AI-powered text-to-speech software uses artificial intelligence to create or modify realistic-sounding human speech. Thanks to the growing accessibility of AI technology, these AI voice generators are now widely available and easy to use—even for those without audio engineering expertise. Simply input text or upload an audio file, select the characteristics of the voice you want to produce, and let the software take care of the rest. Some AI voice generators even offer voice cloning, letting you recreate the voice of a specific person—your favorite singer or actress, for example—with varying degrees of accuracy.
We evaluated some of the best AI-powered text-to-speech software to see how they compared on features and price. Here are our picks for the best text-to-speech software in 2024:
- Murf: Best for Multichannel Content Creation
- PlayHT: Best for AI Voice Agents
- LOVO: Best Combined AI Voice and Video Platform
- ElevenLabs: Best for Enterprise AI Scalability
- Speechify: Best for AI Narration
- Altered: Best for Real-Time Voice Morphing
Featured Partners: AI Software
Top AI Voice Text-to-Speech Software Comparison
The following chart shows at a high level how the best AI voice generators compare against key criteria for generative AI voice software.
Best For | Multilingual Voices | Custom Voices | Dubbing and Translation | API | Starting Price | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Murf | Best for Multichannel Content Creation | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $19 per month, billed annually, or $29 billed monthly for one editor |
PlayHT | Best for AI Voice Agents | Yes | Limited | Yes | Yes | Free for non-commercial use, 12,500 characters, and one voice clone |
LOVO | Best Combined Voice and Video Platform | Yes | Yes | Limited | Yes | $24 per user, per month, billed annually$29 per user, billed monthlyFree 14-day trial |
ElevenLabs | Best for Enterprise Scalability | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free for up to 10,000 credits per month |
Speechify | Best for AI Narration | Limited variety and availability | Yes | Yes | Limited | Free for 10 standard reading voices and limited text-to-speech features |
Altered | Best for Real-Time Voice Morphing | Limited to some features | Yes | Yes | Limited | Free for one voice, 10,000 AI tokens, and three minutes per month voice morphing |
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Murf
Best for Multichannel Content Creation
Murf is one of the top generative AI voice tools available to both casual and business users, providing them with an accessible user interface and a range of scalable voice generation and editing features. Its core capabilities include text-to-speech generation, no-code voice editing, AI-driven translation, voice deployment to apps via API, voice cloning, and an AI dubbing feature that supports more than 20 languages.
Many business users select this tool for its wide range of collaborative features, enterprise-level security and compliance expertise and features, vocal quality and variety, and comprehensive support for various enterprise use cases.
On top of its easy-to-use enterprise integrations with various creative and product development tools, Murf also offers free creative guides and resources. These cover topics and formats ranging from e-learning and Spotify ads to corporate videos and advertisements, IVR voices, animation character voices, documentaries, and more.
Why We Picked Murf
We picked Murf because it’s a flexible platform that supports content creation across different channels. It has an easy-to-use interface with strong text-to-speech, voice cloning, and dubbing features, making it great for both business and creative users. Its integration with tools like Canva and Adobe makes it convenient for teams working on creative projects, and its enterprise-level security ensures that it meets strict data protection standards.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Use case-specific support guides | No free plan beyond a 10-minute free trial |
Lots of integrations for popular tools and platforms | No built-in voiceover recording |
Detailed customization across voice styles | Voice cloning limited to higher-tier plans |
Pricing
- Creator Lite: $19 per month billed annually, or $29 billed monthly for one editor to access up to five projects and 24 hours per year of voice generation
- Creator Plus: $33 per month billed annually, or $49 billed monthly for one editor to access up to 30 projects and four hours per month of voice generation (up to 48 hours per year)
- Business Lite: $66 per month billed annually, or $99 billed monthly for up to three editors and five viewers to access up to 50 projects and eight hours per month of voice generation (up to 96 hours per year); free trial access to this plan’s features is available for one editor, up to two projects, and up to 10 minutes of voice generation
- Business Plus: $133 per month billed annually, or $199 billed monthly for up to three editors and five viewers to access up to 200 projects and 20 hours per month of voice generation (up to 240 hours per year); free trial access to this plan’s features is available for one editor, up to two projects, and up to 10 minutes of voice generation
- Enterprise: Pricing information available upon request; this plan is designed for more than five editors and unlimited viewers to create custom projects with unlimited voice generation access
- Murf API: Pricing information available upon request
- AI Translation: Add-on for Enterprise and Business plan users; pricing information available upon request
Features
- Integrations: Available for Canva, Google Slides, Adobe Audition, Adobe Captivate and Captivate Classic, and HTML embed code; users can also download Murf Voices Installer to directly incorporate Murf voices into Windows apps
- Vocal Library: More than 120 voices, styles, and tonalities in more than 20 languages
- Team Collaboration and Project Organization: Folders, sub-folders, shareable links, and private folders and projects
- Enterprise Compliance: Depending on the plan selected, users can benefit from GDPR, SOC2, and EU compliance support as well as SSO, access logs, custom contracts, and security reviews
- Visual Voice Editing: Easy-to-use buttons and clickability to adjust pitch, emphasis, speed, interjections, pauses, pronunciation, and more
Read Top Generative AI Tools and Apps to find more apps to boost your workflow.
