⚡ Quick Verdict:
- Pricing: ElevenLabs starts at $5/month. Altered starts at $30/month.
- Best for: ElevenLabs for text to speech, dubbing and voice agents. Altered for voice morphing and voice editing.
- Key difference: ElevenLabs generates new speech from written text. Altered rebuilds recordings you already have.
- Our pick: ElevenLabs for most users, based on its wider language coverage and much lower entry price.
The cheaper tool here is not the weaker one.
ElevenLabs costs $5 a month. Altered starts at $30.
But price is the least interesting difference between them.
One is an ai voice generator built around written text.
The other is an online audio editor built around voice recordings.
That single split decides which one belongs in your workflow.
Overview
This ElevenLabs vs Altered comparison covers pricing, voice quality, cloning and ease of use.
We also break down who each of these ai tools works best for.
Our writers spent hands-on time with both platforms.
Those notes appear in the “What Our Team Noticed” sections below.
The rest comes from published specs, documentation and G2 reviews.
What is ElevenLabs?
ElevenLabs is an ai voice generator that turns written text into spoken audio.
You will also see it written as Eleven Labs AI across the web.
The company launched in 2022 and reached a $3.3 billion valuation by early 2025.
Its ai text to speech engine is the piece most people arrive for.
It handles speech synthesis in 29 languages for a global audience.
The platform bundles text to speech, voice cloning, AI dubbing and AI music.
Audio enhancement tools and conversational AI agents sit in the same dashboard.
The video below walks through the interface if you prefer watching.
🏆 Winner: ElevenLabs
Generate ai voices in 29 languages from plain text. The free tier gives you 10,000 credits every month to test it.
ElevenLabs Pricing
ElevenLabs uses a hybrid model. You pay a monthly fee and spend credits on characters.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10,000 credits monthly and up to 3 custom voices |
| Starter | $5/month | 30,000 credits and rapid voice clone access |
| Creator | $11/month | YouTube videos, podcasts and regular voice overs |
| Pro | $99/month | Studios producing audio content at volume |
Pricing verified September 2026.
Free trial: No card needed. The Free tier stays free and renews credits monthly.
Money-back guarantee: No published refund window. Cancel before renewal to stop billing.
📌 Note: Enterprise sits above Pro with custom pricing. That tier adds dedicated infrastructure and stricter security standards.
⚠️ Warning: Credits reset monthly and do not roll over. Heavy dubbing work burns through a Creator plan fast.
Key Benefits of ElevenLabs
Here is what makes ElevenLabs worth a look:
- Natural sounding speech: The Eleven v3 model handles complex dialogue, accents and emotional tags. Output holds up against a natural human voice in short clips.
- AI voice cloning: Upload samples and build a digital copy of your own voice. Generative models and neural networks do the rest.
- AI dubbing and translation: Re-voice video into more than 30 languages. Tone, emotion and timing carry across.
- Conversational AI agents: Build real-time voice and chat agents for support, sales and education. Latency stays low and Slack or Google Calendar hook in.
- AI music and sound effects: Generate studio-grade music and custom effects from plain prompts.
- Accessibility support: The ElevenReader app converts articles, PDFs and e-books into audio. It reads text aloud for on-the-go listening.
- Media and enterprise use: Studios voice audiobooks and dub films with it. Support teams automate calls with natural sounding voice agents.
The free tier is enough to test all of this on a real script.
What Our Team Noticed
Our writer signed up for ElevenLabs and spent several days generating voice overs for short videos. Here is what stood out:
The clip below shows that same session in the editor.
ElevenLabs Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Free plan includes 10,000 characters monthly and up to 3 custom voices
- Speech synthesis in 29 languages reaches a global audience
- Eleven v3 supports complex dialogue, accents and emotional tags
- AI dubbing translates video into more than 30 languages
- Paid plans start at $5 per month
❌ Cons
- Credits do not roll over from month to month
- No real-time voice changer for live voice chats
- Cleanup tools are thinner than a dedicated audio editor
- Long-form dubbing costs climb quickly on lower tiers
What is Altered?
Altered AI is a voice content creation platform built for media production.
Altered Studio packs multiple voice AI technologies into one desktop app.
You get a Voice Changer, a Real-Time Voice Changer and Premium Text-to-Speech.
Voice Cloning, an AI Voice Cleaner and a Voice Editor round out the set.
Podcasters, video game publishers and film companies are the target buyers.
Here is a walkthrough of how the studio handles a full project.
Runner Up: Altered
Reshape voice recordings you already have. Voice morphing, cleanup and editing sit in one online audio editor.
