typecast's pricing and cloning pages disagree on how many professional clone slots each plan has.

    Source: typecast.aichecked

    Languages

    35+

    Source: typecast.aichecked

    Good

    • Commercial licence and an instant clone from $5 a month.
    • Emotion presets and context-aware Smart Emotion for character and story voices, with avatars and video export.
    • Generation and playback are unlimited, so you pay only for what you download.

    Watch out for

    • Few minutes per dollar: about 35 minutes of downloads for $5 and 50 for $19.
    • No rank on Artificial Analysis's arena and almost no independent reviews.
    • Typecast tells agencies and institutions to use its $69 Business plan.

    Skip it if: you narrate long books or courses: the cheaper plans run out after 35 to 90 minutes of downloads a month.

    Typecast's home page: the text-to-speech demo with its emotion presets, such as Happy, Sad, Angry, Whisper and Low tone.
    Typecast's home page: the text-to-speech demo with its emotion presets, such as Happy, Sad, Angry, Whisper and Low tone.

    Source: typecast.aichecked

    Visit Typecast

Facts we checked

Stated plainly, with where each one comes from and when we last looked.

ClaimValueSource
ElevenLabs released Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo on September 28, 2026, with more than 90 languages and instant clones from about 10 seconds of audio.

Source: elevenlabs.iochecked

ElevenLabs' API lists Eleven v4 at $0.08 and v4 Turbo at $0.04 per 1,000 characters, or $80 and $40 per million.

Source: elevenlabs.iochecked

On October 25, 2026, Artificial Analysis's Provider Voice Arena ranked Eleven v4 Turbo first and Eleven v4 second of 98 models; Cartesia Sonic 3.6 was fourth and Fish Audio Drama 3 Preview ninth, the top open-weights model.

Source: artificialanalysis.aichecked

Fish Audio released Drama 3 with open weights on October 13, 2026; its API price is $10 per million bytes until November 12, then $50.

Source: fish.audiochecked

Speechify's API added Simba 3.5, with 48 languages under one model id, on October 21, 2026; it is billed at launch prices until November 21, 2026.

Source: speechify.aichecked

Typecast's maker, Neosapience, listed on KOSDAQ on September 21, 2026 at KRW 10,000 a share, below its offering range.

Source: news.bizwatch.co.krchecked

How to do it

Each step is one thing to do.

  1. Keep the recordings behind your cloned voices

    A cloned voice cannot be moved from one service to another. Keep the original audio you cloned it from, so you can make the same voice again on the new tool.

  2. Use your ElevenLabs credits before you downgrade

    ElevenLabs drops unused credits when you downgrade or cancel and rolls them over for at most two months only while you stay subscribed. Finish what you need first.

  3. Run the same script on two or three free tiers

    Speechify's API gives 500,000 free characters a month, Cartesia 20,000 and Fish Audio about 7 minutes. Use your own script and voice style, and listen on the speakers your audience will use.

  4. Check commercial rights before you publish

    Free audio from Fish Audio, Cartesia, Murf, Typecast and MiniMax is for personal use only. Speechify's free API tier allows commercial use; ElevenLabs' free plan does not.

  5. Price it in your own language

    Fish Audio bills bytes and MiniMax counts a Chinese or Japanese character as two credits, so text in those languages can cost two to three times the English rate.

  6. Switch off model training where you can

    ElevenLabs and Cartesia both let you opt out of training on your data, from the moment you opt out. Set it before you upload a voice you care about.

How we ranked these ElevenLabs alternatives

The job this list ranks for is replacing ElevenLabs for what most people use it for: natural text to speech, cloned voices and an API. Every product here runs its own voice models and has a free way to start. They were placed on public blind-test rankings, price per character, voice cloning and the consent it asks for, languages, commercial rights on free plans, and what each company may do with your audio. Every price, limit and term was read on the maker's own pages on October 25, 2026, and carries its link.

Fish Audio is first because it covers the most of what ElevenLabs does, at a fraction of the API price, and adds open weights. Cartesia ranks highest on blind tests but is built for developers only. Speechify's API is the cheapest well-ranked option, and MiniMax Audio scores second only to Speechify among these tools on the public blind test of cloned voices.