PlayHT
Best for AI Voice Agents
PlayHT has been a favorite artificial intelligence (AI) voice generation tool for a few years now, offering users a highly accessible and scalable tool for multilingual AI voice generation. Compared to other AI voice generation tools, PlayHT first and foremost sets itself apart with its range of voice and language options: All plans, including the free plan, can access 907 voices and 142 different languages and accents. The tool also comes with limited instant voice clones and offers high-fidelity clones to enterprise users.
Beyond its more conventional AI voice features and tools, PlayHT is geared toward a very specific use case: AI voice agents. With its Play Agents feature set, users can create personalized AI voice agent avatars and set specific parameters and prompts for how they should interact with users. The tool also includes several pre-built agent templates, API-driven options for agent training and tracking, and an easy-to-use table for monitoring conversation history.
Why We Picked PlayHT
PlayHT is ideal for those focusing on building AI voice agents, thanks to its dedicated tools for creating conversational AI avatars. With support for over 900 voices across 142 languages and accents, it’s one of the most diverse platforms we’ve evaluated. PlayHT’s pre-built templates for AI agents in industries like healthcare and hospitality make it easy to get started, with the platform’s API providing further flexibility for customization.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
More voice and language options than most competitors | Multilingual features somewhat limited for voice cloning |
Dedicated, easy-to-use technology for AI voice agents | Character limits in Free and Creator plans |
Solid API integrations | Voice quality can be inconsistent |
Pricing
Pricing for PlayHT depends on whether you select PlayHT Studio, AI voice agents, or the API subscription plans. All prices are based on annual plans unless stated otherwise.
PlayHT Studio
- Free Plan: Noncommercial access to all voices and languages, one instant voice clone, and up to 12,500 characters
- Creator: $31.20 per month for 10 instant voice clones and 3 million characters per year
- Unlimited: $99 per month for unlimited characters and unlimited voice clones
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
AI Voice Agents
- Free Plan: Noncommercial access to 30 minutes of agent content creation
- Pro: $20 billed monthly plus $0.05 per each minute used over 400 minutes
- Business: $99 billed monthly plus $0.05 per each minute used over 2,000 minutes
- Growth: $499 billed monthly plus $0.05 per each minute used over 10,000 minutes
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
PlayHT API
- Free Plan: Noncommercial access to all voices and languages, one instant voice clone, and up to 12,500 characters
- Hacker: $5 billed monthly plus $0.25 per every additional 1,000 characters over 25,000 characters per month
- Startup: $299 billed monthly plus $0.20 per every additional 1,000 characters over 1.5 million characters per month
- Growth: $999 billed monthly plus $0.10 per every additional 1,000 characters over 10 million characters per month
- Business: Custom pricing
Features
- Multilingual Voice Library: Includes 907 text-to-speech voices and 142 languages and accents
- Pronunciation Library: Lets users define specific pronunciations and save these rules for future projects
- Multi-Voice Content Creation: A single audio file and project can include multiple voices
- Play Agents Feature: Custom AI voice agents and preconfigured agent templates for healthcare, hotels, restaurants, front desks, and e-commerce can be used to create more intelligent customer service AI chatbots/agents
- Real-Time Streaming API: Character-based pricing for API access, which scales up to include dedicated enterprise clusters and other advanced features
For more information about generative AI providers, read Top Generative AI Companies.
