Last updated: October 16, 2026. ElevenLabs, WellSaid, Murf, and Speechify prices were read on October 10, 2026. FineVoice prices were read on October 16, 2026. Where a page did not show a number we could quote, the guide says "check current price."
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An AI voice is useful for a course, a product demo, an ad read, or a training clip when you do not have a recording booth. It is a bad tool for pretending to be a customer, a celebrity, or a company. The practical differences between the well-known products are not "which voice sounds the most human." We did not run that test. The differences you can check on the pricing page are: whether the free plan allows commercial use, what the meter counts, and what a paid plan costs when the page actually prints a number.
Two rules sit above the comparison. Do not clone a real person's voice unless that person gave you permission and the tool's terms allow it. And do not publish a client deliverable on a plan that says commercial use is excluded. A free preview is for picking a voice. The paid plan is for shipping the file.
What to compare
- The right. "You can generate audio" and "you can use it in an ad, a course, or a client project" are different sentences. Read the plan name that grants a commercial license.
- The meter. ElevenLabs sells credits that several products share. WellSaid meters downloaded minutes and says generation on paid plans is unlimited. Murf's API page prices characters. FineVoice meters text-to-speech characters, and the Ultra card on its pricing page does not print the same cap as the comparison table under it. Those units do not convert cleanly into "minutes of finished narration" without the company's own calculator.
- The promo. A first-month discount is not the renewal. Write down the ongoing monthly or yearly figure before you start a trial.
How the five tools compare
| Tool | Commercial use on the free plan | What the pricing page showed | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | Not listed. Commercial license is on the Starter plan and above. | Oct 10, 2026. Free $0 and 10,000 credits. Starter $6/month and 30,000 credits. Creator $22/month. Annual billing is 10 months' price. | A creator who needs many voices, cloning, and other audio tools on one credit pool |
| WellSaid | No. The free tier says 3 download minutes a month and no commercial rights. | Oct 10, 2026. Individual annual plans at $10/month ($120/year) and $33/month ($396/year), both with commercial rights. Monthly prices of $19 and $49 were also on the page. | English narration for training, explainers, and team production |
| Murf | Not confirmed in the text we could quote. Read the Studio plan terms. | Oct 10, 2026. API rates of $0.01 and $0.03 per 1,000 characters, and $0.10 per minute for voice changer. Studio subscription prices: check current price. | Voiceover production, or an API if you are building the voice into a product |
| Speechify | Not quoted here. Speechify's reader and Speechify Studio are different products. | Oct 10, 2026. No Speechify dollar figure is quoted in this guide. Check the plan that matches listening versus a commercial voiceover. | People who already use Speechify to listen, and who then need a separate Studio plan to publish |
| FineVoice | No. The terms limit Free Plan output to personal, non-commercial, internal evaluation, and they name advertising and client work as excluded. | Oct 16, 2026. Free $0. Basic $8.99/month or $71.99/year. Pro $17.99/month (first month $12.99) or $99.99/year. Ultra $24.99/month or $129.99/year. Basic and Pro text to speech: 100,000 and 300,000 characters a month. The Ultra card says unlimited; the comparison table says 600,000 characters a month. | Narration plus a voice changer and a clone you have rights to, on Basic or above |
ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs sells text to speech, speech to text, sound effects, music, dubbing, and voice cloning from one account. The pricing page's own FAQ, read October 10, 2026, lists monthly prices and included credits: Free $0 with 10,000 credits; Starter $6 with 30,000 credits; Creator $22 with 121,000 credits; Pro $99 with 600,000 credits; Scale $299 with 1,800,000 credits and 3 seats; Business $990 with 6,000,000 credits and 10 seats. Enterprise is custom. The same FAQ says annual billing is ten months' price, which it equates to $5, $18.33, $82.50, $249.17, and $825 a month for Starter through Business.
The plan cards put a commercial license, instant voice cloning, and music commercial use on Starter, not on Free. Professional voice cloning is listed on Creator. Credits are shared across products. The FAQ's approximate costs: text to speech at 1 credit per character on the models it describes that way, speech to text at 330 credits a minute, and higher costs for music, sound effects, voice changer, and dubbing. Unused paid credits can roll over, with a cap described on the page. Free-plan credits do not roll over. A first-month promotion was also on the cards that day (Starter showed a $1 first month, Creator an $11 first month). Treat that as a promotion with an end date, and budget on the $6 and $22 figures.
