9 Best AI Voice Generators (March 2023) for Natural Text-to-Speech

https://nerdynav.com/best-ai-voice-generators/

From voicing story characters to creating multilingual podcasts, the best AI voice generators can give you studio-quality voiceovers at a fraction of the price.

In this article, I’ve reviewed the best AI voice generators to help choose the right one for your project.

First, here is my #1 pick:

BEST OVERALL

MURF.ai

Best collection of voices overall (with the best African-American voices out of all AIs tested). Perfect for Podcasts, e-learning, and ads.

120+ lifelike and non-robotic voices with 20+ different languages and accents. Vary emotion, pitch, speed, emphasis, edit pronunciations, and more.

You can also clone your own voice or swap existing voices with clearer voiceovers.

Listen to Murf Voice Samples

Read review

AI text-to-speech software is helping people to be more productive, create more engaging content, and is making the world more accessible for people with disabilities.

AI voiceover tools help you save time and thousands in voice-over costs by:

• Easily experiment with a wide range of voices, languages, and accents.
• Immediately re-voice any script changes as many times as needed.
• Make your customer support bots sound more natural.
• Localize your ads and training videos.
• Boost user engagement through voice.

Let’s get started with reviews.

What Are the Best AI Voice Generators (TTS)?

Here are my top picks for the best AI Voice Generators:

• MURF.ai
• Play.ht
• Lovo
• Voicera
• Typecast
• Speechify
• Woord
• NaturalReader
• Voicemaker

1. MURF.ai

Best Overall for Creators & Artists

MURF Studio is a complete AI voice solution that you can use to add lifelike voices to your stories, podcasts, audio newsletters, explainer videos, product trainings, and more.

Why I Chose It (Key Features)

With Murf, I was able to do very human-like voiceovers in a matter of minutes. It handled different emotions and accents very well and my friends were not able to tell that the voices were generated by an AI.

Here’s my favorite voice Terrel:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EfTpdPiZE64?start=8&feature=oembedMurf offers lifelike voices with different emotions

Likes

• 120+ Realistic-sounding human-like voices with options to vary pitch, speed, inflection, tone, emphasis, and more.
• Switch voices by gender, country, and language (even within the same paragraph!)
• Specify custom pronunciation using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA notation), and change emphasis word by word.
• You can also clone your own voice with MURF
• Spectacular emotive range: Make the AI voice sound upbeat, powerful, inspiring, smooth, deep, etc. Mimic joy, anger, sadness, and more.
• 20+ languages and accents to create natural voice-overs in different languages according to your target audience.
• Murf’s collection of African-American voices is the best among AI voice generators.
• Easy-to-use web interface that works smoothly.
• With Voice changer, I could swap my own recorded voice (which had noise) with a professional studio-like voice (crystal clear)
• Provides voice-over add-on for Google slides and free music to add in video voice-overs.
• Allows direct imports from 100s of sites like Youtube/Vimeo

Dislikes

• With the monthly plan, unused minutes don’t carry over to the next month.
• Sometimes struggles with pronouncing acronyms and inflecting on the end of questions.

Pricing

Users can get started with a free plan to try out all the different features of MURF. I liked the fact that it did not require a credit card to sign up for the free plan. Paid plans start at $19 per month, billed annually.

The good thing about their voice generation limit is that playing around with different voices for the same text does not consume it.

My Recommendation

Businesses, content creators, and storytellers can save a lot in voice-over production and revisions by opting for MURF instead of hiring voice-over artists. With its range of emotive AI voices with different languages and accents, I highly recommend Murf for all kinds of voice-over needs.

Get started with Murf.ai for free.

Try MURF.ai Yourself

Heads up: Educators, Students, and Non-Profits can get special discounts. First, sign up for the free trial with your official id and then follow the steps here to put in a request.

2. Play.ht

Best for Large Enterprises, IVR, Ads

Play.ht is an AI powered text-to-speech generator used and trusted by big companies like Verizon, Samsung, and Hyundai.

