Complete Guide to ElevenLabs 2026: Voice Cloning, API, and Pricing

What Is ElevenLabs?

ElevenLabs is the leading AI voice technology platform, providing the most natural-sounding text-to-speech, voice cloning, and audio AI tools available in 2026. Used by content creators, audiobook publishers, game studios, and enterprises worldwide, ElevenLabs generates speech that is nearly indistinguishable from human voice recordings.

The platform offers pre-made voices in 32 languages, custom voice cloning from short audio samples, real-time voice conversion, AI dubbing for video content, and a comprehensive API for developers building voice-enabled applications.

ElevenLabs Key Features

Text-to-Speech

Convert any text to natural-sounding speech using ElevenLabs’ AI voices. Choose from a library of pre-made voices or use your cloned voice. Adjust stability, similarity, style, and speed to fine-tune the output. The voices handle complex text including numbers, abbreviations, technical terms, and emotional content with appropriate intonation and pacing.

Voice Cloning

Create a digital clone of any voice from audio samples. Instant Voice Cloning requires just 1 minute of clean audio for a usable clone. Professional Voice Cloning uses 30+ minutes of studio-quality audio for a higher-fidelity replica. Cloned voices capture the speaker’s unique characteristics: tone, cadence, accent, and speaking style.

Voice Design

Create entirely new synthetic voices from text descriptions. Specify age, gender, accent, tone, and speaking style: “young female, warm and confident, slight British accent” generates a unique voice matching your description. Voice Design is useful when you need a specific voice type that is not available in the voice library and do not have audio samples for cloning.

AI Dubbing

Automatically dub video content into 32 languages while preserving the original speaker’s voice characteristics, emotion, and timing. Upload a video, select target languages, and ElevenLabs translates the script, generates localized speech that matches the original voice, and synchronizes lip movements. This feature transforms video localization from a weeks-long process into minutes.

Sound Effects

Generate custom sound effects from text descriptions. “Thunder rolling in the distance,” “coffee shop ambience with quiet conversation,” or “mechanical keyboard typing” produces high-quality audio. Sound effects complement voice generation for podcast production, video content, game audio, and multimedia presentations.

Projects (Long-Form)

ElevenLabs Projects handle long-form content like audiobooks, podcasts, and course materials. Upload your text, assign different voices to different speakers or chapters, adjust pacing and pronunciation for specific words, and generate complete audio files. Projects maintain consistent voice quality and pronunciation across hours of content.

Getting Started with ElevenLabs

Step 1: Create Your Account

Sign up at elevenlabs.io. The free tier includes 10,000 characters per month and access to pre-made voices. Explore the voice library and text-to-speech features to evaluate quality before upgrading.

Step 2: Choose or Create a Voice

Browse the Voice Library for pre-made voices filtered by language, accent, age, gender, and use case. For a custom voice, upload audio samples for Voice Cloning or describe your ideal voice for Voice Design. Test different voices with your content before committing to one for a project.

Step 3: Generate and Fine-Tune

Paste your text and generate speech. Listen to the output and adjust settings. Stability controls consistency (lower = more expressive, higher = more consistent). Similarity controls how closely the output matches the reference voice. Style controls emotional expressiveness. Speaker Boost enhances clarity for cloned voices.

ElevenLabs Pricing

Plan	Price	Characters	Features
Free	$0	10,000/month	Pre-made voices, 3 custom voices
Starter	$5/month	30,000/month	Instant cloning, 10 custom voices
Creator	$22/month	100,000/month	Professional cloning, dubbing, 30 voices
Pro	$99/month	500,000/month	Higher quality, API, 160 voices, projects
Scale	$330/month	2,000,000/month	Enterprise features, priority support

ElevenLabs Use Cases

Podcasters use ElevenLabs to generate intro/outro narration, create AI co-hosts, and produce multilingual versions. YouTubers generate voiceovers for tutorials and explainer videos. Audiobook publishers convert manuscripts to professional narration at a fraction of traditional recording costs. Game developers create dynamic NPC dialogue. E-learning companies produce course narration in multiple languages.

ElevenLabs vs Alternatives

Play.ht offers similar features at competitive pricing. Amazon Polly provides reliable enterprise TTS at lower cost but with less natural voices. Google Cloud TTS offers multilingual support with Google ecosystem integration. For the most natural-sounding speech and best voice cloning quality, ElevenLabs leads the market.