Text to Speech Online Free - Comparison of 18 Voice Generators

Online text to speech conversion using AI tools is becoming increasingly popular in various industries, from entertainment to education. These tools allow users to generate speech from text input, making it easy to create voiceovers, podcasts, and even video game characters. With these advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, these audio generators can produce realistic and natural-sounding voices that can be customized to fit any specific need.

While there are multiple paid solutions for text to speech conversion, the ability to do that for free helps small businesses and individuals create professional-quality audio content without investing in expensive equipment or hiring voice actors. Additionally, many of these tools are incredibly user-friendly, with many offering simple interfaces and easy-to-use features.

Despite so many tools in the market, choosing the right tool that supports text to speech online for free can be daunting. Factors such as voice quality, language support, and pricing must all be considered before making a decision. In this article, our goal is to help people looking to convert text to speech online for free. After a lot of research and evaluating 18 tools, we have put together a list of tools to figure out the ones that offer the most benefits in their free tiers.

Table of contents

Top Text to Speech Online Free Tools

Here’s a quick look at our top picks for text to speech online free tools to give you an idea of what to expect from our guide:

Tools with Comprehensive Free Usage

• TTS Maker Pro allows up to 20,000 characters per week and supports both commercial use and exports, ideal for moderate to heavy users who can manage the monthly cap.
• VoiceGenerator offers unlimited access and supports commercial use without any attribution requirement. Although it includes advertisements, this tool is excellent for extensive, cost-free use. Possible downside - It uses your browser’s built-in voice synthesis technology, so the voices will differ depending on the browser that you’re using. You can download the audio as a file, but the downloaded voices may be different from your browser’s voices because they are downloaded from an external text-to-speech server.

Tools with Realistic Human Voice Output

• PlayHT stands out with its superior voice quality, detailed usage terms for the free plan should be checked below.
• ElevenLabs is noted for high-quality outputs but limits some features in its free version, such as commercial rights, etc.

What makes a text to speech tool great

When evaluating voice generators for transforming text into speech, several core features enhance their effectiveness and usability. Here’s a breakdown of these essential aspects:

Text-to-Speech Conversion

Voice generators utilize sophisticated algorithms to convert written content into spoken words, offering a seamless experience without the need for software installation. These technologies are designed to produce audio that is remarkably human-like, providing an engaging and clear auditory representation of the text.

Voice Customization Options

A standout feature of quality voice generators is their extensive customization capabilities. Users can modify the pitch, speed, and tone to align with their specific requirements, enhancing the listener’s experience. Additionally, some of these systems support Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), which allows for intricate adjustments like adding pauses for effect, defining pronunciation or emphasizing certain words to enrich the realism of the audio output. SSML enables precise control over various aspects of speech synthesis, making it possible to create highly tailored and dynamic audio experiences.

Language and Accent Selection

A versatile voice generator supports multiple languages and accents, which is invaluable for users needing to produce content in various dialects. This feature enables the creation of audio in numerous languages from a single platform, with options to select from different voices within the same language to best match the desired tone and style.

Text Input Flexibility and Output Options

Effective voice generators accommodate various text input lengths and formats, including plain text, PDFs, and Word documents. They should also provide straightforward mechanisms for exporting or downloading the audio files, allowing users to easily integrate the content into different media like podcasts, audiobooks, videos, and presentations.

Incorporating these features, voice generators can serve a broad spectrum of applications, making them invaluable tools in educational, entertainment, and professional settings. Whether for personal use or professional projects, these tools facilitate the creation of high-quality audio content that meets the diverse needs of a user.

Table of Comparison of Top Text to Speech Generators

Here’s a table highlighting the key differences between all the voice generators we evaluated, you can compare them side by side and make an informed purchase decision.

Note:

1. In line with the focus of this article, our comparison highlights features available in free plans. Please note that the tools discussed may offer additional features in their paid versions.
2. For relative comparison, we have assumed that at an average reading speed, 750 characters would be equivalent to 1 minute of audio.

Platforms that allow commercial usage without attribution requirement

Platforms that don’t allow commercial usage on the free plan

Platforms that don’t allow voice export on the free plan

Some of the platforms that don’t offer a free plan

Revoicer, Micmonster and Getwoord were evaluated as well, but unfortunately, they don’t offer free plans as part of their offerings.

Our Top Picks in Each Category

Based on the data above, our top picks for various categories would be the following:

Top Picks for Comprehensive Free Usage

• TTS Maker Pro allows up to 20,000 characters per week and supports both commercial use and exports, ideal for moderate to heavy users who can manage the monthly cap. Seems like the most balanced pick for free online text to speech.
• VoiceGenerator offers unlimited access and supports commercial use without any attribution, this makes it excellent for extensive, cost-free use. However, the platform includes ads, voice realism is low, and emphasis on words, pauses are not supported.
• Voicemaker and NaturalReaders both have a generous free usage, both don’t allow commercial usage and downloads respectively. If you need to generate AI voice for personal use, then either of these could be a great pick.

Highly Realistic Voice Output

• PlayHT and ElevenLabs both stand out amongst all the TTS tools with their superior voice quality. By incorporating intonation to emphasize specific words or phrases, adding natural pauses, tone variation, and inflection, both these tools achieve remarkably realistic AI voices

Tools supporting Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML)

• NaturalReaders supports SSML which really helps if you are looking for more fine-grained control over generated voice.
• PlayHT and ElevenLabs don’t allow SSML, but voice generated is so realistic, that you probably don’t even need the customization you might need with other platforms.

Conclusion

Choosing the right text to speech online free tool depends heavily on your specific needs. In this article, we have compared multiple aspects like price, voice realism, SSML support, and free tier limits. There could be multiple other aspects that could be considered as well like support for multiple languages, integration with other tools, voice cloning support, etc. Hope this article helps people save time and pick the right text to speech tool for free online.

Text to Speech Online Free Tool FAQs