AI voice generators using text-to-speech (TTS) technology have advanced rapidly over the last few years.
You can now create high-quality audio of human-like voices in various accents, tones, and languages without leaving your desk.
No voice talent, recording equipment, dubbing studio, or editing software needed!
Hundreds of AI voice generators claim to produce voices and speech audio that is natural, emotive, and indistinguishable from a human voice.
These tools make producing high-quality audio for all your content seamless, including voiceover audio for multimedia, video ads, animations, online gaming, training material, slideshows, podcasts, and more.
So, how does this software work? What can you use it for? And can it really create a voiceover good enough to replace a human voice?
That’s what we wanted to find out.
So, we rounded up the top AI voice generators and tested them against each other to find the best of the best. We review them in detail and provide examples of the voiceovers we made.
Best AI Voice Generators | Pricing | Our P2P Rating |
Play.ht |
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Listnr |
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Murf.AI |
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Replica Studios |
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BigSpeak |
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Read on for our full reviews and examples of the audio we created with these AI voice generators!
AI voice generators have progressed rapidly in the last couple of years. Text-to-speech (TTS) software has moved from being primarily an assistive technology like text-to-voice, reading digital text out loud, to becoming a method of creating audio voice recordings for a multitude of use cases.
AI speech software is now used for everything that once required the physical recording of human speech.
This software helps produce automated voiceovers in various languages, accents, and tones for:
This has been made possible by the massive advances in deep learning and AI-based natural language processing (NLP), and natural language generation (NLG).
There is no sign of these advances slowing down, and AI for various language-based uses is here to stay!
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By 2025, this market will boost to a shocking $60 million. In 2030, the global GDP will increase by over $15.7 trillion thanks to the benefits AI products, like voice generators, offer.
AI voice generators or AI speech software are valuable today because of how advanced these tools have become.
Content creators can now produce professional, high-quality voiceovers without any recording equipment or voice talent, and you can customize and edit your voice recordings extensively to create a natural and emotive voiceover that is indistinguishable from a human voice!
At least, that’s what they’re telling us they can do…
To find out how good the top competitors are, we decided to test them ourselves and see what can do.
AI speech software is a text-to-speech (TTS) software program that converts text into audio using an AI-generated voice that can be customized by the user. Both TTS software and AI voice generators allow users to customize the language, gender, accent, tone, and speech rate for the audio they create.
The end result is an AI-generated voice that sounds remarkably natural and expressive. Some of the top AI speech software can produce a voice that is indistinguishable from a human voice!
This software is becoming better and better and easier to access and use. Much like AI copywriting tools, content creators now regularly use them for many use cases, from marketing material to teaching online courses, internal training material to audiobooks and animations, and everything else in between.
No matter what you need, you can use AI speech software to produce a high-quality voiceover content without any recording or editing equipment, voice actors, or, worse, having to hear a recording of your own voice (*shudders in 90s voicemail)… All in half the amount of time, without ever leaving your desk.
Some of the more advanced tools also allow you to translate into various languages, add music, and match the audio to video content so that your voiceover perfectly syncs with the visuals you’re using.
AI speech software to automate converting text to speech. We use these tools to create automated voiceovers for explainer videos, video ads, podcasts, and similar projects.
This review compares how the best platforms produced voiceovers and how many features each tool makes available for these projects.
The most common features of AI speech software include:
Creating the perfect voiceovers for your videos takes a lot of time. Not to mention recruiting talent and recording all that audio!
Fortunately, AI speech software makes this process much easier. With one platform, you can create voiceovers from countless templates while tuning the tone and accent of your audio to connect with your audience and match your video content.
Traditionally, creating the voiceover for a video or slideshow or recording an audiobook, speech, or lecture is a time-consuming and resource-heavy task.
From the voice talent to the recording location/soundproof studio, to the recording and editing equipment, to painstakingly trying to get the audio to sound good AND be in sync with the visuals, it’s a process that requires some expertise and a lot of time.
The biggest benefit of using this software is how much time and money you can save while still creating a high-quality voiceover!