Who it's for
A creator or a small team that wants more than a single narration track: multilingual speech, dubbing, sound, or a cloned voice, and that will watch a shared credit balance.
Pros
- The commercial license and instant voice cloning are published on a low paid tier, Starter at $6 a month before any annual discount.
- One credit pool covers several audio products, which is simpler than five subscriptions if you use more than speech.
- The FAQ prints both monthly and annual-equivalent prices, so the renewal math is on the page.
Cons
- Free is a preview. The commercial license is not on that card.
- Credits are easy to spend on something other than narration. Dubbing and music draw from the same pool.
- Professional voice cloning waits until Creator, at the $22 monthly price, and you still need the right to the voice you clone.
WellSaid
WellSaid's pricing page, read October 10, 2026, is built around downloaded minutes of finished audio. The free tier offers 3 download minutes a month and says it has no commercial rights. On annual billing, an individual plan is listed at $10 a month, billed at $120 a year, with 240 minutes a year and full commercial rights. A higher individual plan is $33 a month, billed at $396 a year, with 2,160 minutes a year, also with full commercial rights. The monthly view of the page shows $19 a month for 20 minutes and $49 a month for 180 minutes. A team price of $160 per user per month, billed annually at $1,920 a year, includes 2,880 minutes a year per user. Paid plans say generation is unlimited and the limit is what you download. The page's FAQ names Starter, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. The dollar cards above are quoted without forcing those names onto a figure the markdown did not label.
Self-serve copy on the page emphasizes English voices on the individual tiers. "All languages" is listed on the custom enterprise tier, not on the $10 plan. If you need a language other than English, confirm that before you compare WellSaid with ElevenLabs.
Who it's for
A business making English training, sales, or explainer audio, especially if you want the limit stated in download minutes instead of credits.
Pros
- Commercial rights are stated on the paid individual tiers, and the free tier says the opposite in plain language.
- You can preview without burning the download cap, because paid plans describe generation as unlimited.
- Annual and monthly prices are both printed, so the discount is visible.
Cons
- Three free download minutes, with no commercial rights, will not finish a client project.
- The cheaper paid tiers are described with English voices. Multilingual work may mean a different plan or a different tool.
- Download minutes are the real quota. Generating a dozen takes and downloading all of them spends the meter.
Murf
Murf sells a Studio for making voiceovers and a separate API. On October 10, 2026, the API view of murf.ai/pricing listed pay-as-you-go rates of $0.01 per 1,000 characters for its faster conversational text-to-speech, $0.03 per 1,000 characters for studio-quality speech, and $0.10 per minute for the voice changer. It also listed a translation rate of $0.02 per 1,000 characters. Purchased API credit is described as not expiring. The page says the API catalog includes 150+ voices in 35+ languages.
The Studio subscription prices sit on another tab of that same pricing page. They did not come through as a reliable set of plan cards in the text we read, so this guide does not quote a Studio monthly fee. Open the Studio tab and read the current price, the download rights, and whether a free Studio account can be used in a client project. Murf's own navigation also lists voice cloning. Use that only with permission from the person whose voice it is.
Who it's for
A freelancer or a team making voiceovers in Studio, or a developer who wants character pricing on the API instead of a monthly credit bundle.
Pros
- The API rates above are printed per character, which is easier to estimate than a shared credit that also buys music and dubbing.
- API credits are described as non-expiring, unlike a monthly allotment that resets.
- Studio and API are separate, so a narration customer does not have to buy a developer plan.
Cons
- This page does not quote Studio subscription prices. Check the current price on the Studio tab.
- Commercial rights on the free Studio experience were not clear in the text we could quote. Read them before a client file goes out.
- Voice cloning is a product on the site. Permission is still your problem, not the software's.
Speechify
Speechify is widely used as a text-to-speech reader: listen to an article, a PDF, or a document. It also sells Speechify Studio for generated voiceovers and related creator tools. Those are different products. A plan that lets you listen to your own files does not automatically let you publish a voiceover in an ad or a course.