LOVO
Best Combined AI Voice and Video Platform
LOVO offers a robust suite of AI tools that assist with voice generation and voiceover tasks as well as other creative endeavors related to video and image creation. Its flagship platform, Genny, is designed to be easy-to-use. It leverages LOVO’s own generative AI technologies to facilitate tasks like video editing, subtitle generation, voice generation, and voice cloning. With the help of ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion models, users can also generate short-form and long-form text and AI art projects at no additional cost and without needing any third-party tools.
Users of LOVO appreciate the fact that the tool supports multiple languages and unique vocal tones, is intuitive, and offers high-quality voice outputs compared to competitors. Many users also appreciate that they can buy affordable, lifetime deals through AppSumo, making it a cost-effective option for long-term projects.
Why We Picked LOVO
LOVO’s all-in-one platform, Genny, merges AI voice generation with video creation, making it ideal for users who need more than just text-to-speech. The platform supports voice cloning, video editing, and even AI-driven image generation, supported by ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion models. This will appeal to content creators interested in AI video production, as will Genny’s emphasis on high-quality, multilingual voice output.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Built-in voice recorder and upload options for voice cloning | Priority queue may delay projects for Free and Basic plan users |
All-in-one solution for video, voice, and image creation tasks | Expensive per-user pricing structure |
API integration available | Occasional pronunciation issues |
Pricing
- Basic: $24 per month for one user per plan subscription; includes two hours of voice generation a month, five voice clones, and more than 500 AI voices
- Pro: $48 per user, per month, with 50 percent discount for the first year; 14-day free trial
- Pro+: $149 per user, per month, with 50 percent discount for the first year
- Enterprise: Available upon request
Features
- Genny: All-in-one video creation platform with voice generation, voice cloning, subtitle generation, art generation, text generation, and video editing capabilities
- Multilingual Voice Library: Includes more than 500 voices and more than 100 languages. LOVO also caters voices to more than 25 emotions
- Built-In Voice Recorder: For voice cloning, users can record their voices directly within the LOVO platform or upload a pre-recorded clip
- Simple Mode: Faster, lightweight Simple Mode for shorter voice generation and voiceover projects (between 2,000 and 5,000 characters)
- API Access: LOVO voice application development features are available in all plans
Read Midjourney vs. Dall-E: Best AI Image Generator for an in-depth comparison of two leading AI art generators.
ElevenLabs
Best for Enterprise AI Scalability
ElevenLabs is an AI research firm that has developed comprehensive AI voice technologies for text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, dubbing, voice cloning, and multilingual content generation. Users consistently praise the platform for producing some of the most lifelike AI voices available today, often remarking on how natural and authentic the vocal tone is compared to other competitors.
ElevenLabs is one of the most business-friendly AI voice tools on the market today. It caters to a wide range of needs with flexible pricing options, from a comprehensive free plan that covers 29 languages and thousands of voices to its top-tier offering for enterprises. At the highest level, businesses gain access to perks like custom contract terms, SSO, unlimited concurrency, and volume-based discounts.
For startups, ElevenLabs also offers a grant program designed for fledgling businesses. Eligible applicants who can convince the vendor of their long-term strategy and growth potential get three months of free access to ElevenLabs, which includes 11 million characters per month and enterprise-grade features.