Thanks to AI voice generators, you can speed up your productivity by 40%. They’re making it easier and more accessible for anyone to create a high-quality voice recording without any expertise or equipment needed!
Some more of the top benefits of using AI speech software include:
For a little more insight, here is a video from CyberWave247 about the rise of AI voice generators.
To test and evaluate the top AI speech software, we considered what features and functions you need to produce top-quality voiceovers and then worked out some evaluation criteria from there.
Combining all these factors allows you to produce quality voiceovers to make your videos sound natural, emotive, and polished.
Here is how we tested them to find out:
We selected popular AI speech software with robust features and good user reviews on both the tools and third-party review sites. After signing up, we tested each one to see what it could do and how easy (or not) it was to use.
We created a very basic voiceover script for a generic video ad for a financial services provider. Then, we used the same script for all the tools to get as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible.
This meant the basic input was the same for all the tools, and the quality of the final product was determined by what the tool could do with that simple script.
To make sure that we considered each tool fairly, we also evaluated each tool against the following criteria:
The main objective of our test was to determine the quality of the voiceovers you can produce, the user-friendliness of the platform, and your level of control over customizations and editing.
These are the top 10 AI generator tools that we tested to find the best of the best:
After using all ten AI speech software platforms, we selected the best (see the detailed reviews on those below) based on our evaluation criteria and the quality of the final product.
Many of the best voice generator tools were fairly basic and easy to use. You could easily input the text you want to convert to audio and choose your desired voice, and the software would do the rest.
They were all quite good and passable, especially if you just need text made to audio/speech but don’t necessarily need it to sound flawlessly human, with varied tones and convincing emotion.
However, the ones that stood out the most were the ones that allowed us to tweak and customize the voice, tone, and speech rate. This gave us a little more control, and we got some pleasing results with some playing around to switch out words and edit punctuation.
With more time and flexibility, we could have improved the quality further, and if you’re going to use your software for anything professional or commercial, we recommend that you set aside some time to test out all your options regarding the customizations the tool offers.
The tools that did not make it into our selection of the top AI speech software were still good tools, and we definitely recommend that you check them out for yourself if you think they might be a good fit for your use case.
However, from our point of view and with our experience of using them to generate a voiceover for a video ad, they were not as good as the ones we review in detail below:
Play.ht has a fantastic track record, and it’s an ideal voiceover tool for small teams. You can create super realistic voiceovers for podcasts and videos by inputting text, converting it to speech, and editing it.
Play.ht provides useful additional features like:
After signing up for Play.ht and going through the quick onboarding process, you can jump straight into your voiceovers!
You’ll notice the dashboard has all the bells and whistles of some other tools. This is because Play.ht is ideal for small teams, not solo creators. You’ll notice navigation to your AI voices, team, analytics, podcast hosting, and resources on the left-hand menu.
When you start creating your AI voiceovers with Play.ht, you’ll notice a simple and intuitive editor. You can upload your text file or copy and paste the text directly into Play.ht’s editor.
It’s super simple to choose your voice; each voice has a signature accent, language, tone, and emotion.
Besides how easy Play.ht is to use, we love this tool for the quality of the voices it provides and the few pronunciation problems we encountered compared to some of the other tools we tested.
We could use two voices for our Play.ht test. So we chose a British female and a male. We chose the high-quality audio option to customize our voiceover with a pace at 1x and a neutral tone.
This is an example of what we created using Play.ht:
All in all, the quality of the voiceover we created with Play.ht is quite impressive. These voiceovers are good enough to use for projects across various professional use cases, which is why Play.ht made it into our top five selection!
That said, it would take a bit more finesse to create a really great voiceover with Play.ht. You will need to spend some time editing the script and finetuning the customizations to get a more fluid and impactful voiceover, but it is certainly possible.
Plat.ht also offers a lot of additional value in terms of its API and the various additional services they offer. The tool’s features are generous, and there isn’t much you can’t do in Play.ht.
However, there are a few cons to Play.ht, and these are:
Play.ht’s Pricing:
Website: https://play.ht/
When it comes to top-tier voice generation software, Listnr is among the very best! This speech software is ideal for podcasts and explainer videos and offers plans for individuals and teams.