Altered Pricing
Altered keeps its tiers simple. Three plans, no credit maths.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | Testing voice morphing and the voice changer |
| Creator | $30/month | Voice creators, podcasters and solo media production |
| Professional | $90/month | Studios needing custom voice models and cleanup at scale |
Pricing verified September 2026.
Free trial: Yes. You can sign up for a free trial of the Creator plan on the Altered website.
Money-back guarantee: Not published. Use the free trial to check the fit before you pay.
📌 Note: Professional and Enterprise terms are handled on the pricing page. Larger studios negotiate directly.
⚠️ Warning: The entry paid plan costs six times the ElevenLabs Starter tier. Budget accordingly if you only need text to speech.
Key Benefits of Altered
Here is where Altered earns its place:
- Voice morphing: Swap one speaker’s voice for another across characters, accents and styles. Useful for animation and voice puppeteering.
- Real-time voice changer: Ultra-low latency morphing for live calls and gaming. It works inside voice chats on most platforms.
- AI voice cleaner: Strips background noise from raw voice recordings before you edit.
- 14 speaking styles: Emotive text to speech covers whispering, shouting and everything between. Dialogue stops sounding flat.
- Custom voice models: Train a vocal identity from your own samples. The platform also transcribes and translates into multiple languages.
- History editing: Track and revert to earlier versions of any audio project. Nothing is lost to a bad take.
- One workspace: Multiple voice AI technologies live behind a single user friendly interface.
Start with the free trial if voice editing is your main reason for looking.
What Our Team Noticed
Our writer ran a batch of podcast takes through Altered Studio and tested the voice editor. Here is what came out of that session:
The recording below covers the same workflow end to end.
Altered Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Real-time voice changer with effective noise cancellation
- 14 speaking styles including whispering and shouting
- History editing lets you revert to earlier project versions
- Praised by professionals in game development and podcast production
❌ Cons
- Paid plans start at $30 per month
- Smaller voice library than dedicated text to speech tools
- No conversational agents or sound effect generation
- Works best when you already have voice recordings to feed it
Feature Comparison
These two ai voice generators overlap less than the category suggests. Both use text to speech technology, but only one is built as text to speech software first. Below are ten areas where the gap actually shows.
| Feature | ElevenLabs | Altered |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $5/month | $30/month |
| Free Plan | ✅ | ✅ |
| Text to Speech | ✅ 29 languages | ✅ 14 speaking styles |
| AI Voice Cloning | ✅ | ✅ |
| Real-Time Voice Changer | ❌ | ✅ |
| Voice Morphing | ❌ | ✅ |
| Conversational AI Agents | ✅ | ❌ |
| Sound Effects & Music | ✅ | ❌ |
| Noise Cleanup | Basic | ✅ AI Voice Cleaner |
| Best For | Turning written text into audio | Reshaping voice recordings |
1. Voice Quality and Realism
ElevenLabs: The Eleven v3 model produces realistic ai voices that hold intonation, rhythm and pacing. Deep learning techniques trained on large speech datasets drive the generative voice output. In short clips the ai generated voice sound is hard to separate from human speech.
Altered: Premium Text-to-Speech gives you natural sounding ai voices with real emotional range. Its ai generated voices avoid the flatness older computer generated voices had, though the library of speech voices is narrower. Altered leans on advanced voice AI technology rather than raw catalogue size.
2. AI Voice Cloning
ElevenLabs: Voice cloning builds a digital copy of a speaker’s voice from uploaded audio files. The free tier allows up to 3 custom voices. Generative models and neural networks handle the reconstruction.
Altered: Voice cloning technology here is aimed at production teams replacing human talent on retakes. You can build a custom voice model and reuse it across a project. The cloned vocal identity stays consistent between sessions.
⚠️ Warning: Both platforms expect consent from anyone whose voice you clone. Cloning a person without permission creates legal exposure, and the EU now fines high-risk AI misuse up to 7% of global turnover.
3. Expressive Control and Speaking Styles
ElevenLabs: Emotional tags let you fine tune delivery inside the text itself. You can push a line toward excitement, sarcasm or calm. That gives you close to complete control over how each sentence lands.
Altered: The Speaking Style system offers 14 preset options, including whispering and shouting. Voice training then adapts a model to the delivery you want. It is a cleaner route to varied voice performances than tag editing.
4. Voice Morphing and Live Voice Changing
ElevenLabs: There is a speech to speech mode, but no live voice changer. You cannot morph your voice mid-call. This is the clearest capability gap in the ElevenLabs feature set.
