The best ElevenLabs alternative depends on what you need to replace. ElevenLabs now sells a creator suite, speech APIs, voice cloning and a complete agent platform. A tool that replaces its text-to-speech API may not replace its agent runtime, and an agent platform may not give a video producer the editing workflow they need.
ElevenLabs alternatives at a glance
Text to speech (TTS) generates audio. An agent runtime also manages the conversation and its actions. Subscription, model, telephony, large language model (LLM) and infrastructure charges are separate cost categories, so these entry points are not comparable total call prices.
| Alternative | Best for | What it replaces | Lowest entry point | Main tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dasha | Technical teams building production voice agents | Managed runtime, phone and web channels, telephony integrations and operations | Free Developer offer; Growth from $0.08/minute | Not a standalone narration or voice-cloning studio |
| Deepgram | Teams that want speech recognition, speech generation and agent orchestration from one vendor | Speech APIs plus agent runtime | $200 initial credit; Standard Voice Agent API $0.075/minute | Tighter dependency on Deepgram's speech stack |
| Cartesia | Developers prioritizing low-latency audio and reasoning logic they control in code | Speech APIs plus audio-first agent runtime | Free model credits and agent funds; agent calls $0.06/minute | Cartesia's own speech models are part of the runtime |
| Resemble AI (Chatterbox) | Self-hosted voice models, data control and custom voice work | Text to speech and voice cloning | MIT-licensed code; self-hosting costs extra | You still need the rest of the agent stack |
| Murf | Business voiceovers and a focused streaming TTS API | Creator workflow or speech-synthesis layer | Studio trial; Falcon 2 TTS $0.01/1,000 characters | Not a complete voice-agent runtime |
Which ElevenLabs alternatives are free or open source?
The clearest open-source ElevenLabs alternative here is Resemble AI's MIT-licensed Chatterbox code, but self-hosting adds infrastructure costs. Dasha and Cartesia offer free agent-development tiers, Deepgram starts with a $200 credit, and Murf has a Studio trial with ten generation minutes and no downloads. None is free for unlimited production use.
1. Dasha: best for production conversational AI products
Our managed production platform is for technical teams building real-time conversational AI products. We provide the runtime around the conversation: phone and web channels, telephony integrations, tools, testing, monitoring and large-scale call execution. Our Call Inspector makes completed conversations inspectable.
The Dasha application and API for our managed runtime support inbound and outbound calls, bulk calls, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) credentials, knowledge bases, custom tools and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections. For completed conversations, the Call Inspector shows the transcript, recording playback when recording is enabled, LLM prompts and responses, tool executions, a timeline and latency breakdown.
Dasha pricing
Our pricing plans have two entry points:
- Developer: free, with 1,000 free minutes to start, one concurrent call, full API access and email support.
- Growth: starts at $0.08 per minute with one-second billing and no minimum duration; Voice over IP (VoIP) and LLM tokens are separate. Our uptime target is 99.99%.
When to choose Dasha
Choose Dasha when you are building an embedded voice product and need more than a speech model. We are a strong fit for technical teams that need call execution, telephony integrations, external actions, testing and production debugging without assembling every component themselves.
Choose another tool if your only job is audiobook narration, dubbing or cloning a voice for creator content. We support multiple TTS providers, including ElevenLabs, so you may be able to keep an ElevenLabs-backed voice while migrating the runtime or switch to another supported speech provider.
2. Deepgram: for a unified speech and agent API
Deepgram's Voice Agent API combines speech to text, LLM orchestration and text to speech over one WebSocket connection. It includes turn-taking, interruption handling and function calls. Teams can bring their own LLM, TTS or both, depending on the configuration.
Deepgram fits teams that want one vendor for speech recognition, speech generation and agent orchestration, with usage-based API pricing.
Deepgram pricing
Deepgram starts with a $200 credit. Its pay-as-you-go rates include:
- Aura-2 text to speech at $0.030 per 1,000 characters.
- Aura-1 text to speech at $0.015 per 1,000 characters.
- Standard Voice Agent API at $0.075 per minute.
- Standard Voice Agent API with bring-your-own TTS at $0.065 per minute.
- A custom configuration with bring-your-own LLM and TTS at $0.050 per minute.
Agent usage is metered by WebSocket connection time. Growth starts at $4,000 per year prepaid and has different rates. The initial $200 credit is not a recurring monthly allowance. Budget carrier and any outside bring-your-own provider charges separately from these API rates.
