ElevenLabs vs Hume AI: Which Text-to-Speech is Best in 2025?

by | Last updated Nov 13, 2025

Winner
ElevenLabs
4.5
  • Voice Generation
  • Voice Cloning
  • Expressive Control
  • All Language Support
  • Instant Voice Preview
  • Free Plan Available
  • Paid Plans from $4.17/month
Runner Up
Hume AI Best
3.5
  • Octave TTS
  • Empathetic Voice Interface
  • Expression Measurement API
  • Conversational Voice
  • TTS Creator Studio
  • Free Plan available
  • Paid Plans from $3/month
ElevenLabs vs Hume AI

Ever feel like computer voices just don’t sound real?

It can be a real bummer when you’re trying to listen to something important, right?

Well, two cool tools are trying to fix that.

They both make computer voices sound way more like actual people talking.

But which one is better when we compare ElevenLabs vs Hume AI? 

Overview

We’ve put both ElevenLabs and Hume AI through their paces.

Testing them with different kinds of text and listening closely to how natural their voices sound. 

Elevenlabs
4.5out of 5

Ready to experience the magic of ElevenLabs’ hyper-realistic AI voices? Try their paid plans and unlock a new level of creativity in your audio projects.

Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $4.17/month.

Key Features:

  • Voice Cloning
  • Instant Voice Synthesis
  • Creative Voice Design
Hume AI Logo
3.5out of 5

Join over 5,000 early adopters exploring the potential of Hume AI! Check for exclusive updates and more. Explore its advanced features today!

Pricing: It has a free plan. The premium plan starts at $3.00/month.

Key Features:

  • Real-time Streaming
  • Voice Control
  • Multiple Formats

What is ElevenLabs?

Have you heard about ElevenLabs? It’s pretty cool.

They’re all about making computer voices sound super real.

Like, almost like a person is actually talking.

Also, explore our favourite ElevenLabs alternatives

Elevenlabs Introduction

Our Take

Elevenlabs

Upgrade to Eleven Labs AI today! Get access to 29+ languages and 1000+ realistic voices. Choose a subscription that fits your needs!

Key Benefits

  • Natural-sounding voices: Boasts some of the most realistic AI voices in the industry, capturing even subtle emotions.
  • Ease of use: The sleek interface makes voice generation and editing a breeze.
  • Customization options: Fine-tune speech styles, delivery, stability, and even add breathing sounds.
  • Integration: Offers API access for developers, plus plugins for popular tools like VSCode.
  • Additional features: Create unique “voice clones” with just a minute of sample audio and experiment with expressive AI-generated sound effects.

Pricing

All the plans will be billed annually.

  • Free: $0/month.
  • Starter: $4.17/month.
  • Creator: $18.33/month.
  • Pro: $82.5/month.
elevenlabs pricing

Pros

  • Voices sound very real.
  • Voice cloning is a cool feature.
  • You get high-quality audio.
  • It works in many languages.
  • It’s easy to try out quickly.

Cons

  • The free plan is limited.
  • Cloning needs good audio.
  • Sound effects are still new.
  • Some plans can be pricey.

What is Hume AI?

Have you heard of Hume AI? They’re doing some fascinating stuff.

Their focus is really on how we feel when we talk.

They want AI to understand and even show emotions in its voice.

Also, explore our favorite Hume AI alternatives…

Hume AI Introduction

Our Take

Hume AI Logo

Join over 5,000 early adopters exploring the potential of Hume AI! Sign up now for exclusive updates and explore their advanced features!

Key Benefits

  • More Expressive Voices: Their Octave TTS generates voices that sound more realistic and can convey a broader range of emotions.
  • Empathic Voice Interface (EVI): This is a conversational AI that can understand your vocal nuances and respond with emotional intelligence, making interactions feel more natural and genuine.
  • Context-Aware Responses: The AI’s voice can adjust its tone and cadence to match the emotional context of the conversation.
  • Programmatic Implementation: It’s designed for easy integration into your applications with well-documented APIs and SDKs.
Youtube Video

Pricing

  • Free: $0
  • Starter: $3/month.
  • Creator: $10/month.
  • Pro: $50/month.
  • Scale: $150/month.
  • Business: $900/month.
  • Enterprise: Contact Sales for custom pricing.
Hume AI Pricing

Pros

  • More Human-Sounding AI.
  • Potential for Empathetic Interactions.
  • Customizable Voice Styles.
  • High Audio Quality.
  • Wide Range of Applications.

Cons

  • Pricing Can Vary.
  • Learning Curve.
  • Emotional Understanding is Complex.
  • Limited Real-World Testing.

Feature Comparison

The modern ai voice landscape is bifurcated by two primary goals: ultra-realistic speech generation and emotional intelligence.