The features for voiceovers Listnr offers include:
Lisnr doesn’t walk you through an onboarding form. You simply create an account and start producing voiceovers!
The dashboard is really intuitive. You have navigations to podcasts, voiceovers, audio player settings, TTS voices and APIs, and your general settings on the left-hand menu.
Click “Create a Voiceover” on the dashboard to create a voiceover.
You can upload or use the link of an article/blog or text file, or input the text yourself. We chose the latter method for this test, using our generic video ad script.
What stood out about Listnr is how well you can customize and edit your voiceovers. While the voiceovers sounded a little outdated, with shades of the classic ‘beige narrator’ of infomercials past, there are many ways to tweak the tone, pace, and emotion to connect with your audience.
For this test, we used a female voice with a UK accent and set the voice style, pronunciations, and speed to ‘regular’.
This is the audio voiceover we created:
As a basic voiceover with minimal editing, it’s really good! Given some more tweaks and editing, it would be even better.
While Listnr’s voice quality is clear and the tone is very natural, the voice doesn’t sound as human-like as it could because of a few breaks in the tone/infection that place a little more emphasis on certain words. Editing the script to avoid the ‘problem words’ and adjusting the speed and tone fixes that, though it just takes a bit of time.
We also found that the accents were not great, and the user interface was a bit clumsy to use. Overall, it’s a very good tool but maybe not quite as polished or advanced as the others in the list. That said, the voiceover quality is good, and it could be used professionally with some tweaks and edits.
The biggest drawbacks to Listnr include:
Listnr’s Pricing:
Website: https://www.listnr.tech/
Murf.ai is the most popular and reliable AI speech software, with an impressive range of features and high-quality voiceovers.
With Murf.ai, you can use features for voiceovers like:
When you start with Murf.ai, they take you through a 2-step onboarding process. This helps Murf direct you toward the right functions and resources for your voiceovers.
After onboarding, Murf.ai will take you to an interface where you can create your project.
The dashboard boasts a simple and clean user interface, making this tool ideal for beginners. You can create a project or workspace or navigate to Murf.ai’s templates in the left-hand menu with a few clicks.
Just click “Create New Project” to produce your voiceover! Murf.ai starts you off with their default voice – a male, American voice. But you can change this and choose from a wide array of different accents.
Plus, you can edit your pronunciations here too! Editing the pronunciation is a very useful feature, especially if you need to create a distinct and recognizable character’s voice.
You can set your desired tone and pace next to the button where you choose your voice. In the bottom editor, you can seamlessly add your chosen voices and media files, such as a video or audio.
We used two voices, male and female, with British accents. The clarity and quality of Murf.ai’s voices are excellent, the pronunciation is good, and the accents are quite accurate. Overall, we were impressed with how quick and easy it was to create a voiceover in Murf.ai, and happy with the quality we got with minimal effort in terms of editing and customization.
Click here to listen to Listen to the Voiceover We Created in Murf.ai.
We liked using Murf and it was very user-friendly. However, there were some downsides too:
Murf.ai’s Pricing:
Website: https://murf.ai/
ReplicaStudios is one of the newer tools on this list, and some of the functions are still in beta, but it’s also one of the most complex platforms, and it is made with gaming, metaverse, and narration/movie dialogue in mind.
ReplicaStudios provides features specialized to voiceovers for movies, gaming, and the metaverse. The tool offers in-depth customizations, and the more you use it, the more you can train its algorithm to capture your targeted pronunciation and overall delivery.
We chose to include ReplicaeStudios in our top selection due to the complexity of this software compared to others. This is ideal for its target niches – gaming, metaverse, and film.
You can use features like:
The dashboard is crowded but easy to navigate. Scrolling down, you can find online community integrations for Discord, YouTube, and Twitter, as well as integrations and plugins. On the left-hand bar, you can find your projects and AI voices.
We clicked “Start a New Project” to test this tool and manually added the text to Replica’s TTS tool.