Deepgram tradeoffs
Deepgram is vertically integrated around its speech stack. That simplifies procurement and integration, but it also increases dependency on one vendor's speech models and runtime. Bring-your-own options reduce that dependency without removing the Deepgram orchestration layer. The default stack and a bring-your-own configuration have different cost and dependency profiles.
The dashboard shows high-level usage; turn-by-turn session observability requires your application to capture and persist WebSocket events.
3. Cartesia: for an audio-first, low-latency runtime
Cartesia Line is an audio-first voice-agent runtime built around Cartesia's Ink speech recognition and Sonic text-to-speech models. Developers can connect an LLM, own the reasoning logic in code and deploy agents to phone or WebSocket audio. The product also includes logs, evaluations, deployment versions and rollback.
This is a strong fit when speech latency and an integrated real-time audio stack matter more than provider portability.
Cartesia pricing
Cartesia's monthly plans separate model credits from prepaid agent funds:
| Plan | Monthly price | Model credits | Agent funds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 20,000 | $1 |
| Pro | $5 | 100,000 | $5 |
| Startup | $49 | 1.25 million | $49 |
| Scale | $299 | 8 million | $299 |
Enterprise pricing is custom. Sonic 3.6 TTS uses one model credit per character. Ink speech to text uses three credits per audio second from that shared model-credit pool. Agent funds are a separate dollar allowance, not additional TTS characters.
Managed Agents calls cost $0.06 per minute. A Cartesia-provided phone number adds $0.014 per minute. The code runtime is still called Line in the developer documentation; pricing uses Managed Agents. Temporary free LLM and evaluation offers are not permanent cost assumptions.
Agent-call concurrency is 8, 12, 20 and 60 across Free through Scale. TTS request concurrency is a separate limit: 2, 3, 5 and 15.
Cartesia versus ElevenLabs at the speech-API layer
Sonic 3.6 supports 44 languages. For a speech-API replacement, compare its character-based model allowance with ElevenAPI's input-character pricing. For a runtime replacement, compare Managed Agents or Line with ElevenAgents. Approximate TTS-minute allowances do not represent full agent-call minutes or include the rest of the conversation stack.
Cartesia tradeoffs
Line is structurally tied to Cartesia's speech models. That can deliver a coherent audio pipeline, but replacing the speech layer later involves more than changing an API key. Telephony support, phone-number availability and capacity depend on the setup.
4. Resemble AI: open-source Chatterbox for self-hosting
Resemble AI's MIT-licensed Chatterbox code provides an open-source route to text to speech and voice cloning. The family includes multilingual and low-latency variants. It is relevant to teams that need to inspect or self-host the voice-model layer, keep data inside a controlled environment or build a custom speech service.
Resemble AI has ended commercial voice generation. Its open voice models remain available, so this option is Chatterbox self-hosting, not a managed Resemble voice service.
Chatterbox pricing
The code uses the MIT license, with no software license fee. Inference infrastructure depends on the model and workload; Chatterbox-Nano supports CPU inference. Hosting, deployment, monitoring and maintenance still require resources. Resemble's detection-product pricing does not price a voice-generation service.
Chatterbox tradeoffs
Chatterbox replaces the speech and voice-cloning layer, not the full agent runtime. A production phone agent still needs speech recognition, an LLM, orchestration, telephony, logging and incident ownership. Choose self-hosting only if your team can own model-appropriate compute, deployment, monitoring, maintenance and incidents.
5. Murf: for business voiceovers and a focused TTS API
Murf serves two related use cases. Murf Studio provides a creator workflow for voiceovers, pronunciation controls, stock media and integrations such as Canva and PowerPoint. Murf's Falcon 2 API provides streaming text to speech over HTTP or WebSocket for real-time applications.
Falcon 2 supports multilingual speech and switching languages within a sentence. Murf fits teams that want to replace the speech layer or give a business content team a focused production interface.
Murf pricing
Murf Studio has a free trial with ten minutes of voice generation and no downloads. Its annual Studio plans start at an equivalent $19 per month for Creator and $66 for Business, both billed annually. These are Studio prices, not API allowances.
Falcon 2 API speech generation costs $0.01 per 1,000 characters. That character rate does not include a complete agent runtime.
Murf tradeoffs
Murf's text-to-speech API is not a complete production voice-agent runtime. You still need speech recognition, LLM orchestration, telephony, tools and monitoring. Compare it to the ElevenLabs API or Creative workflow, not to the full ElevenAgents product.
