ElevenLabs vs Fish Audio: pricing, features and which to choose

ElevenLabs is a voice technology company founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, initially focused on human-like text to speech. It now spans ElevenCreative for generating, editing, dubbing, and localizing audio; ElevenAPI for production voice infrastructure; and ElevenAgents for deployable voice and chat agents. The platform also includes speech recognition, voice cloning, voice design, sound effects, music, image and video tools, Studio productions, knowledge bases, and workflow building. Its latest models include expressive Eleven v4, low-latency v4 Turbo, multilingual v3, Flash v2.5, and Scribe v2 transcription. Strengths include unusually broad language coverage, expressive delivery, and fast realtime performance. However, pricing, concurrency, commercial rights, training controls, and third-party dependencies require scrutiny. Cartesia, Inworld, and Google Gemini TTS are credible alternatives. ElevenLabs best suits creators, developers, and businesses needing integrated voice production.

A typical ElevenLabs workflow starts with a script, a library voice, or a Voice Design prompt, then moves through generation, editing, localization, and export. Its creative tools combine text to speech, speech to text, voice cloning, voice changing, voice isolation, sound effects, music, image and video generation, dubbing, and Studio Productions. Developers can integrate HTTP endpoints, WebSocket streaming, or Text-to-Dialogue, while ElevenAgents adds realtime configurations, workflow building, knowledge bases, widgets, multilingual conversations, and text messaging. Scribe v2 can return word-level timestamps, speaker diarization, and dynamic audio tagging. Users may create an Instant Voice Clone, or access Professional Voice Cloning on eligible plans. This breadth suits creators producing complete media projects as well as teams embedding generated audio and conversational agents into applications.

ElevenLabs is a broad, hosted alternative to narrower voiceover tools, combining expressive speech, dubbing, music, sound effects, voice design, image and video features, Studio productions, and realtime agents. Its latest Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo models target emotional, contextual, multilingual speech, with Turbo reaching approximately 150ms time to first speech, while Scribe v2 handles transcription, timestamps, and speaker diarization. Credit consumption can complicate forecasting: paid plans start at $6 monthly, with annual billing offering two months free, but separate activities draw from shared quotas. Free output is noncommercial, and users need rights to inputs, voices, and models. Cartesia is better for developers focused on low-latency speech infrastructure; Murf AI suits collaborative voiceover production, while WellSaid emphasizes licensed voices and enterprise controls. Choose ElevenLabs for varied localization and agent workflows in one account.

Fish Audio began as Fish Speech, a project by former Nvidia researcher Shijia Liao, who trained a voice-generation model on one GPU and open-sourced it. The company later rebranded as Fish Audio, with Rissa Cao serving as CEO and co-founder. Its public history records the first Fish Speech release in December 2023. The company launched five models in the year before July 2026, including four speech-generation systems and one speech-to-text model. TechCrunch reported that Fish Audio raised a $52 million seed round in July 2026, led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today. The report also cited more than eight million users across hosted and open-source models, $21 million in annual recurring revenue, and a GitHub repository exceeding 31,000 stars.

A typical Fish Audio workflow begins by selecting a voice or creating one through cloning or Voice Design, then entering a script and adding bracketed directions such as [whisper] or [laugh]. Users generate audio, review it, and download or share the result. For production integrations, developers send text to the REST TTS endpoint or use WebSocket streaming through Python or TypeScript SDKs. S2.1-Pro supports multi-speaker dialogue and 83 languages; s2.1-pro-free suits development under fair-use limits. For transcription, teams upload a recording to /v1/asr and specify the transcribe-1-pro header to receive speaker markers, turns, timestamps, and vocal-event cues. Live applications instead keep a realtime WebSocket open with transcribe-stream-1, billed by session duration.

Fish Audio differs from ElevenLabs, Cartesia, and PlayHT in its combination of expressive controls, open models, and deployment options. S2.1 Pro offers 83 languages, multi-speaker dialogue, and free development access, while bracket-based direction and open-weight models provide control over delivery and deployment. The $15-per-million-UTF-8-byte API price differs from credit-based web plans, complicating budgeting across products. Starter API accounts allow five concurrent requests, and long recordings can occupy a slot for minutes. Its terms permit use of Usage Data and Content to develop or enhance models, while voice submissions and public content carry licensing and consent responsibilities. Fish Audio suits creators and engineering teams prioritizing expressive control, multilingual output, and self-hosting.