Where ElevenLabs stands in October 2026

ElevenLabs released Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo on September 28, 2026, with more than 90 languages and instant clones from about 10 seconds of audio. Its API pricing page lists v4 at $80 per million characters and v4 Turbo at $40. In the apps, the Starter plan costs $6 a month ($1 for the first month until November 1) and includes a commercial licence and instant cloning; the free plan's 10,000 monthly credits may only be used non-commercially, with attribution.

Early v4 users quoted from r/ElevenLabs by eesel describe an American accent bleeding into other languages, an overly theatrical delivery for restrained voices, and the loss of the style and speed sliders. On Trustpilot ElevenLabs scores 3.0 from 1,205 reviews, with recent one-star reviews about subscriptions restarting after cancelling. If price, those changes or billing are why you are leaving, the tools below are the realistic options.

What the public leaderboards show

Artificial Analysis's Provider Voice Arena ranks 98 models by blind listener votes on each provider's own voices. As read on October 25, 2026:

  • #1 Eleven v4 Turbo and #2 Eleven v4
  • #4 Cartesia Sonic 3.6
  • #9 Fish Audio Drama 3 Preview, the top open-weights model
  • #10 Speechify Simba 3.2
  • #24 MiniMax Speech 2.8 HD
  • #26 Murf Falcon 2

Typecast's SSFM 3.0 has an arena Elo of 1100 on its model page but no rank. Vapi's Humanness Index compares cloned voices only and is still provisional, at about 14,000 votes: Eleven v3 scores 98, Speechify Simba 3.2 97, MiniMax Speech 2.8 93 and Fish Audio S2.1 Pro 84. Eleven v4 is not on it yet.

Several vendors still advertise a first place from older snapshots. Cartesia's Sonic page carries a "Ranked #1 in Speech Arena" badge, Speechify announced Simba 3.2 as number one in July, and MiniMax's Speech 2.8 HD was fifth in a May snapshot. The vendors' own head-to-head tests, such as Cartesia's Sonic 3.6 post and Fish Audio's blind test, were run against Eleven v3, before v4. ElevenLabs' own v4 test says listeners preferred v4 over Sonic 3.6 about three times in four; that is a vendor test too.

Studio, real-time API or reading app: which one you need

  • A voice studio for voiceovers, audiobooks and videos: Fish Audio's app, MiniMax Audio, Murf's studio and Typecast. These replace ElevenLabs' web app and Studio.
  • A real-time API for voice agents and apps: Cartesia, Speechify's API, Murf's Falcon and Fish Audio's API. Compare the price per million characters and the time to first audio.
  • A reading app that reads documents aloud: Speechify's Reader, at $29 a month or $139 a year, is a listening app; it does not include the API and does not export voiceovers.

Fish Audio's API bills UTF-8 bytes rather than characters. An English letter is one byte, but a Chinese or Japanese character is three, so the same $15 buys about a third as much text in those languages. MiniMax counts a Chinese or Japanese character as two credits.

The tools differ most in what they ask before you clone a voice. Fish Audio has the speaker read a passage aloud live for a professional clone and matches the voiceprint against the training audio. Speechify's API checks a spoken consent phrase and the speaker. ElevenLabs allows professional clones of your own voice only, after a spoken verification. Cartesia, MiniMax and Typecast say you may only clone a voice you have the right to use, but describe no check, and Murf's terms require written consent from the speaker, with cloning sold only on Enterprise.

Other tools we looked at

  • NaturalReader is a reading app that resells voices from Gemini, OpenAI, Azure and ElevenLabs. Its ElevenLabs voices cost 10 to 20 credits per character, it has no API, and it scores 1.5 from 59 reviews on Trustpilot.
  • Luvvoice makes its speech with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or its own models, according to its privacy policy. It appears on no public leaderboard, and its $8 Lite plan does not list commercial rights.
  • TTSMaker turned away automated visits to its official pages when this list was researched, so its prices, terms and operator could not be confirmed, and it appears on no public leaderboard.

For more voice tools, see our Fish Audio review.

Where these tools fall short

What they still get wrong, with the evidence, and what no public test has settled yet.