What ElevenLabs does well
ElevenLabs spans three product areas:
- ElevenCreative for voiceovers, Studio projects, dubbing, music, sound effects, images and video.
- ElevenAPI for text to speech, speech to text, voice cloning and other generative-audio capabilities through REST APIs and Python or TypeScript software development kits (SDKs).
- ElevenAgents for programmable voice and multimodal agents with knowledge bases, tools, telephony, analytics and testing.
Its models target different workloads. Eleven v4 is the expressive model for content creation and long-form dialogue; v4 Turbo serves agents and interactive applications. Both support more than 90 languages. The model IDs are eleven_v4 for the Text to Dialogue API and eleven_v4_turbo for the Text to Dialogue WebSocket.
Eleven v3 remains an expressive, multi-speaker option with more than 70 languages. Multilingual v2 targets stable long-form output in 29 languages. Flash v2.5 targets real-time applications and supports 32 languages. Model inference latency is only part of response time; application, network and telephony overhead still affect a live conversation.
That breadth makes ElevenLabs a strong fit when voice realism, expressive delivery, a large voice library and cloning are the main requirements. It also suits teams that want creator tools and APIs in the same account.
Instant and professional voice cloning also have different training requirements. The model, product and subscription each affect the buying decision.
ElevenLabs pricing in 2026
ElevenLabs has several billing units: Creative credits, API model usage, prepaid wallet funds and Agents call minutes. A credit count is not a universal character or call-minute allowance.
Creative subscriptions
ElevenCreative uses a shared monthly credit pool across its creation tools. These are regular monthly subscription prices, excluding introductory promotions and taxes:
| Plan | Monthly price | Included credits | Notable additions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10,000 | Core creation tools; non-commercial use with attribution |
| Starter | $6 | 30,000 | Commercial license, instant voice cloning and Dubbing Studio |
| Creator | $22 | 121,000 | Professional voice cloning |
| Pro | $99 | 600,000 | 44.1 kHz pulse-code modulation (PCM) through the API and 192 kbps audio |
| Scale | $299 | 1.8 million | Three seats, team collaboration and three professional voice clones |
| Business | $990 | 6 million | Ten seats, ten professional voice clones and lower-cost low-latency TTS |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom terms, support, security and scale |
Annual plans require prepayment and cost ten times the regular monthly price per year. Their monthly-equivalent figures are not month-to-month prices.
Up to two unused monthly credit allotments can roll over on an active paid subscription. Together with the current allotment, that can produce a balance of three allotments. Free credits do not roll over. Cancellation or downgrade forfeits unused paid subscription credits at the end of the billing cycle; prepaid wallet funds follow separate rules.
ElevenLabs API pricing by model and billing unit
ElevenAPI's model-specific rates use the following units:
| API workload | Models | Published rate | Billed quantity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expressive or long-form TTS | v4, v3, Multilingual v2 | $0.08 per 1,000 | Input characters |
| Conversational or lower-priced TTS | v4 Turbo, v3 Conversational, Flash/Turbo | $0.04 per 1,000 | Input characters |
| Batch transcription | Scribe v2, Scribe v2 Medical | $0.22 per hour | Submitted audio duration |
| Realtime transcription | Scribe v2 Realtime | $0.39 per hour | Submitted audio duration |
Transcription charges follow submitted audio duration. Optional keyterm prompting adds $0.05 per audio hour for batch transcription or $0.08 for realtime. These are speech-model prices, not whole-agent call prices.
API character allowances differ from Creative credit counts. For example, Creator lists 121,000 Creative credits and 275,000 v4 API characters. The lower-priced TTS families list roughly double the v4 character allowance. Approximate audio-minute equivalents do not change character-based TTS metering. API requests can still consume account credits under the account's billing rules.
Eligible self-serve accounts, including Free accounts, can add prepaid pay-as-you-go funds with a $5 minimum top-up. Included subscription quota is used first; prepaid funds expire after 12 months. The wallet retains dollar value and converts it to credits at the active plan's rate. Funding the wallet does not unlock a higher plan's features. Legacy accounts with enabled overages and Enterprise accounts can follow different billing arrangements.
ElevenAgents call pricing
ElevenAgents has its own included call minutes and simultaneous-call limits. Free includes 15 minutes and four simultaneous calls; Creator includes 275 minutes and ten simultaneous calls. Additional standard minutes cost $0.08 per minute. When enabled, burst capacity lets agents exceed the plan's concurrency limit; calls using that excess capacity cost $0.16 per minute. LLM usage is extra. External Twilio or SIP carriers bill separately; ElevenLabs adds no separate telephony fee.