While creating our voiceover with Replica, we noticed how easy it was to use, especially considering the complexity of the features it offers and producing voiceovers with two voices in dialogue is much easier than in many of the other top AI speech software platforms!
We used three female and one male voice with UK accents (English and Scottish) for this test. All the voices were set to a lighthearted tone, and we left the default pace settings.
The results were… Interesting.
This can work for specific use cases but not for a video ad voiceover. You can definitely hear that slightly robotic video-game voiceover in it, and the voices don’t sound convincingly human. That said, there is emotion and a lot of editing and customization options that you can use to refine your voiceover.
As a still-evolving product, we really liked what ReplicaStudios is trying to do. They have various options to create characters with custom voices and ‘cast an AI voice actor’ for that character, setting the voice’s age range, gender, and accent.
You can then create scenes, add characters, and input their words, adjusting the style (charming, angry, or distraught) and pace. When the features are finalized, it will be fantastic for animators and game developers. Also, you can claim ownership of your voices so your characters can be unique and not sound like anyone else.
The negative aspects of ReplicaStudios are:
ReplicaStudio’s Pricing:
Website: https://replicastudios.com/
BigSpeak is an easy-to-use, quick AI voice generator that’s perfect for basic projects and beginners.
For seamless AI voice generation, BigSpeak offers features like:
When you register a BigSpeak account, there’s no onboarding process, and you can develop voiceovers for your project.
The dashboard (in the image above) is really simple. You can create AI voiceovers, transcribe audio, produce voice clones, and browse through BigSpeak’s various voices.
Users love BigSpeak because it requires no experience to use. You simply paste or type the text you want to convert to speech, choose your desired voice, opt for text or SSML, and boom—you’re done!
It was effortless to create a voiceover with BigSpeak. You can also add your own custom voice. However, you can’t customize the pace and tone because BigSpeak makes it one of the more basic tools on this list.
For this test, we chose a female voice with a UK accent. This is what the end result sounds like:
BigSpeak gets the accent right in their voiceovers, and the audio quality is good. However, limited customization and editing options exist, and the voice does not sound convincingly human. It’s pretty monotone and a little robotic.
That said, you can use these voiceovers as a quick solution for simple projects where emotion and humanness are not so important, like slideshows or instructional videos. BigSpeak is a free platform that’s perfect for these projects.
The main cons of BigSpeak are:
BigSpeak’s Pricing:
Website: https://bigspeak.ai/
Summary: The Best AI Voice Generators We Tested Are:
AI voice generators are ideal for business owners, marketers, podcast hosts, creators, and game developers to produce high-quality voiceovers with minimal time and effort!
To find the best AI speech software, we signed up for top-rated tools on the market and put them to the test, so you don’t have to!
These tools support several languages, accents, and tones, helping you create professional voiceovers for video ads, explainer videos, podcasts, and more.
What will you create first?
AI voice generators are tools business owners, marketers, developers, and creators use to produce voice-overs for video ads, presentations, and so forth. These tools automate the voice-making process and provide features like AI voices in various accents, languages, and tones to find the perfect voice for your project.
AI voice generators are super handy because they make voiceovers quick and easy. You can amplify your content's reach by providing content in various languages, boost your lead generation efforts, and offer an alternative learning style if you create and sell online courses. Read this article for the best AI voice generators that we tested, how we tested them and why these tools are worth every penny.
Yes, AI voice generators are quite advanced in this area. Not only can they produce speech in multiple languages, but they can also offer a variety of accents within those languages. This technology is constantly evolving, so the number of languages and accents offered is likely to keep growing.
YouTubers use various AI voice generators for their text to speech software (TSS). Some of the most popular options are Play.ht, Listnr, Murf, ReplicaStudios, and BigSpeak. YouTubers use these TSS tools for narration, voiceovers, explainer videos and more. Check out the full review for examples of the voices generated by AI voice generators and TSS.
The copyright status of AI-generated content with voices is a bit of a grey area currently. It would be a good idea to consult a legal expert if you choose to use a AI TTS speech software for commercial purposes.
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