Writing & language

Text to Voice: what you'd pay elsewhere

AltFTool's Text to Voice reads your text aloud using the voices already built into your browser and operating system, free. ElevenLabs Starter is US$6/month (with a US$1 first-month offer when we checked), and its Free plan gives 10k credits a month without a commercial licence. The difference is not subtle: ElevenLabs produces downloadable, studio-quality AI voices and we play back the system voices your device happens to have.

Prices checked 3 days ago
Open the free Text to VoiceCompare prices

At a glance

Free Text to Voice here
Free · no account
ElevenLabs
US$6/month
USD list price
ElevenLabs free tier
Free plan: 10k credits a month, no commercial licence.
Biggest trade-off
No audio file. The tool plays speech through your speakers; there is no MP3 or WAV download, so you cannot use it for a voiceover.
Open the free tool

Reading text aloud with a synthetic voice: what the paid tools charge

Each figure is read from the vendor's own page on the date shown. Software pricing drifts — if a number here disagrees with the vendor's page, trust theirs.

ElevenLabs

USD list price

Generating realistic AI voice audio from text, downloadable for voiceovers, audiobooks and video.

Entry price

US$6/month

Starter plan, monthly billing; 30k credits a month and a commercial licence

Free tier

Free plan: 10k credits a month, no commercial licence.

A promotional first month of US$1 was shown when checked. Creator is US$22/month (US$11 first month) and Pro US$99/month. The page shows a yearly billing toggle but no yearly figures were readable, and prices exclude taxes.

Checked 3 days ago

Read from elevenlabs.io/pricing (opens in a new tab), elevenlabs.io/pricing/api (opens in a new tab)

What each free tier actually allows

Whether you need to pay at all depends on where the free plan's ceiling sits. Here it is in each vendor's own terms.

ElevenLabs

USD list price
  • ElevenLabs Free is US$0/month with 10k credits per month (listed at about 10 minutes of audio) and up to 3 Studio projects. The commercial licence first appears on the Starter plan.

What the free Text to Voice does not do

A comparison that cannot say what its own tool gives up is an advert.

  • No audio file. The tool plays speech through your speakers; there is no MP3 or WAV download, so you cannot use it for a voiceover.
  • Voice quality and choice depend entirely on your device and browser. Built-in system voices sound noticeably more robotic than ElevenLabs' models, and the list differs between Windows, macOS, Android and iOS.
  • Some browser voices are synthesised by the browser maker's own servers rather than on the device (Chrome's online 'Google' voices are an example), so we do not claim the text never leaves your machine.
  • No voice cloning, no emotion or pronunciation control, no multi-speaker projects and no API.

What the free Text to Voice does

  • Plays text aloud with any voice your browser exposes, with rate, pitch and volume controls
  • Pause, resume and stop
  • No credits, no character quota, no account
Open Text to Voice — the real tool, not a demo

Questions people actually ask

Can I download the audio?

No. This tool uses the browser's speech engine, which plays sound but does not hand back a file. If you need an audio file for a video or podcast, you need a service that renders audio, such as ElevenLabs, and its commercial licence starts on the paid Starter plan.

Cite this page

APA, MLA, BibTeX

Quote anything on this page with a credit. The date below is the date this page's data was read, not the date you are reading it — cite it alongside any figure you take from here, because these numbers move.

Canonical URL
https://www.altftool.com/deals/text-to-voice
Author and publisher
AltFTool — no individual author is credited on this page.
Prices checked
Price read from

APA

AltFTool. (2026, November 1). Text to Voice: what you'd pay elsewhere. https://www.altftool.com/deals/text-to-voice

MLA

"Text to Voice: what you'd pay elsewhere." AltFTool, 1 Nov. 2026, www.altftool.com/deals/text-to-voice.

BibTeX

@misc{altftool-deals-text-to-voice,
  author       = {{AltFTool}},
  title        = {{Text to Voice: what you'd pay elsewhere}},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {nov},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.altftool.com/deals/text-to-voice}},
  note         = {Prices checked 2026-11-01. Source: ElevenLabs: \url{https://elevenlabs.io/pricing}.}
}

Each price is transcribed from the vendor's own page on the date shown and is never converted between currencies, so quote that date alongside any figure you take from here. The vendor links are plain links — no affiliate tracking, no referral IDs, no paid placement.

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