ElevenLabs Alternatives (2026): Honest Picks
ElevenLabs alternatives by need: cheapest API, Mandarin, cloning, voice agents, Alipay. Prices checked 11 October 2026; PlayHT and Hume TTS are gone.
VoiceSmiths Team
Disclosure: written by the VoiceSmiths team. VoiceSmiths runs on ElevenLabs' own models, so for most people we are a different way to use ElevenLabs rather than a replacement for it. Every price below comes from the vendor's own page, checked on 11 October 2026; where a page would not load or a detail was not stated, we say so. Prices change often, so check before you buy.
There is no single ElevenLabs alternative; there is a better tool for each reason people leave. If you are leaving because of price, the cheapest good option is an API (Google's Gemini TTS or OpenAI's). If it is Mandarin, look at MiniMax or Azure. If it is cloning on a budget, Fish Audio or Cartesia. If you need to pay with Alipay or WeChat Pay, a Chinese tool, or VoiceSmiths. And if you just want the best expressive English voice, ElevenLabs is still the reference: Eleven v4, released on 28 September 2026, was reported at launch as first on the Artificial Analysis speech leaderboard.
Before you switch: two that are gone
- PlayHT: Meta acquired its parent, Play AI, in July 2025, and the service has since been wound down (play.ht no longer loads). If old guides recommend it, they are out of date.
- Hume AI (Octave) is closing its TTS and voice APIs: access ends on 13 November 2026, and account data is deleted afterwards. If you build on it, migrate now.
Picks by reason
| Your reason | Look at | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest cost per minute, via API | Google Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS; OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts | Around $0.01–0.02 per minute of audio; both steerable with plain-language instructions |
| Mandarin first | MiniMax Speech 2.8; Microsoft Azure AI Speech | MiniMax is a Chinese vendor with strong Mandarin; Azure has 30+ zh-CN neural voices |
| Cheap voice cloning | Fish Audio; Cartesia | A professional clone on Fish Audio's $11 plan; instant cloning on Cartesia's $5 plan |
| Real-time voice agents | Cartesia Sonic | Built for low latency rather than for a creator studio |
| Polished English narration for training | WellSaid Labs | Corporate and e-learning narration; English only below Enterprise |
| A studio editor for voiceovers | Murf; Speechify Studio | Timeline editors aimed at marketers and trainers |
| Paying with Alipay or WeChat Pay | 讯飞配音 (iFlytek), 魔音工坊 (Moyin), 剪映 (CapCut China); VoiceSmiths | Chinese payment, Chinese interface |
| A whole cast from a story | VoiceSmiths | Paste a chapter; characters found and voiced; same cast in 9 languages |
The comparison
| Tool | Cheapest paid entry | API price | Mandarin | Cloning | Alipay / WeChat Pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | Starter $6/month: 30,000 credits (about 30 minutes) | $0.08 per 1,000 characters on v4; $0.04 on Flash and v4 Turbo | Yes; its v4 launch named Mandarin and Cantonese as the biggest gains | Instant from Starter, professional from Creator ($22/month) | No: cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay |
| Google Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS | API only; free tier available | About $0.0135 per minute ($9 per 1M audio tokens), doubling from 1 January 2027 | Yes (Chinese and Cantonese among 130+ languages) | "Voice replication" with consent audio | Not stated |
| OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts | API only | $0.60 per 1M text tokens in, $12 per 1M audio tokens out (third parties estimate about $0.015 per minute); tts-1 $15 per 1M characters | Supported, but OpenAI says its voices are optimized for English | Custom voices need approval | Not stated |
| Microsoft Azure AI Speech | Free 0.5M characters a month | Neural $15 per 1M characters; Neural HD $22 | 30+ zh-CN neural voices | Custom and Personal Voice, approval required | Not stated |
| MiniMax Speech 2.8 | Audio subscription from $5/month (points; conversion to characters not stated) | International: $100 per 1M characters (HD), $60 (Turbo). China: ¥3.5 per 10,000 characters (HD), a Chinese character counting as two | Yes, native | $1.50 per cloned voice via the international API | Not verified |
| Fish Audio | Plus $11/month: 250,000 credits (about 200 minutes), one professional clone | $15 per 1M UTF-8 bytes (a Chinese character is 3 bytes, but also carries more speech, so a minute costs about the same in either language) | Yes | On every paid plan | "Regional payment methods" mentioned; Alipay not verified |