This detailed comparison assesses ElevenLabs AI, the best ai voice generator focused on high-fidelity synthetic ai voices for creators.

Hume AI, the emotion recognition platform designed to analyze and respond to human emotion through voice and video.

We explore how these ai tools represent two distinct futures for natural sounding speech.

1. Core Technological Focus

  • ElevenLabs: It is a dedicated voice generator and ai voice generator tool, rooted in advanced ai voices research to produce ai generated voices for long-form content and voice overs.
  • Hume AI: It is the first emotional ai, focusing on multimodal emotion recognition via its API, creating a new ai with emotional intelligence for real-time empathetic interactions.

2. Emotional Input Analysis

  • ElevenLabs: It processes text to infer emotions and speaking styles, using punctuation and context to deliver expressive natural sounding ai voices in a non-interactive workflow.
  • Hume AI: It can analyze human emotion by measuring hundreds of dimensions of expression; hume’s ai algorithms use voice video and text to precisely measure emotional intensity and valence.
Youtube Video

3. Voice Generation Quality

  • ElevenLabs: It sets the gold standard for realism, ensuring that the ai generated voice sound from its models is nearly indistinguishable from the human voice.
  • Hume AI: It offers high-quality ai text to speech through its Octave engine, where the quality of the ai generated voices is designed to capture nuanced delivery for emotions and speaking styles.

4. Cloning and Voice Identity

  • Eleven Labs AI: It provides robust ai voice cloning options for users to replicate their own voice with high fidelity, creating a reliable ai voice asset for professional use.
  • Hume AI: It does not currently focus on cloning the own voice of the user but allows users to generate ai voices that fit a specific personality or style, simplifying character creation.

5. Multimodal Recognition

  • ElevenLabs: It is audio-first and primarily generates speech output, leaving the integration with youtube video or other visual elements to the end user.
  • Hume AI: Its algorithms use voice facial expressions and text data simultaneously, making it a robust, popular emotion recognition platform designed to provide comprehensive emotional analysis.

6. Visual Analysis and Indicators

  • ElevenLabs: It provides the audio foundation for videos and digital twins, with its ai voice cloning ensuring voice consistency across a user’s entire video content at scale.
  • Hume AI: Its ai algorithms use voice video and measure emotional indicators like smiling, frowning and eyebrow movements in video to interpret subtle cues with precision.
Youtube Video

7. Industry Applications and Insights

  • ElevenLabs: It is widely used across media and publishing, generating realistic ai voices and voice overs for content ranging from educational materials to marketing campaigns.
  • Hume AI: The emotion recognition technology provides insights highly valued by industries including customer service healthcare and market research for improving interactions.

8. API and Developer Integration

  • ElevenLabs: It offers an accessible pay as you go pricing structure and a robust developer platform, making it easy to integrate its superior voice generator technology into countless applications.
  • Hume AI: It provides speech to text transcription alongside its emotion recognition algorithms interpret subtle cues from the customer’s tone of voice during a support call or detect emotional shifts, making it a useful emotion recognition tools suite.

9. Business Focus and Future Direction

  • ElevenLabs: It will remain focused on voice realism, continuing to develop advanced ai voices that meet the highest bar for natural ai voices and generative output.
  • Hume AI: The ceo of hume ai is committed to building empathetic interactions, a focus detailed in a hume ai review; customers seeking a best hume ai alternative should first understand this core mission, as confirmed by several ai review alternatives 2025.

Final Verdict

Alright, we’ve checked out ElevenLabs and Hume AI.

For the most real-sounding voices and lots of choices, ElevenLabs wins.

They have many voices and languages, and their voice cloning is cool.

It’s also easier to get started with them.

Hume AI’s focus on emotion is neat.

But for now, ElevenLabs feels more ready for most people.

They give you great sound and many ways to prompt the voices.

We think ElevenLabs is the better choice right now because it’s of good quality and easy to use.

Trust us; we’ve tested them out!

More of ElevenLabs

Here’s a brief comparison of ElevenLabs against the alternatives, highlighting standout features:

