ElevenLabs
Realistic AI voice synthesis and cloning
Overview
ElevenLabs is the leading text-to-speech and voice-cloning platform — produces voices that are routinely mistaken for real recordings. Powers audiobook narration, podcast hosts, dubbing, accessibility readers. Eleven v3 (GA March 14, 2026) added Audio Tags for emotional control, expanded language coverage to 70+ languages (up from ~28), a Text-to-Dialogue mode, and a 68% reduction in complex-text errors. Free tier with character/credit limits; paid tiers for commercial use.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 11 Jul 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- 10,000 credits/month
- Text to speech + speech to text
- No commercial use
- 30,000 credits/month
- Commercial license
- Instant voice cloning
- $5/mo billed annually
- 121,000 credits/month
- Professional voice cloning
- Higher-quality audio
- $18.33/mo billed annually
- 600,000 credits/month
- 44.1kHz PCM audio via API
- 192kbps audio quality
- 1.8M credits/month
- 3 workspace seats
- 3 professional voice clones
- 6M credits/month
- 10 workspace seats
- Low-latency TTS from ~5c/min
Use cases
What you can produce with ElevenLabs
- A narrated audiobook chapter or full short-form audiobook with a cloned author voice, exported as a distributable MP3 or WAV file
- A faceless YouTube video with AI voiceover that matches scripted emotional tone cues (e.g., [excited], [whispers]) across the entire script
- A dubbed or localized version of a marketing video in 29+ languages while preserving the original speaker's voice profile
- A branded podcast episode produced without a recording session, using a consistent cloned brand voice for weekly releases
- A game NPC dialogue pack with multiple emotionally distinct voice lines generated from a single character voice clone
- A real-time conversational voice agent (e.g., customer-support bot or interactive assistant) built via the ElevenLabs Agents API with low-latency TTS (Flash model ~75ms inference) and a sub-300ms end-to-end latency target for live deployment
- A multilingual e-learning or corporate training module with synchronized voiceover narration across English, Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian languages
ASEAN Perspective
ElevenLabs in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
ElevenLabs is still the benchmark for synthetic voice: the most natural prosody in the category, strong cloning and dubbing, and v3's audio tags for emotional control across 70+ languages. For audiobooks, video voiceover, IVR, accessibility, and product voice features it's the default quality pick, and a February 2026 $500M Series D at an $11B valuation plus May 2026 API price cuts of up to 55% suggest the platform isn't slowing down. The watch-outs are cost discipline and billing mechanics — credits don't roll over, failed generations still burn them, and high-volume production climbs fast — plus the consent and misuse governance any voice-cloning deployment demands. Developer experience is excellent: clean API, good SDKs, easy embedding. English-first UI, globally available, with useful coverage of languages relevant to ASEAN markets.
What people say
The 1.5-point gap between ElevenLabs' G2 score (4.5/5 across 1,140 reviews) and its Trustpilot score (about 3.0 from roughly 1,000 reviews) tells the whole story: the voices are superb, the billing is not. On G2 — where podcasters, YouTubers, and game developers praise v3's emotional range and 70-plus languages — the word "expensive" appears 171 times. On Trustpilot, auto-renewals, credit forfeiture on cancellation, and confusing overage mechanics dominate. Users report real cost per finished minute running 2–3x the advertised rate, because failed takes — mispronunciations, cut-off audio, retries — burn credits without producing usable output, and unused credits don't roll over.
ElevenLabs has responded on price, at least for developers: on May 7, 2026 it cut self-serve API rates by up to 55% for text-to-speech and up to 45% for speech-to-text, and added pay-as-you-go credits for people who don't want a subscription. On models, v3 is more expressive but less predictable than v2, which many production teams still prefer for consistency.
The business is on a tear regardless. A $500M Series D closed February 4, 2026 at an $11B valuation, led by Sequoia — more than triple the year-earlier figure — with an IPO reportedly in view. Bottom line: still the quality leader in AI voice, and now cheaper at the API layer, but budget for credit burn and read the renewal terms before you subscribe.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
Notable facts
- ElevenLabs can clone a voice with as little as one minute of sample audio — a process that previously required hours of professional studio recording.
- The company grew from zero to 1 million users in its first year, driven almost entirely by word-of-mouth from podcasters and content creators.
- ElevenLabs' Eleven Multilingual v2 model was the first commercial TTS model to achieve near-human scores on the MUSHRA audio quality benchmark across 29 languages.
Frequently asked questions
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including ElevenLabs's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with ElevenLabs unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
For the latest details, please refer to ElevenLabs directly →
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