Why I Chose It (Key Features)

Likes

• 907+ AI Voices with 142 languages and accents (including support for multiple vernacular languages for some countries)
• Ultra Realistic AI Voices tailor-made to be indistinguishable from humans for specific use cases like audiobooks, e-learning, marketing
• Various voice styles like Newscaster, Conversational, Customer Support, and Cheerful.
• Accurately pronounces most terminologies and acronyms making it very useful for E-learning.
• High-quality voice cloning (check out their cloned samples of Tom Hanks, Joe Rogan, etc)
• Can create audio articles using their SEO-optimized audio widget. Also makes your site accessible to those with hearing issues.
• Support for Indian state languages like Malayalam, Telugu, etc in addition to Hindi.
• Limits are in word counts (not character counts) so easy to track. Limits are also quite generous (the lowest plan gives 240,000 words/year)

Dislikes

• Not all AI voices work equally well. At the same time, voices in the ultra-realistic collection are scary good. (On a side note: I personally found Aria to be the best AI voice)
• Ultra-realistic voices are only available in the Premium plan and above.

Pricing

Play.ht plans start from USD $14.25 per month (with yearly limit of 250,000 words).

Only the premium plan offers ultra-realistic voices and it’s a bit on the costly side. I suggest grabbing it during special offers like new year deals. (50% discount with resulant price of $49.5 per month)

My Recommendation

Play.ht is a voice generation service that is being professionally used for voicing their customer support systems by 7000+ teams and some very large enterprises. If you need AI voice generation at a scale, Play.ht is your best bet.

Try Play.ht Yourself

3. Lovo

Best for Creators Using Their Own Voice

LOVO AI is a budget-friendly text-to-speech software with a generous free plan for personal use (no credit card required).

Why I Chose It (Key Features)

Likes

• Very easy to use. Get non-robotic, human-like voices with one click.
• 180+ voices, 33 languages. Can change speed, intonation, pronunciation, etc.
• Clone your own voice with only 15 minutes of audio.
• Clean and clutter-free UX.
• In-house developed AI voice engine ensures the voices are unique, realistic, and not found in any other tool. (Most other tools are built over Google’s Wavenet, Amazon’s Polly, etc, and sound similar)
• Option to add background music right from Lovo Studio.
• A generous free plan + good discounts for personal use and freelancers so it’s a budget-friendly option.
• API to create and offer your own software offerings built over Lovo’s engine (requires resell rights).

Dislikes

• They have a history of deleting AI voices from their catalog which can be inconvenient if you plan to choose and stick with a single voice for all your projects.

Pricing

LOVO is completely free to get started with and offers extremely affordable paid plans starting at $17.49 per month. (30 downloads/month of up to 15,000 chars each)

My Recommendation

I recommend the free plan of LOVO for hobbyists who want to clone their own voice for making videos without buying costly tools.

Freelancers will also definitely benefit from LOVOs commercial plans as they get 100 downloads/mo and super realistic premium voices.

Try LOVO Yourself for Free

4. Voicera

Best for Bloggers

Voicera is a natural-sounding text-to-speech tool to help bloggers create audio articles and blogs.

When it comes to reading on the web, people like to listen > scan > read fully.

Voicera audio articles increase user engagement and help visitors to stay longer on your blog (boosting SEO). It also helps with accessibility for people with vision issues.

Why I Chose It (Key Features)

Voicera allows bloggers to easily integrate read-aloud features into their blogs enhancing UX, SEO, and inclusiveness.

Likes

• 200+ languages. Varied choices by gender and age.
• Ability to change voice speed.
• User-friendly dashboard. Just input the article link, choose a voice, and the audio embed is created in seconds.
• Easy to embed iframe HTML code.
• Supports WordPress, Ghost, and any other sites allowing users to insert HTML snippets.
• Voicing credits don’t expire. Can also be topped up.
• Useful for improving user engagement metrics.

Dislikes

• Requires support for HTML code embeds. Thus, it is not available on Medium and Substack.

Pricing

Voicera starts at $29 for 200,000 credits where 1 credit = 1 word. These credits don’t expire with time.

My Recommendation

I recommend Voicera for bloggers, news websites, or any website with long-form content. Company blogs will also greatly benefit from the improved audio SEO and accessibility provided by Voicera’s audio articles.

Try Voicera for Audio Articles

5. Typecast

Best for Animators (Characters + Voice)

Typecast.ai provides realistic voice actors (virtual characters + text-to-speech.

