ElevenLabs

Category: AI Voice/Audio

The best AI voices, now a whole creative suite.

ElevenLabs makes the most convincing synthetic speech available, and has expanded well beyond it. Text to speech covers a large voice library across dozens of languages with fine control over delivery, alongside voice cloning from a short sample, dubbing that preserves the original speaker's voice across languages, and a dialogue mode for multi-speaker audio. The product has since split into three lines with separate pricing: a creative suite now including image and video generation and an ads engine, a conversational agents platform for building voice agents that handle real-time speech, and an API business for developers embedding speech into their own products. There is a first-party MCP server, both a local package and a hosted remote version listed in Claude's connector directory, so you can generate audio directly from an assistant. Agent Skills and a CLI arrived in 2026.

Our verdict

Still the quality benchmark, and for a flagship brand asset where the voice has to be genuinely convincing, nothing else is close. The dubbing is the underrated feature for marketers: taking one video into six languages while keeping the speaker's own voice changes the economics of international content entirely. The MCP server means you can generate audio from Claude without opening the app. Two things to weigh. Pricing has split across three separate tabs, so there is no longer a single ElevenLabs price, and the creative tab currently shows promotional figures that contradict the list price, so check what you are actually signing up to. More importantly, there is an open US class action from journalists and voice actors alleging voiceprints were taken from public recordings without consent. It is unresolved, and voice-cloning consent is a live issue rather than a settled one, so get written permission before cloning anyone's voice, including a colleague's.

Best for: Anyone producing voiceover at volume, teams localising video into other languages, and developers building voice into a product.

Pros

  • The most convincing synthetic speech available, by a clear margin
  • Dubbing preserves the original speaker's voice across languages
  • First-party MCP server, both local and hosted, listed in Claude's connector directory
  • Voice cloning from a short sample, plus multi-speaker dialogue mode
  • Mature API and CLI for embedding speech in your own product
  • Free tier is enough to judge quality before paying

Cons

  • Pricing now splits across creative, agents and API tabs, so there is no single price
  • Promotional pricing on the creative tier contradicts the list price, so check carefully
  • An open US class action over voiceprints taken without consent is unresolved
  • Get written permission before cloning any voice, including a colleague's
  • No GBP pricing, and prices exclude tax

Pricing: Free, then from $5/mo (Freemium)

Rating: 4.5/5