Weak

Weak

  • None of these alternatives outranks ElevenLabs on public blind tests today.

    Evidence: On Artificial Analysis's arena on October 25, 2026, Eleven v4 Turbo and Eleven v4 are first and second; the best alternative here, Cartesia's Sonic 3.6, is fourth.

  • Leaderboard places change within weeks.

    Evidence: Speechify's Simba 3.2 was first in July 2026 and is tenth now; MiniMax Speech 2.8 HD was fifth in May and is 24th.

  • Several pricing pages disagree with themselves.

    Evidence: Fish Audio's credits per minute do not match its Plus minutes, Murf gives Falcon's price as both 1 cent a minute and 1 cent per 1,000 characters, and Typecast's pricing and cloning pages list different clone slots.

Uncertain

Uncertain

  • How Eleven v4 compares on cloned voices.

    Why unsure: Vapi's Humanness Index, the public blind test of cloned voices used here, is provisional and does not include Eleven v4 yet.

  • How long Fish Audio's free developer API lasts.

    Why unsure: Fish Audio's own post gives November 30, 2026 as the end date and, in an update, August 31, 2026.

Common questions

Answer first, then why, an example, the limits and what to do next.

What is the best ElevenLabs alternative?

For most people, Fish Audio: it has a large voice library, cloning with a live speaker check, mobile apps and an API at $15 per million bytes of English text, under a fifth of Eleven v4's $80 per million characters. For real-time voice agents, Cartesia ranks closest to ElevenLabs on blind tests, fourth of 98; for the cheapest API, Speechify charges $6 to $10 per million characters.

Is there a free ElevenLabs alternative?

Yes: Speechify's API gives 500,000 free characters a month, with commercial use and no card. Cartesia gives 20,000 characters a month, Fish Audio about 7 minutes and MiniMax Audio about 12 minutes, all for personal use only. Fish Audio's Drama 3 model is also free to download and run yourself if your business makes under US$500,000 a year.

Which ElevenLabs alternative has the cheapest API?

Speechify and Murf have the cheapest APIs here: Speechify charges $6 to $10 per million characters by plan, and Murf's Falcon 2.1 costs $0.01 per 1,000 characters, or $10 per million. Fish Audio's S2.1 Pro is $15 per million bytes of English text. Eleven v4 lists at $80 per million and v4 Turbo at $40, and MiniMax's HD model costs $100.

Which ElevenLabs alternative is best for voice cloning?

On Vapi's provisional Humanness Index, the public blind test of cloned voices, Speechify's Simba 3.2 scores 97 and MiniMax's Speech 2.8 scores 93, against 98 for Eleven v3; Fish Audio's S2.1 Pro scores 84. Fish Audio and Speechify also check consent most strictly: Fish has the speaker read a passage live, and Speechify's API checks a spoken consent phrase.

Is there an open-source ElevenLabs alternative?

No tool here is fully open source, but Fish Audio publishes the weights of Drama 3, which ranks ninth of 98 on Artificial Analysis's arena. They come under the Fish Audio Community License rather than an open-source licence: Drama 3 is free for research and for businesses under US$500,000 a year, and any hosted voice service needs a paid licence. The other tools here are closed.

Can I use AI voices commercially on a free plan?

Most free plans do not allow commercial use: free audio from ElevenLabs, Fish Audio, Cartesia, Murf, MiniMax Audio and Typecast is for personal use only, and ElevenLabs and Typecast also ask for attribution. Speechify's free API tier is the exception: its pricing page lists commercial use on the free plan.