Why We Picked ElevenLabs
We picked ElevenLabs for its flexible pricing structure and lifelike selection of voices, making it a good fit for businesses looking for customization and scalability in their AI voice generation software. Users frequently highlight the platform’s high audio quality and scalable plans, which include a generous, feature-rich free tier. While its API documentation may be limited, the API is available in all plans, offering more granular options for businesses with complex or specific requirements.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Users frequently praise the audio quality | Unclear if user limits apply to certain subscription levels |
Scalable plans and generous free features | Somewhat limited API documentation (though API is available in all plans) |
Multiple language options | Voice customization can require some detailed work |
Pricing
- Free: 10,000 monthly characters, or approximately 10 minutes of audio per month
- Starter: $4.17 per month, with the first two months free; includes 30,000 monthly credits, or around 30 minutes of audio per month
- Creator: $18.83 per month, with the first two months free; includes 100,000 monthly credits, or around 100 minutes of audio per month
- Pro: $82.50 per month, with the first two months free; includes 500,000 monthly credits, or around 500 minutes of audio per month
- Scale: $275 per month, with the first two months free; includes 2 million monthly credits, or around 2,000 minutes of audio per month
- Business: $1,100 per month, with the first two months free
- Custom Enterprise Plans: Available upon request
Features
- Precision Voice Tuning: Adjust vocal stability and variability, vocal clarity, and style exaggerations with drag-and-drop editing
- Multilingual Voice Library: Text-to-speech available in 1,000 voices and 32 languages
- Speech to Speech: Upload an audio file or record your own voice and turn it into a different voice
- Dubbing Studio: Video translation and dubbing available in 29 languages, with automatic transcription, translation, and voice cloning to ensure that each speaker retains their original voice characteristics across languages
- AI Speech Classifier: Lets users upload an audio file and determine whether the clip was created by ElevenLabs AI
Speechify
Best for AI Narration
Speechify is an AI voice solution that specializes in text-to-speech technology for mobile platforms and more casual use cases, like article narration. With the Speechify AI platform, users can select from a wide variety of AI voices, including voices that mimic celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Snoop Dogg. All of this is available in various mobile and online locations, including through browser extensions that are accessible and favorably reviewed by users.
While Speechify’s core audience is recreational users, students, and other more casual users who want a convenient solution for reading aloud text in various formats, the platform offers some key enterprise AI usability features through its Voice Over Studio for Business. With this suite of Speechify solutions, business users can benefit from unlimited video and voice downloads, commercial rights, collaborative project management features, dozens of voices, and enterprise security and compliance features.
Why We Picked Speechify
We picked Speechify for its ease of use and accessibility, making it ideal for non-professional users, students, and audiobook lovers. Its mobile and browser integrations let users access text-to-speech easily, and the celebrity voices add a fun, personal touch. While it’s mainly designed for individuals, Speechify also offers business features like project collaboration and commercial usage rights, making it useful for professional narration tasks as well as more personal ones. Though not as robust for large businesses, its simple yet functional design makes it a good choice for AI narration.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Wide range of subscription options and price points | Waitlist for text-to-speech API |
Accessible browser extensions and mobile app versions | Not the most robust tool for enterprises |
Offers an offline mode | Free-tier voices can sound flat and robotic |
Pricing
Pricing depends on how you plan to use the tool. Some of the options available to Speechify users include the following:
Speechify Text to Speech
- Limited Plan: Free for 10 standard voices, speeds up to 1x, and basic text-to-speech features
- Premium Plan: $11.58 per month for more than 30 high-quality voices, 20 languages, and speeds up to 5x
Speechify Studio
- Free Plan: AI voice-over, video support, and 10 minutes of voice generation
- Basic Plan: $24 per user, per month for 50 hours of voice generation, dubbing, transcription, and commercial usage rights
- Professional Plan: $32.08 per user, per month for AI avatars, voice cloning, and 100 hours of voice generation
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing available
Features
- Browser Extensions and App: Accessible via Chrome and Edge extensions, as well as Android, iOS, and PDF readers like Adobe Acrobat
- Multilingual Voice Library: Enterprise users get access to over 100 voices in more than 40 languages
- AI Dubbing: Supports dubbing in multiple languages, with options to adjust voice, tone, and speed
- AI Video Generator: Users can create videos voiced and presented by AI avatars
- Various Upload and Download Formats: Users can upload content in .txt, .docx, .srt, or YouTube URL formats and download projects as video, audio, or text
Altered
Best for Real-Time Voice Morphing
Altered distinguishes itself from competing AI voice generators by focusing on real-time voice transformation and morphing, allowing users to change their voice in live settings. This is particularly useful in scenarios like streaming and gaming, where users may wish to alter their voice or adopt a specific vocal identity, or for privacy or role-playing purposes. Altered’s real-time voice changer enables users to modify their voice with low latency, which is essential for real-time situations.