Why I Chose It (Key Features)

Typecast is incredibly useful to create any kind of animated video which requires natural voice-overs and synthetic human characters.

Likes

• 300+ realistic voices.
• Choose a human or animated character.
• Large selection of characters. Can also vary character background.
• Easy to use video editor with minimal/no need of post processing.
• Control pitch, emotion, tempo, etc.
• Import pdf, epub, excel, and ppt to convert to voice.
• Helpful templates for edu videos, documentaries, audiobooks, etc to get you started.

Dislikes

• The subtitling/transcript feature is slow and buggy.
• The free version provides only 3 minutes of download time.

Pricing

The paid plans of Typecast start from $7.99 but most serious users will need the Pro plan (for $35.99/mo) as it is the one with detailed speech control.

My Recommendation

I suggest Typecast for content creators who need AI characters as well as a text to speech.

Try Typecast

6. Speechify

Best for Listening

Speechify is a text-to-speech software that increases your productivity by reading your ebooks, PDFs, articles, etc to you in a natural-sounding voice. It also provides impressive voice-over generation capabilities.

Why I Chose It (Key Features)

Speechify is great for all kinds of reading-aloud tasks you throw at it. It helped me go through more books and get more stuff done. Listening to Speechify does not feel boring and the AI voices sound real enough to keep you hooked.

You can also feed it text to generate voice-overs for your own content (free up to 300 chars) but for large-scale voice generation, you will need to get a custom quote from support.

Likes

• Incredibly lifelike and natural-sounding text-to-speech capabilities.
• 30+ natural reading voices and 20+ different languages.
• Can vary the reading speed of AI.
• Supports multiple apps and platforms (Web, chrome extension, mac, android, iOS, etc)
• Listen while you read. Speechify also provides tools to highlight and take notes if you need to.
• Scan any text (printed or on-screen) for listening.
• Flexible pricing and generous free plan (no limits for TTS, 10 voices) with custom rates for getting a premium plan as a group.
• With Speechify Audiobooks, you get 1000s of audiobooks narrated by actors! There are nearly 60,000 audiobooks.

Dislikes

• Primarily targeted for reading with TTS. Need to contact sales for voice-over generator for generating more than 300 characters of your own text and downloading as an mp3.
• Speechify audiobooks are not part of the premium and have to be purchased separately (or as an add-on in a bundle).

Pricing

My Recommendation

With speechify, every book can become an audiobook, and every blog post a podcast! Speechify makes listening to anything a joy and its note-taking tools and additional natural voices make the premium worth it. The added convenience of chrome extension and mobile apps is just great.

I recommend it to users who are looking for text-to-speech software to read to them. For voice generation capabilities (TTS to downloadable mp3), you will need to contact their customer support and get a quote.

Try Speechify for Free

7. Woord

Best for Listening to Articles by URL

Woord is an online reader which converts text in web articles, blogs, scanned docs, and images to speech.

Why I Chose It (Key Features)

Likes

• Supports SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language)
• Scan photos to convert text to audio (OCR)
• Scan docs to convert text to audio (OCR)
• Has a chrome extension
• Pro plan has no character limit.

Dislikes

• Robotic voices
• Bare bones UI.

Pricing

The Starter plan costs $9.99 per month and allows commercial use with a generous limit of 100,000 characters. The pro plan has no limit – unlimited audios and characters per month!

My Recommendation

If you are looking for a simple text-to-speech converter that does the job, provides commercial rights, and is super affordable, woord is the right fit for you.

Try Woord for Free

8. Natural Reader

Best for Students with Learning Disabilities

Natural reader is a free text to speech app that reads articles and documents aloud for you. It is especially useful for students with reading and learning disabilities like dyslexia.

Why I Chose It

Natural reader is very easy to use and makes life easier with people with reading issues. Besides listening to material can also help students learn things in novel ways (some people learn better through audio).

Likes

• Easy-to-use web app with simple UI
• Chrome extension
• Different voices
• Users can vary the speed of voice
• Discounts for education

Dislikes

• Voices sound robotic
• Needs internet access
• The pronunciation editor is not very reliable

Pricing

Natural reader has these pricing plans (paid yearly) for personal use:

Premium Yearly: $59.88/year

Plus Yearly: $110/year

For commerical voiceover, Natural reader gets quite expensive. If you want to use the mp3 for commercial purposes like podcasts, training videos, etc, the pricing is as follows:

My Take

The free version of Natural Reader is well worth a try. For commercial uses, I find its pricing plans a bit on the higher side.