Altered: The real time voice changer runs at ultra-low latency for live calls and gaming. Voice morphing swaps characters, accents and styles on recorded takes too. Noise cancellation keeps the result usable in messy rooms.
5. Conversational AI and Voice Agents
ElevenLabs: Conversational AI agents handle real-time voice and chat for support, sales and education. They connect to Slack and Google Calendar. Teams also use them to power virtual assistants and IVR systems.
Altered: No agent layer exists. Altered stops at producing audio content, not conversations. If you need an artificial intelligence agent answering calls, this is not the tool.
6. Sound Effects and AI Music
ElevenLabs: Text to sound effects turns a written prompt into a usable audio file. AI Music generates studio-grade tracks the same way. That covers a full soundbed without leaving the platform.
Altered: Nothing here generates music or effects. The focus stays on the voice track alone. You will need a separate tool for score and ambience.
7. Audio Cleanup and Voice Editing
ElevenLabs: Audio enhancement tools clean up generated speech reasonably well. But they assume the audio came from the platform. Rescuing a badly recorded interview is not the design goal.
Altered: The Voice Editor works like a next generation audio editor for spoken tracks. History editing tracks every version, so voice editing stays reversible. The AI Voice Cleaner pulls background noise out before you start.
8. Languages, Dubbing and Translation
ElevenLabs: Speech synthesis covers 29 languages, and AI dubbing re-voices video into more than 30. Tone, emotion and timing survive the switch. For reaching a global audience, this is the stronger side.
Altered: Transcription and translation move content into multiple languages too. The coverage is narrower and built around existing recordings. It suits localising a finished podcast more than producing multilingual content from scratch.
9. Ease of Use and Learning Curve
ElevenLabs: Paste written text, pick a voice, press generate. Voice generation time on short scripts runs to seconds. As speech software goes, this is the shortest path to high quality voice overs for a YouTube video.
Altered: Altered Studio bundles more tools, so the first hour takes longer. The payoff is one workspace instead of four. Experts credit it with making audio production simpler once you know the layout.
10. Pricing & Cost
Here are both plan structures side by side.
| Tier | ElevenLabs | Altered |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0/month |
| Entry Paid | Starter: $5/month | Creator: $30/month |
| Mid | Creator: $11/month | Professional: $90/month |
| Top | Pro: $99/month | — |
ElevenLabs: Four tiers give you room to grow slowly. At $5 a month the Starter plan is the cheapest serious entry point in this category. Credits, not seats, decide what you actually spend.
Altered: Three tiers, and the jump from free to $30 is steep. You are paying for the voice changer and editor, not just speech. For teams shipping high quality voice content every week, that maths works out.
Different Scenarios
| If You Need… | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tight budget | ElevenLabs | $5 vs $30 entry price |
| Live voice chats | Altered | Only one with a live changer |
| Multilingual dubbing | ElevenLabs | 29 languages, 30+ for dubbing |
| Cleaning raw recordings | Altered | AI Voice Cleaner and editor |
| Voice agents or IVR | ElevenLabs | Built-in conversational agents |
| Beginner-friendly start | ElevenLabs | Paste text, generate speech |
💰 Your Budget
ElevenLabs asks $5 for its first paid tier. Altered asks $30, so the cheaper route matters if you only need ai voiceovers.
🔌 Your Tech Stack
ElevenLabs plugs into Slack and Google Calendar through its agents. Altered sits closer to your recording chain as an online audio editor.
🎬 Your Content Type
Animated explainer videos, training videos and e learning modules start from a script, which favours ElevenLabs. Game dialogue and podcasts start from voice recordings, which favours Altered.
🎓 Your Experience Level
Beginners get a usable result from ElevenLabs in minutes. Altered rewards people who already understand audio editing.
🆓 Free Trials and Demos
Both offer a free tier, so test with your real script. Altered also runs a free trial of the Creator plan.
🛟 Voice Library Depth
ElevenLabs gives you an extensive voice library across accents and ages. Altered offers fewer stock options but deeper control over each one.
Switching Guide
Already paying for one? Here is what changes if you move.
🔄 Switching from ElevenLabs to Altered?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- A real time voice changer for live gaming and calls
- Voice morphing across characters, accents and styles
- History editing that reverts any audio project version
❌ What you’ll lose:
- Conversational agents and their Slack integration
- AI music and text to sound effects generation
- The $5 entry price and 29-language coverage
📋 How to switch:
- Download your generated audio files from the ElevenLabs history panel
- Start the free trial of the Altered Creator plan
- Re-upload your voice samples and train a custom voice model
🔄 Switching from Altered to ElevenLabs?