Altered also offers post-production tools like voice cloning and voice puppeteering, which allows users to adjust the pitch, tone, or delivery of their speech. Equally interesting is the tool’s Accent Conversion tool, which is designed to standardize the accent, identity, and even emotion of call center staff. In addition to the above, Altered offers text-to-speech functionality, transcription, translation, and an API for enterprise users who want to integrate and customize the service for specific uses.
Why We Picked Altered
We picked Altered because it offers unique functionality for users interested in real-time AI voice generation. The real-time voice morphing is fast and responsive, allowing for seamless voice manipulation during live interactions, while Altered’s post-production features, like voice puppeteering and voice cloning, provide flexibility for creative projects. The pricing is also reasonably affordable, with various plans to suit different needs, from free options for basic use to more advanced plans for professional and enterprise-level applications.
Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
High-quality, real-time voice changing | Doesn’t support all web browsers |
Wide range of voice modulation options | Fairly limited Free tier |
Lots of post-production tools | Some features require tokens to use |
Pricing
Altered offers a variety of subscriptions based on usage requirements.
- Free: Unlimited real-time voice editing (one voice) at 16kHz, three minutes per month voice morphing, and 10,000 AI tokens
- Real-Time: $6 per month, with 80 percent off the first month, for unlimited real-time voice editing at 16kHz, five minutes per month voice morphing, and 25,000 AI tokens
- Creator: $30 per month for unlimited real-time voice editing, 60 minutes per month of voice morphing, 325,000 AI tokens, and accent and speaking style morphing
- Professional: $90 per month for unlimited real-time voice editing, 180 minutes per month of morphing, 1,000,000 AI tokens, 48kHz output, and flexible/performance voice morphing
- Enterprise: Available on request; includes API access
Features
- Real-Time Voice Changer: Low-latency voice morphing with noise reduction for live communication and gaming
- Voice Cloning: Lets users create voice clones from a few seconds of recording for personalized voice applications
- Text-to-Speech: Supports more than 70 languages and accents
- AI Voice Cleaning: Removes background noise, filler sounds, and other sound artifacts to audio quality
- Custom Voices: Enables the creation of custom voice models without additional per-voice fees
- Voice Puppeteering: Integrates AI with voice acting to control voices for audio content creation
Key Features of AI Text-to-Speech Software
AI text-to-speech software typically includes features that help users transform text, audio, and other media into voices with adjustable qualities to meet their needs. Additionally, many of these generative AI tools come with features to make enterprise-level collaboration and content creation run more smoothly.
Text to Speech
As the term implies, text-to-speech is a type of AI technology that changes written text into spoken audio. Most AI voice generator software enables users to use text prompts in various lengths and languages, which are then processed to produce a spoken version of the content.
Voice Cloning
With voice cloning, AI technology can capture the content, tonality, speed, and other characteristics of a person’s voice in a recording and use that information to create a faithful replica—or clone—of their voice. With this capability, users can generate entirely new content and recordings that sound as though they were spoken by said person.
Custom Voices or Voice Changing
With some AI voice generation tools, users can submit a voice clip or record their own voice directly into the app and then modify it to sound like a completely different character. This is typically done by making adjustments to tone, accent, mood, and other vocal traits within the platform. Many users find this feature valuable for creative projects, such as video game development.
Multilingual Voice Library
Most generative AI voice tools give users access to a diverse, multilingual library of predeveloped voice models. Because the pronunciation and intonation of speech often differ between languages, these tools ensure that each language is represented accurately. This allows users to create more natural-sounding voice recordings that respect the unique characteristics of each language’s speech patterns.