This guide does not quote a Speechify price. On October 10, 2026 we did not get a clean, labeled price table from Speechify's own pricing page that we were willing to hard-code. Third-party roundups disagree with each other often enough that repeating them would invent a number. Open Speechify, pick the product you actually need, and read whether that plan includes commercial rights.
Who it's for
Someone who wants a reader for documents, and who will look at Studio separately if the job is a publishable voiceover.
Pros
- Listening and producing are sold apart, which keeps a reading subscription from being mistaken for a production license.
- If you already pay for the reader, you can judge Studio on its own invoice instead of as a bundle you did not mean to buy.
Cons
- You have to check two products, not one, and the rights can differ.
- No price is quoted here on purpose. The current price has to come from Speechify's site the day you buy.
FineVoice
FineVoice sells text to speech, voice cloning, a voice changer, and other audio tools from one account. The other tools named on the pricing cards include a voice enhancer, speech to text, sound effects, a voice translator, talking photo, background music, and a podcast generator. The pricing page, read October 16, 2026, shows four columns: Free, Basic, Pro, and Ultra.
The comparison table on that page lists monthly prices of $0, $8.99, $17.99, and $24.99. The Pro cell also says "28% OFF First Month — Just $12.99." The same table lists annual prices of $0, $71.99, $99.99, and $129.99. The annual cards restate Basic, Pro, and Ultra as $5.99, $8.33, and $10.83 a month, billed at $71.99, $99.99, and $129.99 a year, and label the discounts 33%, 54%, and 57%. The page says sales tax may be applied based on residence. Its FAQ says unused characters and minutes do not carry over, and it states a 15-day money-back guarantee. Educators and students are offered 30% off. The teams block points to a custom plan. The heading on that block reads "Get a Custom Aunio Plan." The terms of use, which print their own last-updated date of February 5, 2024, name Aunio Pro next to Basic, Pro, and Ultra in the paid output license. This guide does not describe what Aunio includes beyond that.
Text to speech is metered in characters, and the page prints two different character rows. "Number of Input Characters" says "Only 1000 characters" on Free and 5,000 on Basic, Pro, and Ultra. "Conversion Quota" is the larger meter: 1,000 characters a day on Free, then 100,000, 300,000, and 600,000 characters a month on Basic, Pro, and Ultra. Download limit is listed as unlimited on every column. Treat the 5,000 figure as the input cap the table labels, and the monthly or daily quota as the conversion cap. They are not the same number.
The annual cards agree with the table on Basic (100,000 text-to-speech characters) and Pro (300,000). They do not agree on Ultra. The Ultra card says "Unlimited" text to speech, and unlimited voice cloning, voice changer, talking photo, voice design, voice enhancer, sound effects, voice translator, speech to text, background music, and podcast generation. The comparison table on the same page caps Ultra text to speech at 600,000 characters a month. It also lists Ultra at 300 instant voice clones and 15 professional voice clones, while the Ultra card says voice cloning is unlimited. This guide does not choose between those two blocks. Read both before you budget an unlimited plan. Instant voice clone counts in the table are 3, 50, 100, and 300, and professional voice clone counts are 0, 5, 10, and 15, for Free through Ultra.
Rights come from the terms, not from the price cards. The Free Plan section grants a license to generated output "solely for personal, non-commercial, and internal evaluation purposes," and says that output may not be sold, sublicensed, redistributed, monetized, or used for commercial activities, advertising, client work, or a revenue-generating product. The section for Basic, Pro, Ultra, and Aunio Pro says FineVoice does not restrict using that output for your own purposes, including commercial purposes. An earlier sentence in the same terms says the license to access the site is "solely for your own personal, noncommercial use." The paid-plan section is the one that talks about generated audio. This guide does not collapse those two sentences into one rule, and it is not legal advice. On cloning, the terms say that if you upload somebody's voice recording, you represent that you have permission from the voice owner, and that only you are responsible for those rights.
A separate API price list, read the same day at api.finevoice.ai, sells character packages that last one year: Creator, 6,000,000 characters for $90; Pro, 9,000,000 for $135; Scale, 12,000,000 for $156; Business, 15,000,000 for $195. The FineVoice TTS blurb on that page says the model supports 154 languages. Those packages are not the subscription plans above. This guide does not convert either meter into minutes.