Sources

Sources

  1. Fish Audio home page (fish.audio), accessed
  2. Fish Audio pricing (fish.audio), accessed
  3. Artificial Analysis: text to speech leaderboard (Provider Voice Arena) (artificialanalysis.ai), accessed
  4. Fish Audio docs: pricing and rate limits (docs.fish.audio), accessed
  5. Fish Audio: professional voice cloning (fish.audio), accessed
  6. Fish Audio Community License (github.com), accessed
  7. Cartesia Sonic (cartesia.ai), accessed
  8. Cartesia pricing (cartesia.ai), accessed
  9. SpeechifyAI text-to-speech API (speechify.ai), accessed
  10. SpeechifyAI API pricing (speechify.ai), accessed
  11. SpeechifyAI API reference: speech (docs.speechify.ai), accessed
  12. MiniMax Audio (minimax.io), accessed
  13. MiniMax Audio plans (minimax.io), accessed
  14. MiniMax API: speech pricing (platform.minimax.io), accessed
  15. MiniMax: Speech 2.8 (minimax.io), accessed
  16. MiniMax app and web terms of service (minimax.io), accessed
  17. Murf home page (murf.ai), accessed
  18. Murf pricing (murf.ai), accessed
  19. Typecast home page (typecast.ai), accessed
  20. Typecast pricing (typecast.ai), accessed
  21. Artificial Analysis: Typecast SSFM-v30 (artificialanalysis.ai), accessed
  22. Typecast API pricing (typecast.ai), accessed
  23. Typecast voice cloning (typecast.ai), accessed
  24. Typecast docs: overview (typecast.ai), accessed
  25. ElevenLabs: Eleven v4 (September 28, 2026) (elevenlabs.io), accessed
  26. ElevenLabs API pricing (elevenlabs.io), accessed
  27. Fish Audio: Drama 3 (October 13, 2026) (fish.audio), accessed
  28. Bizwatch: Neosapience KOSDAQ listing (September 2026) (news.bizwatch.co.kr), accessed
  29. ElevenLabs pricing (elevenlabs.io), accessed
  30. ElevenLabs docs: professional voice cloning (elevenlabs.io), accessed
  31. eesel: Eleven v4, what changed (October 2026) (eesel.ai), accessed
  32. Trustpilot: ElevenLabs reviews (trustpilot.com), accessed
  33. Vapi Humanness Index (humannessindex.vapi.ai), accessed
  34. Gradium: best ElevenLabs alternatives (May 2026 snapshot) (gradium.ai), accessed
  35. Fish Audio: blind TTS provider comparison (April 2026) (fish.audio), accessed
  36. Cartesia: introducing Sonic 3.6 (August 2026) (cartesia.ai), accessed
  37. Cartesia terms of service (cartesia.ai), accessed
  38. Speechify Reader pricing (speechify.com), accessed
  39. ProPakistani: Speechify's Simba 3.2 tops a blind test (July 11, 2026) (propakistani.pk), accessed
  40. Murf terms of service (murf.ai), accessed
  41. NaturalReader help: pay-as-you-go credits (help.naturalreaders.com), accessed
  42. Trustpilot: NaturalReader reviews (trustpilot.com), accessed
  43. Luvvoice privacy policy (luvvoice.com), accessed
  44. ElevenLabs docs: models (elevenlabs.io), accessed
  45. ElevenLabs docs: billing (elevenlabs.io), accessed
  46. ElevenLabs privacy policy (elevenlabs.io), accessed
  47. Hugging Face: fishaudio/drama-3 (huggingface.co), accessed
  48. Fish Audio: S2.1 Pro free API (fish.audio), accessed
  49. Trustpilot: Fish Audio reviews (trustpilot.com), accessed
  50. Fish Audio privacy policy (fish.audio), accessed
  51. eesel: Fish Audio Drama 3 review (October 2026) (eesel.ai), accessed
  52. Cartesia vs ElevenLabs (Cartesia) (cartesia.ai), accessed
  53. Cartesia docs: TTS models (docs.cartesia.ai), accessed
  54. SpeechifyAI models (speechify.ai), accessed
  55. Speechify Studio pricing (speechify.com), accessed
  56. Trustpilot: Speechify reviews (trustpilot.com), accessed
  57. MiniMax API reference: text to audio (platform.minimax.io), accessed
  58. MiniMax Audio privacy policy (minimax.io), accessed
  59. Murf Falcon 2 (murf.ai), accessed
  60. Trustpilot: Murf reviews (trustpilot.com), accessed
  61. Luvvoice pricing (luvvoice.com), accessed
  62. TTSMaker (ttsmaker.com), accessed

Changelog

Changelog

  1. List created from public sources: prices, free plans, cloning rules and terms read on each maker's pages, and leaderboard ranks read on October 25, 2026.

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