If you sell voiceovers, narrate faceless videos or produce course audio, the voice tool is your main cost and your main quality risk. We compared the four tools that come up most often in our research notes. We have no affiliate relationship with any of them. Links go to each tool's own site.
Short answer
- Start with ElevenLabs if you want the cheapest way to a commercial license ($6/month Starter), one credit pool that also covers dubbing, and a free tier (personal use only) to test with your own script before paying.
- Pick Murf if your clients want corporate e-learning or explainer narration and you prefer a fixed number of voice hours per month over a credit pool.
- Pick WellSaid if you work with brand or training teams and your volume is low: its yearly Starter plan is the cheapest entry here, but minutes are capped per year.
- Speechify Studio is worth a look for high-volume narration on annual billing (about 24 hours a year on the $100/yr Starter tier).
Prices compared (checked 17 Oct 2026)
| Tool | Free tier | Entry paid plan | Mid plan | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | Yes: 10,000 credits/mo, personal use only | Starter $6/mo (30,000 credits, commercial license) | Creator $22/mo (121,000 credits; $11 first month) | Credits are shared across text-to-speech, dubbing and music; Pro is $99/mo (600,000 credits). Annual billing is 10× the monthly price |
| Murf | See site | Creator $29/mo or $19/mo billed yearly (2 hours of voice/mo) | Business $99/mo or $66/mo billed yearly (8 hours/mo) | Studio editor, voice library, team features on Business |
| WellSaid | See site | Starter $19/mo or $10/mo billed yearly (240 downloaded minutes/yr) | Pro $49/mo or $33/mo billed yearly (2,160 minutes/yr) | Plans changed in June 2026; the old "Creator" tier is gone |
| Speechify Studio | See site | Starter $100/yr (about 24 hours of voiceover) | Creator $49/mo (about 8 hours) | Voiceover, dubbing and video tools in one subscription |
Prices are list prices in USD, before tax, from each vendor's pricing page or help center on the date above. Voice-tool pricing changes often. ElevenLabs repriced every plan in April 2026, and WellSaid in June 2026. Check before quoting a client.
What actually matters for paid work
1. Commercial rights
Free tiers are usually for personal use. ElevenLabs' free plan explicitly says "Personal use only". Commercial use starts on Starter. If you deliver audio to a paying client on a free plan, you are likely breaking the terms. Budget at least one paid plan from your first paid job.
2. How minutes are counted
- ElevenLabs counts characters as credits. Re-generating a line to get a better take costs credits again. At roughly 900 characters per finished minute, Creator's 121,000 credits cover about 134 minutes of first takes.
- Murf and Speechify count hours of generated voice.
- WellSaid counts downloaded minutes, so previews are cheaper.
For revision-heavy client work, assume you will generate 1.5–2× the final runtime.
3. Voice cloning and consent
Cloning a client's or a voice actor's voice needs their written consent, and every platform here requires it in its terms. ElevenLabs offers Instant Voice Cloning from Starter and Professional Voice Cloning from Creator. Never clone a voice you don't have rights to. It is the fastest way to lose an account and a client.
4. The "AI voice" disclosure
Marketplaces and some clients require you to say a voiceover is AI-generated. Put it in your gig description and your contract. Our AI voiceover service note covers pricing your work around this.
5. Free tools you still need
None of these replace basic audio cleanup. Audacity is free and handles normalizing, noise reduction and exporting to client specs (for example −16 LUFS for podcasts).
A cost example
Take a freelancer delivering eight 5-minute explainer voiceovers a month. That's 40 minutes finished, and roughly 60–80 minutes generated once you count retakes.
- ElevenLabs Creator ($22/mo): 121,000 credits is roughly 2 hours of standard text-to-speech at about 1 credit per character. That covers this volume with room to spare.
- Murf Creator ($29/mo, or $19 yearly): the 2-hour cap covers it.
- WellSaid Starter: 240 minutes a year runs out in about 3–4 months at this pace. You'd need Pro.
At this volume the tool costs $20–$50 a month. For comparison, human non-broadcast e-learning narration runs about $30–$55 per finished minute on the GVAA rate guide, and AI-produced voiceover sells below that. The tool is rarely what limits profit. Finding clients is.
How we compared
We read each vendor's current pricing page and help-center plan pages on 17 Oct 2026 and compared plans on price, usage limits and commercial rights. We did not run listening tests, so this page makes no claim about which voices sound best. Try each free tier or trial with your own script before you commit. No vendor paid for placement or reviewed this page.
Sources: ElevenLabs pricing, Murf pricing, WellSaid pricing, WellSaid June 2026 plan changes, Speechify Studio pricing.