Tools · Issue #13 ·
ElevenLabs, the AI voice generator that turns a script into a voiceover in a minute
In one line: ElevenLabs turns text into realistic, expressive speech, and also does voice cloning, transcription, dubbing, sound effects and music, with a free plan of 10,000 credits a month (roughly 10 minutes of speech) for non-commercial use.
What it is
ElevenLabs started as a text-to-speech tool and is now a whole audio studio in the browser. You paste text, pick a voice, and get back speech that sounds like a person reading it, not a GPS. Its homepage says speech works across 90+ languages and that its voice library has 17,500+ voices, or you can design a voice from a written description or clone your own. Around that core sit Speech to Text (transcription), a Voice Changer, a Voice Isolator that pulls a voice out of background noise, Sound Effects, Music, Dubbing into other languages, and Studio, an editor for longer projects like podcasts and audiobooks. Everything runs on one shared pool of monthly credits. There's also a developer API and ElevenAgents, a platform for building voice and chat agents that answer phones or support chats, but most people will start in the web app.
Who it's for
Anyone who needs a voice and doesn't want to record one: YouTubers and short-video makers who need narration, course creators, marketers making ads or explainer videos, indie game makers who need character voices, and writers who want to hear a draft read aloud. It's also useful the other way around, if you have a noisy recording to clean up or a talk to transcribe. Developers building apps or agents that need to talk get the same voices through the API.
Try this today
Go to elevenlabs.io and create a free account; new accounts are put on the Free plan automatically. Open Text to Speech, paste a paragraph you actually need read aloud (an intro for a video, a slide script, a chapter of something you wrote), and try three or four voices from the library on the same text. Listen for the one that sounds least like a robot for your content. Then try one more trick: take a recording made somewhere noisy and run it through the Voice Isolator. Keep an eye on credits while you play. Text to Speech costs about 1 credit per character, so the free 10,000 credits go quickly, and the Voice Isolator uses about 1,000 credits per minute of audio.
The catch
The free plan is for trying things out and personal projects, not for anything you make money from. ElevenLabs' help center says the Free plan has no commercial license and can't be used for any commercial purpose, and if you publish free-plan audio you have to credit ElevenLabs by putting "elevenlabs.io" or "11.ai" in the title. Audio you make on Free never becomes commercial later, even if you subscribe afterward. Instant voice cloning, the commercial license and Dubbing Studio start on the paid Starter plan, and Professional Voice Cloning starts on Creator. Credits go fast: 10,000 credits is about 10 minutes of text to speech, and other features cost more (Speech to Text is about 330 credits a minute, Music about 900, Dubbing 2,000 to 10,000). Free credits don't roll over. On paid plans unused credits roll over for up to two months, but if you downgrade or cancel, unused paid credits expire at the end of the cycle. And realistic voice cloning is powerful stuff: only clone voices you have the right to use.
Pricing
Free: $0, 10,000 credits a month (about 10 minutes of text to speech), non-commercial use with attribution. Starter: $6 a month, 30,000 credits (about 30 minutes), commercial license, instant voice cloning, Dubbing Studio and 20 Studio projects. When we checked, ElevenLabs was running a first-month offer of $1 for Starter until Nov 1. Creator: $22 a month ($11 for the first month), 121,000 credits (about 121 minutes), professional voice cloning and the option to buy more credits. Pro: $99 a month, 600,000 credits and higher-quality 192 kbps audio. Scale: $299 a month, 1.8 million credits and 3 seats. Business: $990 a month, 6 million credits and 10 seats. Enterprise is custom. Paying yearly works out to two months free (Starter $5 a month, Creator $18.33, Pro $82.50, Scale $249.17, Business $825). Prices exclude taxes.
Pricing checked on elevenlabs.io/pricing and the ElevenLabs help center (free plan and commercial use articles) on Oct 27, 2026.