| Cartesia Sonic | Pro $5/month: 100,000 credits, instant cloning | Overage $65 per 1M credits on Pro | Yes (Sonic 3.6) | Instant from Pro, professional from Startup ($49) | Not stated |
| Murf | Creator $19/month billed annually; free tier 10 minutes, no downloads | $0.01 per 1,000 characters (Falcon), $0.03 (Gen2) | Chinese and Cantonese listed | Enterprise only | Not stated |
| Speechify Studio | Studio Starter $100/year (annual only) | API from $10/month for 1.9M characters; free 500,000 characters a month | Chinese listed for Studio | Plan not verified | Not stated |
| WellSaid Labs | Starter $19/month, or $10/month billed annually | Not public | Only on Enterprise | Not on the pricing page | Not stated |
| 讯飞配音 (iFlytek) | Membership ¥45/month | Not covered here | Yes, native | Not verified | Yes, both |
| 魔音工坊 (Moyin) | ¥60/month or ¥348/year in the iOS app (new users ¥38 the first month) | Not covered here | Yes, native | Not verified | Not verified on the web; App Store in China |
| VoiceSmiths | $3.99 one-time (150 credits), or $7/month | Billed in credits; keys in the dashboard | Hand-picked Mandarin voices, polyphone dictionary | Instant cloning and voice design | Alipay in CNY; cards in USD |
When VoiceSmiths is the right pick, and when it isn't
We run on ElevenLabs' models (Eleven v4, v3, Multilingual v2 and Flash), so the voice quality is the same lineage. What differs is around it: a Chinese and English interface, Alipay, a full-cast audio drama studio that finds the characters in a chapter and keeps the same cast across nine languages, a one-time pack instead of a subscription, and support in Chinese.
It is not the cheaper way to buy ElevenLabs audio. On ElevenLabs' own Starter plan a minute of English costs about $0.20; on ours, about $0.47–0.70 on the monthly plans. If you pay by card and produce mostly English, go direct. Our head-to-head is at VoiceSmiths vs ElevenLabs, including the rows where ElevenLabs wins.
How to switch without regret
- Run your own test script on two candidates: a line full of your brand names, an emotional line of dialogue, and two minutes of narration. Our nine-question buying guide has the full checklist.
- Convert prices to cost per finished minute, including retakes. Credits, characters, bytes and audio tokens are not comparable until you do.
- Move your pronunciation fixes. If you kept a pronunciation dictionary, export it; a standard PLS lexicon loads into most engines.
- Re-record consent for cloned voices. A clone does not move between vendors; you clone again from your original recording, under the new vendor's consent rules.
- Check the license on the plan you pick: several free tiers here are personal-use only.
FAQ
What is the best free ElevenLabs alternative? For developers, Google's Gemini TTS has a free tier and Speechify's API includes 500,000 characters a month free. For creators, most studios have a small free allowance, but free output is often personal-use only (Fish Audio's FAQ, for example, says so).
Which ElevenLabs alternative is best for Chinese? For an API, MiniMax Speech (a Chinese vendor) or Azure, which has the deepest catalog of zh-CN voices. For a creator tool paid with Alipay or WeChat Pay, 讯飞配音 or 魔音工坊. VoiceSmiths uses ElevenLabs' models with hand-picked Mandarin voices and Alipay.
What is the cheapest ElevenLabs alternative? Per minute, the APIs: Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS at about $0.0135 a minute until the end of 2026, and OpenAI's gpt-4o-mini-tts. Both are developer products without a creator studio.
Can I pay for ElevenLabs with Alipay or WeChat Pay? Not directly: its payment pages list cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. VoiceSmiths offers the same models with Alipay in CNY.
Is PlayHT still available? No. Meta acquired its parent, Play AI, in July 2025, and the service has since been wound down.
Compare on your own script, free →
Sources
Vendor pages checked on 11 October 2026: ElevenLabs pricing, ElevenLabs API pricing, Eleven v4, Gemini API pricing, Gemini speech generation, OpenAI API pricing, OpenAI text to speech, Azure Speech pricing, Azure language support, MiniMax pay-as-you-go, MiniMax China pricing, Fish Audio plans, Fish Audio API pricing, Cartesia pricing, Murf pricing, Murf cloning, Speechify Studio pricing, Speechify API pricing, WellSaid pricing, 讯飞配音 membership, 魔音工坊 on the App Store, Hume TTS sunset, Meta acquires Play AI (TechCrunch).
Turn your own story into a drama like this
- Paste a chapter or script, up to 8,000 characters
- See the cast free: a voice for every character, tap to hear it
- Render it: a 2,000-character episode is about 140 credits, so the $3.99 trial pack covers one. You get an MP3 and line-timed subtitles