Voice and multimodal calls are billed by connection duration, not just speaking time. Qualifying silence longer than ten seconds receives a 95% discount on the affected agent charge, not on every minute or the carrier's bill. Text-only conversations use message billing plus LLM usage.
The cost comparison therefore needs the exact model, regenerations, long-form editing, connected call duration, LLM tokens and carrier charges. A cheaper character rate alone does not establish a cheaper production agent.
Is ElevenLabs worth it? What the July 27 reviews showed
Third-party review results vary sharply by channel. These July 27, 2026 user-sentiment snapshots describe the review samples at that time, not current product specifications:
| Review platform | Rating snapshot on July 27, 2026 | What the sample suggests |
|---|---|---|
| G2 reviews | 4.5/5 from 1,156 reviews | Strong satisfaction among software buyers, with recurring praise for quality and ease of use |
| Trustpilot reviews | 3.1/5 from 1,067 reviews | A more polarized consumer sample, with material positive and negative feedback |
| Capterra reviews | 4.7/5 from 24 reviews | Positive but much smaller sample, including incentivized and non-incentivized reviews |
| Gartner Peer Insights | 4.5/5 from 17 ratings | Positive enterprise-oriented sample, but too small to generalize broadly |
Recurring positive themes were natural voice quality, expressive output, cloning, fast setup and API access. Recurring complaints concerned unpredictable costs at high volume, inconsistent long-form pacing or tone, pronunciation and locale problems, and mixed support experiences.
These ratings reflect different user groups, feature sets and support channels. A creator rating does not establish agent-runtime quality, and a small enterprise sample does not represent every deployment.
Why the shortlist excludes Vocode and PlayAI
Vocode appears in older ElevenLabs comparisons. Its open-source orchestration library connects speech-to-text, text-to-speech and LLM providers across telephony, web and other channels.
On July 27, 2026, the MIT-licensed Vocode core repository showed a last commit of November 15, 2024 and sought community maintainers. Its hosted app and API endpoints were unavailable at that time, even though its hosted documentation still described a service.
That historical snapshot supports treating Vocode as code to audit or fork rather than assuming a maintained hosted service. There is no software license fee, but your team would own provider costs, infrastructure, security updates and compatibility with changing third-party APIs.
PlayAI, formerly PlayHT, displayed a shutdown notice in its official app during the same July 27, 2026 review, and its public domains did not resolve reliably. These historical availability observations are why neither service is included in the five-option shortlist.
How to choose an ElevenLabs alternative
1. Compare the same product layer
Decide whether you are replacing a creator tool, a TTS API, voice cloning or a complete agent runtime. A lower per-character TTS price does not include agent orchestration. A per-minute agent price may exclude the LLM, carrier and phone number.
2. Model the total production cost
Use one realistic monthly scenario. Include paid plans, generated characters, retries, unused quota, call duration, silence rules, LLM tokens, telephony, concurrency, support and infrastructure. For open source, include engineering and on-call ownership.
3. Test the content that usually fails
Build a test set with product names, people and place names, dates, currencies, long numbers, abbreviations, accents, emotional passages and long-form scripts. Record how many generations need manual fixes and whether the output stays consistent across segments.
4. Measure the complete agent loop
For real-time voice, model latency is only one component. Measure end-to-end response time at the median and 95th percentile, barge-in, turn-taking, noisy calls, tool latency, reconnect behavior and concurrent load. Run the test in the regions and carriers you expect to use.
5. Check switching work before you commit
List which voices, prompts, tools, traces, phone numbers and provider contracts can move. A vendor that owns speech, orchestration and telephony can reduce integration work today but make a future switch broader. A modular stack preserves more choice but leaves your team with more seams to operate.
Which ElevenLabs alternative should you choose?
- Dasha: choose it for our managed production runtime with telephony integrations, tools, testing and call-level debugging.
- Deepgram: choose it for speech recognition, speech generation and agent orchestration from one vendor with usage-based pricing.
- Cartesia: choose it for an audio-first runtime built around Cartesia speech models.
- Resemble AI (Chatterbox): choose the open-source code for self-hosted speech and deployment control, not a managed commercial voice service.
- Murf: choose it for business voiceovers or a focused streaming TTS API.
ElevenLabs remains a fit for expressive speech, cloning, a large voice library or a combined creator suite.
If you need a production voice-agent runtime rather than a standalone audio generator, start building with Dasha using our free Developer offer.