✅ What you’ll gain:
- Speech synthesis across 29 languages for a wider audience
- AI dubbing into more than 30 languages
- A $25 monthly saving at the entry tier
❌ What you’ll lose:
- Live voice changing during voice chats
- The AI Voice Cleaner for background noise
- The 14 speaking styles and version history
📋 How to switch:
- Export finished tracks from the Altered voice editor
- Open a free ElevenLabs account and claim the monthly credits
- Upload clean samples to clone your own voice, then generate speech
What Our Review Didn’t Cover
This comparison focused on solo creators and small production teams. We did not test enterprise contracts, dedicated infrastructure or API throughput at volume. Long-form audiobook runs and multi-hour dubbing jobs were outside our scope. Voice generation time was measured on short scripts only, so results on hour-long files may differ.
Final Verdict
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| 💰 Pricing | ElevenLabs |
| 🗣️ Voice Quality | ElevenLabs |
| 🎭 Voice Morphing | Altered |
| 🌍 Languages & Dubbing | ElevenLabs |
| 🎚️ Audio Cleanup | Altered |
| 🤖 Voice Agents | ElevenLabs |
| 👶 Ease of Use | ElevenLabs |
| 🏆 Overall Winner | ElevenLabs |
🏆 WINNER: ELEVENLABS
ElevenLabs wins 5 of 7 categories.
Best for: professional voiceovers from a script, multilingual dubbing, audiobooks, and voice agents
ElevenLabs converts text into human like voices at consistent quality. Altered reshapes voice performances that already exist. Those are two different jobs.
Altered is the better pick for game studios, voice creators and anyone doing audio storytelling from raw takes. Its voice changer has no equivalent on the other side.
Asking which is the best ai voice generator misses the point. There is no perfect voice tool for every script, only the right one for your source material.
For most people that is ElevenLabs, on price, language coverage and speed.
More of ElevenLabs Compared
Here is how it holds up against other voice generators:
ElevenLabs vs Murf AI
ElevenLabs wins on: emotional tags in Eleven v3, AI dubbing into 30+ languages, a $5 entry tier
Murf AI wins on: 120+ text to speech voices across 20+ languages, a workflow tuned for corporate training, simpler timeline editing for audiobooks and podcasts
ElevenLabs vs Play.ht
ElevenLabs wins on: conversational agents, sound effect generation, cheaper first paid plan
Play.ht wins on: an 800+ library of natural ai voices, 142 languages and accents, output tuned for marketing and explainer clips
ElevenLabs vs LOVO AI
ElevenLabs wins on: voice cloning depth, dubbing that preserves timing, the ElevenReader app for long documents
LOVO AI wins on: 500 voices across 100 languages, Genny’s automated video voiceovers, presets aimed at social media content
ElevenLabs vs Speechify
ElevenLabs wins on: production-grade output, custom voice training, developer access for artificial intelligence software builds
Speechify wins on: its #1 App Store ranking for text to speech, cheaper consumer subscriptions, reading written text aloud from Google Docs and Google Play Books
More of Altered Compared
And how Altered Studio compares elsewhere:
Altered vs Descript
Altered wins on: live voice morphing, 14 speaking styles, character work for game dialogue
Descript wins on: text-based video editing, multitrack podcast sessions, a cheaper starting tier for solo editors
Altered vs Podcastle
Altered wins on: the AI Voice Cleaner, custom voice model training, real-time morphing during recording
Podcastle wins on: remote guest recording, built-in hosting and distribution, a lower monthly cost for interview shows
Altered vs Murf AI
Altered wins on: reshaping existing takes, noise removal on raw files, version history across a project
Murf AI wins on: a larger stock catalogue of different voices, faster script-to-audio turnaround, cheaper plans for teams making training videos
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ElevenLabs AI free?
Yes. The Free tier gives 10,000 credits each month and up to 3 custom voices. Paid plans start at $5 monthly if you need more.
Is Altered AI free?
There is a free plan at $0 monthly, plus a free trial of the Creator tier. Paid access starts at $30 per month.
Is AI voice cloning illegal?
Not by itself. Cloning your own voice, or someone’s with written consent, is legal in most places. Impersonation and deepfake fraud are not.
What is the most realistic AI voice?
Eleven v3 currently produces the most advanced ai voices we have heard, handling accents and emotional tags. Play.ht and LOVO also deliver a convincing computer generated voice.
What is the most realistic AI voice changer?
Altered Studio leads here. Its real time changer morphs a speaker live with low latency, and the result keeps a natural sounding voice rather than a robotic filter.
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