Are you considering an AI voiceover generator for your next video project? There are dozens of options that deliver varying levels of quality and customization. And they’re all priced differently. You don’t have time to test all of those tools for yourself, so we set out to find the best AI voiceover tool available today.
To set up a real comparison, we’ll be using a bit of script from an actual video we created. Below is the original video with voiceover by a real person. We’ll take the first 25 seconds of this video and compare it to the results from various AI voiceover generators.
ElevenLabs
The voiceover sample below is from ElevenLabs using the voice called Bill. Bill is tagged as “old, trustworthy, male, and American.” Achieving the effect heard below took only some slight tweaks of the basic settings. We slowed down the speed a little and increased “Style Exaggeration.” The whole process to set up and generate these 25 seconds of video took about 2 minutes.
Pricing for ElevenLabs is fairly affordable if you’re doing small-scale projects. The free tier allows you to generate about 10 minutes of audio in 29 languages using thousands of unique voices. You can also translate content, generate sound effects, and create custom voices.
Cost and features increase with the audio time you need. The most popular creator plan is $22 a month for about 2 hours of audio and gives you access to the Studio, which allows you to create longer-form content with multiple speakers.
Artlist.io
The slicker interface of Artlist actually makes it a little more difficult to navigate. You can filter voices by gender and video category. If you want to change accents, you do that in the generation screen. Speed and emotion can also be adjusted there. We chose a voice called “Esteem.” You can hear the results below.
To get access to AI voiceover with an Artlist subscription you’ll need the AI Voiceover plan which starts at $11.99 per month for an hour of voiceover time. This includes a menu of languages and accents as well as extensions for Premiere Pro. If you want to use the music or footage features of Artlist, you’ll need separate subscriptions.
MotionArray
MotionArray has a similar interface to Artlist. You enter your text at the top, then set accent, speed and emotion. Finally, you select from the voice catalog before clicking “generate.” The voice we selected was called “Bold Tale.” It was tagged as Male, deep, captivating, memorable. Generation speed was fast and the end result was pretty strong, you can hear it below.
Pricing for MotionArray AI voiceover starts at $10.99 per month billed annually. That pricepoint gets you 1 hour per month of generation time. You can upgrade to 2 hours for $13.99 or 4 hours for $15.99.
Speechify Studio
An offshoot of Speechify, which was created to read text out loud for people with dyslexia or vision impairments, Speechify Studio is a free AI voice generator. The Speechify voices we explored had more of a digital quality than the voices found in other AI voiceover generators. We looked for a deep-voiced, American, male to match our original voiceover artist. That gave us just three options. We ended up with Keenan, who you can hear below.
Our very short script took a couple of minutes to render, longer than either ElevenLabs or Artlist. Then we got an error message. The second attempt was more successful, but the results still had a digital quality as you can hear above.
Pricing for the Speechify AI Studio Basic is $288 per year, which works out to $24 per month. It’s not immediately clear how much rendered time you get for that price point.
WellSaid Labs
Gives you some extra options for voice type, including nonbinary gender and multiple accents for different regions of the US including Appalachia, Midwest, and Southeast. You can also choose from three styles for each voice: Narration, Conversational, and Promo. We selected Wade C, who you can hear below, in narration style.
Rendering was speedy. Overall, the narration was a little faster than we wanted. To fix that, we needed to use the Beta project model. This allows for the addition of cues: loudness, pace, pitch, pauses, etc. Re-rendering with the beta tool resulted in…unexpected quirks as you can hear below.
Simply asking the AI to slow down the first sentence resulted in wild variations in style and tone. The audio went from clear and measured to sounding like an over-caffeinated infomercial host. It didn’t seem audibly slower to us. To adjust pause length, the menu told us to “select punctuation” but the system wouldn’t let us. Beta is certainly the right description for these features.
The monthly cost for Wellsaid is $99 per month for 20 projects with 250 downloads and access to all voices. Business plans start at $179 per user per month and include 100 projects and 9000 downloads per user, as well as integrations with Adobe and Canva.
The Best AI Voiceover Generator Is…
Overall, ElevenLabs seems to offer the highest quality voices and customization features at the lowest cost. While we prefer hiring real voiceover actors, if you do choose the AI route, ElevenLabs seems to be the best AI voiceover generator available today.
Whether you use an AI voiceover generator or hire a voice actor for the human touch, we can help you create a video script and design that fits your brand. At IdeaRocket, we create explainer videos and animated commercials for Healthcare, SaaS, Human Resources and more. Contact us to get started.