Try Natural Reader for Free

9. Voicemaker

Best for Small Budget

Voicemaker is a versatile text-to-speech converter that gives non-robotic AI voices.

Why I Chose It

Voicemaker supports two AI voice engines – standard (on par or better than most other TTS) and neural TTS (even better quality). It is affordable and it works well.

Likes

• Vary pause, speed, volume
• Feature to say as date, time, fraction, etc (often mispronounced by other TTS)
• SSML support
• 2 AI engines – standard and neural
• Very affordable

Dislikes

• UI is a bit bare-bones.

Pricing

My Take

At only $10/mo or $50 for a year, the value for money with Voicemaker is simply phenomenal. Besides, the free plan is pretty generous to try all its features.

Try Voicemaker for Free

FAQs

What Is an AI Voice Generator?

An AI voice generator is a technology that uses artificial intelligence algorithms to generate human-like speech.

There are typically two approaches to generate speech (voice) from text:

• Traditional TTS Synthesis: AI takes the text and turns it into speech by putting together parts of pre-recorded speech. It decides which parts to use based on the text, tone, and other speech elements.
• Neural TTS: AI uses deep learning to directly make speech from text. It’s trained on many examples of text and speech to produce more natural-sounding speech. Deep learning models provide more natural and human-sounding voice.

Why should I use AI Voice Generator?

AI voice generators offer numerous benefits that can help businesses boost efficiency, save time, and improve customer experience. Here’s how:

• Virtual Assistants: AI voice generators can be used to create virtual assistants that can handle customer queries, provide product information, and perform various tasks. This can free up valuable time for human employees and allow them to focus on higher-value tasks.
• Improved Customer Experience: Communicating using voice provides a more personal experience to customers than text. This can improve customer satisfaction and increase the likelihood of repeat business.
• Accessibility: AI voice generators can be used to provide audio output for visually impaired individuals, making websites and applications more accessible.
• Cost Savings: AI voice generators can be less expensive than hiring human voice actors, and they can generate speech at scale with consistent quality. Any needed revisions can also be done with ease.
• Powerful Storytelling: The best AI voice generators listed here make it possible for small creators and hobbyists to voice a large number of characters in their stories and plays. Without these paid and free ai voice generators, such small creators would not be able to bear the costs of hiring and rehiring human voice actors.

What is the best voice cloner?

AI voice cloning is a technology that uses artificial intelligence to generate a digital copy of a human voice.

The technology involves training the AI on an individual’s audio recordings to capture the unique characteristics of their voice, including their tone, pitch, and rhythm, and generate new speech that sounds similar to the original speaker, even when reading new text. Such voice cloners are also called deepfake voice generators as they use deep learning to fake the voice.

As per my tests, Lovo.ai is the best AI voice cloner. It can generate a realistic digital copy of your voice from about 15 minutes of original audio recording.

Readers also ask

Can I create my own AI voice?

What is the most realistic AI voice generator?

What is the best ai voice generator for Youtube?

Wrap Up

So there you have it. In this article, I have listed the best AI voice generators and text-to-speech software with their key features, pros, and cons.

When deciding on the best AI voice generator for your business, it’s crucial to take into account what you’re trying to achieve with it and which features will best align with your specific requirements.

For example, I recommend Murf.ai to most users as it has a flexible and affordable pricing structure with a large number of AI voices. But, if you run a large firm or business and your primary requirement is voices for customer support and automated systems, then Play.ht is the industry-tested solution.

Finally, if you are looking for a text-to-speech tool for listening to books and articles, you may go for Speechify.

AI-powered tools can greatly help you improve your workflows and grow your business. Text-to-speech and voice generation is just one such application. AIs can also be used to write stories, create courses, and even help you develop apps.

I hope you found the AI tools in this article useful for your needs. Thanks for reading.

• Author
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Nerdynav

I write about software and ideas to help solopreneurs build their projects frugally. A software developer by profession, I have worked on AI ML products and have also been featured in leading publications like TowardsDataScience, Analytics Vidhya, Stackify, and The Write Practice.

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