ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs produces AI-generated voices that are genuinely hard to distinguish from real people. The quality is far ahead of the robotic text-to-speech you might remember from a few years ago. It sounds natural, has appropriate pauses and emphasis, and can be customised to match different styles and emotions.

What you can do with it

Video narration: Record a voiceover for a promotional video, explainer, or social media content without booking a voiceover artist. For most business video uses, the quality is more than sufficient.

Voice cloning: Upload a sample of your own voice and ElevenLabs creates a clone of it. You can then generate audio that sounds like you, without actually recording anything. Useful for regular video content creators who want consistency.

Podcast production: Generate scripted audio for podcasts or audio guides. Works particularly well when combined with AI-written scripts.

Automated messages: Create professional-sounding phone system messages, on-hold audio, and automated responses.

Who benefits most

ElevenLabs is particularly useful for businesses that produce regular video content, whether for social media, their website, or training purposes. Instead of setting up a recording environment and re-recording every time the script changes, you update the text and regenerate.

Estate agents, retailers, and service businesses creating video tours or promotional content will find it genuinely useful. Training and e-learning content producers save significant production time.

Getting started

Visit elevenlabs.io and create a free account. The free tier gives you enough credits to experiment and produce a small amount of audio each month. Type or paste your script, choose a voice from the library (or clone your own), and click generate.

Paid plans from $5/month give you more credits and access to voice cloning. For most business uses, the Starter plan at $5/month is sufficient.

How to get set up

1. Go to elevenlabs.io and click Sign Up
2. Create an account with your email or sign in with Google
3. Click Speech Synthesis in the left sidebar
4. Type your text into the box, choose a voice from the dropdown, and click Generate
5. Listen to the result. Click Download to save the audio file.

Time to get started: Under 3 minutes Do you need a credit card? No — free tier available (with usage limits)