Dubbing and Translation
Taking TTS a step further, dubbing and translation with AI support the work to translate an existing text or voice recording into a different spoken language. For dubbing specifically, existing recordings—often movies, commercials, and other visual media—are given a new voice track, typically in a different language, generated by an AI model.
APIs and Third-Party Integrations
With the help of APIs and built-in third-party integrations, users can more easily add AI voice creation and editing capabilities directly into their app and product development workflows. A growing number of AI voice tools are adding relevant third-party integrations to creative platforms, as well as social and distribution channels.
To learn about today’s top generative AI tools for the video market, see our guide: 5 Best AI Video Generators.
How We Evaluated AI Voice Generators
To evaluate these AI voice generators and other leaders in this AI market sector, we looked at each tool’s standard and unique features while focusing on the following criteria. Each criterion is weighted based on its importance to the typical business user.
Vocal Quality | 30 percent
Needless to say, vocal quality, fidelity, and usability are the most important aspects of an AI text-to-voice app. Within this criterion, we evaluated each tool based on the realistic quality of AI voices, the accuracy of AI voice generations, the availability of different voices and languages, and the ability to granularly edit generated voice products. We also considered whether a tool offered users the ability to customize or record their own voices and voiceovers.
Enterprise Scalability | 30 percent
Enterprise scalability is hugely important for AI voice generators since many companies invest in this type of platform to create global marketing, sales, and product content at scale.
For enterprise scalability, we assessed each tool’s global library of voices and dialects, its adherence to enterprise security and compliance standards, features that enhance voice content production and collaboration, integrations with relevant third-party tools and platforms, and the scalability of APIs. We placed a special emphasis on each tool’s enterprise-level plans and the additional features that are available at this level.
Pricing | 20 percent
Pricing is a crucial factor when considering AI voice technology, as the cost of these tools varies widely for the features you get at that price point. As part of this evaluation, we compared each tool’s free plan options, how prices scale from package to package, the subscription packages available to users, and the value of the features added to each tier, particularly enterprise-level plans.
Ease of Use | 20 percent
AI voice tools are supposed to make content creation a simpler task. For this reason, ease of use and accessibility were also important factors in how we judged each of the AI voice generation tools on our list. We looked at each tool’s no-code features, the user-friendliness of voice editing tools, the quality of customer support at each subscription tier, and the availability of self-service resources and community forums for getting started and troubleshooting.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Learn more about AI text-to-speech technology and the top solutions available through these frequently asked questions.
The best AI text-to-speech app will depend on your particular needs and project plans, but Murf is a top choice for its flexibility, with a wide range of general use cases, Altered is good for real-time morphing, and ElevenLabs is known for its ability to finetune an AI-created voice.
Yes, several AI text-to-speech apps are free or are available in free, limited versions.
The best free AI voice generator app will vary based on your exact requirements. ElevenLabs is the best free solution for users who require API access and interoperability with other resources, while Speechify is the most generous for users who don’t need downloads or more complex features.
Yes, AI voice technology is generally legal, though its use is subject to laws regarding consent and intellectual property. This is particularly true for voice cloning or using AI voices for commercial purposes. Overall, AI content creation is an area that’s currently in flux; legal concerns have been raised but not resolved.
Yes, AI text-to-speech apps like Altered and Murf offer features that allow you to transcribe speech into text, though these are often offered as an added, paid-for feature, or as part of a higher-tier subscription plan.
Bottom Line: AI Text-to-Speech Apps Are Affordable and Customizable
AI-powered text-to-speech software technology has grown in popularity for content creators of all backgrounds and budgets. This category of generative AI tools provides creative scalability for videos, podcasts, audiobooks, customer service interactions, and a slew of other enterprise use cases that typically require consistent and original voice content. What’s more, this technology is frequently customizable and available in affordable plans, meaning users of all stripes can try it out.
If you’re not sure which of the AI voice tools in this guide is the best fit for your organization, take some time to test out their free plans. You’ll quickly discover if the software meets your particular needs, if it’s user-friendly, and if it has the features necessary to keep up with your organization’s security and compliance requirements.
Read our guide to the top AI companies for a full portrait of the artificial intelligence vendors serving content creation needs in a wide range of areas.