Who it's for
A creator or a small business that wants narration, a voice changer, and a clone of a voice it has rights to, and that will buy Basic or above before the file is used in an ad or a client project.
Pros
- The terms put Free Plan output and paid-plan output in two different sections, and the free section names advertising and client work.
- Monthly and annual prices are both printed, and the Pro first-month price is labeled on the card, so the promo is separate from the $17.99 renewal.
- The API is a one-year character package, separate from the monthly subscription, if you are building the voice into a product.
Cons
- The Ultra card says unlimited text to speech. The comparison table says 600,000 characters a month. One block is not enough to budget the plan.
- Free output is not a commercial license, and 1,000 characters a day will not finish a client script.
- Unused characters and minutes do not roll over. A quiet month does not bank the next one.
- A clone count on the plan is not permission from the person whose voice it is.
Use a synthetic voice without fooling anyone
A small business gets in trouble with AI voice in three ordinary ways.
- The file ships on the wrong plan. ElevenLabs lists the commercial license on Starter, not Free. WellSaid's free tier says "no commercial rights." FineVoice's terms limit Free Plan output to personal, non-commercial evaluation, and put the commercial wording on Basic, Pro, Ultra, and Aunio Pro. Match the plan to the use before the audio is in an ad, a paid course, or a client deliverable.
- The voice belongs to a real person. Instant and professional cloning features exist so you can reproduce a voice you have the right to use, such as your own, with the tool's consent flow. They are not a way to imitate a customer, a competitor, or a public figure. Deceptive impersonation can violate the tool's terms and, depending on the use, fraud or publicity laws. This guide is not legal advice. If the clip could be heard as a specific real person, get permission in writing first.
- The clip pretends a person endorsed you. The FTC's endorsement guides are aimed at ads that claim someone endorses a product. A synthetic voice that implies a real customer, expert, or celebrity said something they did not say is a false endorsement. Say it is a narration. Do not stage a fake testimonial.
None of that requires you to avoid AI narration. It requires you to buy the license the project needs and to make the speaker obvious.
FAQ
Can I use a free AI voice in a client project or an ad?
Not on the free tiers this guide could verify. ElevenLabs puts the commercial license on Starter and above. WellSaid's free tier says it has no commercial rights and includes 3 download minutes a month. FineVoice's terms limit Free Plan output to personal, non-commercial, and internal evaluation, and they say that output may not be used for advertising, client work, or a revenue-generating product. For Murf and Speechify, read the specific plan. A free account is for auditioning the workflow.
Is it allowed to clone someone's voice?
Only with that person's permission, and only inside the tool's consent rules. Cloning a voice to impersonate someone, to fake a testimonial, or to mimic a company is a safety failure and can be illegal. When you are unsure, use a stock voice the plan already licenses.
Why not convert every plan into "minutes per month"?
The meters are different products. ElevenLabs charges credits that also pay for dubbing, music, and speech to text. WellSaid meters minutes you download. Murf's API meters characters. FineVoice meters text-to-speech characters, with other tools on the same account metered in minutes, hours, or credits. A homemade conversion would pretend those are the same unit. Use each company's calculator for your script length.
Which tool fits a training video, and which fits a newsletter read?
WellSaid's page is written around finished narration minutes and commercial rights for business audio, which matches training and explainers in English. ElevenLabs fits if you also need other languages, dubbing, or a cloned voice you have rights to, and you are willing to manage credits. FineVoice fits a similar mixed job, narration plus a voice changer and cloning, once the project is on Basic or above, with the Ultra quota read on both blocks of its pricing page. A spoken version of a newsletter for your own listening is a reader product, which is Speechify's other half, not automatically a license to republish that audio.
Are these buttons affiliate links?
The FineVoice button is an affiliate link. It includes FineVoice's tracking parameter, and Trident may earn a commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you. The ElevenLabs, WellSaid, Murf, and Speechify buttons open each company's official site, with no tracking parameters. Affiliate programs for those four tools are not approved. A commission does not change the order of this page.
Sources
ElevenLabs, WellSaid, Murf, and Speechify were read on October 10, 2026. FineVoice's pricing page, terms, and API price list were read on October 16, 2026. The terms page prints its own last-updated date of February 5, 2024. Promotions, especially first-month discounts, move faster than plan names.