  • ElevenLabs vs Speechify: Focuses on accessibility and speed for text-to-speech, unlike ElevenLabs’ emphasis on natural, emotionally rich voice synthesis.
  • ElevenLabs vs Descript: Integrates audio/video editing with voice cloning, a broader scope than ElevenLabs’ specialization in lifelike voice generation.
  • ElevenLabs vs Murf: Offers diverse voices with customization for professional use, while ElevenLabs excels in highly realistic, expressive voice generation.
  • ElevenLabs vs Play ht: Provides a wide range of natural-sounding voices with low latency, while ElevenLabs focuses on creating the most realistic and expressive voices.
  • ElevenLabs vs Lovo: Offers emotionally expressive AI voices with versatile multilingual support, but ElevenLabs is known for its superior realism and voice control.
  • ElevenLabs vs Listnr: Includes podcast hosting with AI voiceovers, a different focus than ElevenLabs’ emphasis on advanced, natural-sounding voice generation.
  • ElevenLabs vs Podcastle: Provides AI-powered podcast recording and editing tools, while ElevenLabs specializes in generating highly realistic and expressive AI voices.
  • ElevenLabs vs Dupdub: Features AI avatars and video creation tools, a broader offering than ElevenLabs’ focus on generating lifelike and nuanced voice performances.
  • ElevenLabs vs WellSaid Labs: Delivers consistently professional-grade AI voice generation, but ElevenLabs emphasizes more on emotional range and creative control.
  • ElevenLabs vs Revoicer: Offers realistic AI voices with emotion and speed control, while ElevenLabs focuses on achieving the highest possible realism and expressiveness.
  • ElevenLabs vs ReadSpeaker: Specializes in text-to-speech solutions for accessibility and enterprise, a different focus than ElevenLabs’ natural, expressive voice generation.
  • ElevenLabs vs NaturalReader: Provides versatile text-to-speech with customizable settings, whereas ElevenLabs excels in creating highly realistic and nuanced AI voices.
  • ElevenLabs vs Altered: Provides real-time voice changing and voice morphing, a unique feature set compared to ElevenLabs’ focus on high-fidelity voice generation.
  • ElevenLabs vs Speechelo: Generates natural-sounding AI voices for marketing and video creation, while ElevenLabs specializes in highly realistic and expressive voices.
  • ElevenLabs vs TTSOpenAI: Offers strong text-to-speech capabilities, but ElevenLabs is distinguished by its emphasis on emotional depth and nuanced voice control.
  • ElevenLabs vs Hume AI: Specializes in understanding and analyzing human emotions in voice and other modalities, unlike ElevenLabs’ focus on generating expressive speech.

More of Hume AI

  • Hume AI vs Speechify: Excels in speed listening and accessibility, unlike Hume AI’s focus on emotional understanding.
  • Hume AI vs Murf: Offers diverse voices for creation, while Hume AI analyzes emotion in voice.
  • Hume AI vs Play HT: Generates realistic AI voices for various content formats, differing from Hume AI’s emotion detection.
  • Hume AI vs Lovo AI: Provides a wide range of expressive voices, whereas Hume AI emphasizes the analysis of emotional nuances.
  • Hume AI vs ElevenLabs: Creates highly natural AI voices, contrasting with Hume AI’s emphasis on interpreting voice emotion.
  • Hume AI vs Listnr: Delivers natural AI voiceovers with podcast hosting, unlike Hume AI’s focus on emotional understanding in speech.
  • Hume AI vs Podcastle: Offers AI tools for audio recording and editing, while Hume AI centers on emotional voice analysis.
  • Hume AI vs DupDub: Animates avatars with personalized voices, unlike Hume AI’s emphasis on emotionally intelligent voice interfaces.
  • Hume AI vs WellSaid Labs: Provides professional, natural-sounding AI voices, differing from Hume AI’s emotion-focused approach.
  • Hume AI vs Revoicer: Quickly generates voiceovers, while Hume AI analyzes and generates voices with a focus on emotional expression.
  • Hume AI vs ReadSpeaker: Delivers accessible, natural-sounding voice for enterprises, unlike Hume AI’s emphasis on emotional AI.
  • Hume AI vs NaturalReader: A user-friendly text-to-speech tool, while Hume AI focuses on the emotional aspects of voice.
  • Hume AI vs Altered: Specializes in AI voice changing, unlike Hume AI’s focus on creating and analyzing emotionally expressive voices.
  • Hume AI vs Speechelo: Quickly generates voiceovers with a focus on simplicity, contrasting with Hume AI’s emphasis on emotional intelligence.
  • Hume AI vs TTSOpenAI: Delivers high human-like voice clarity, while Hume AI focuses on the generation and analysis of emotional tone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes ElevenLabs stand out?

ElevenLabs is known for its highly realistic voice cloning and a vast library of natural-sounding voices across many languages.

How is Hume AI different?

Hume AI focuses on creating voices that understand and convey a wide range of human emotions in a nuanced way.

Can I try ElevenLabs and Hume AI for free?

ElevenLabs offers a free plan with limited characters. Hume AI’s free trial availability may vary, so check their website.

Which is better for lifelike voice generation?

ElevenLabs is generally considered superior for overall lifelike voice generation quality and variety right now.

Which platform has better API integration?

Both ElevenLabs and Hume AI offer robust API access for developers to integrate their voice technology into applications.

Related Articles