AI Voice Generator: Ultimate 5 in 2024 [Out of the 10 We Tested]

AI voice generators using text to Speech (TTS) technology have advanced rapidly over the last few years!

Without leaving your desk, you can now create high-quality audio of human-like voices in a variety of accents, tones, and languages.

No voice talent, so recording equipment, studio, or editing software needed!

There are now hundreds of AI voice generators claiming to produce voices and speech audio that is natural, emotive and indistinguishable from a human voice.

These tools make it seamless to produce high-quality audio for all your content, including voiceover audio for video ads, animations, online gaming, training material, slideshows, podcasts, and more.

So, how does an AI voice generator work? What can you use it for? And can it really create a voiceover that is good enough to use instead of 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, which we review in detail, along with examples of the voiceovers we made.

We also cover what AI voice generators are, how they work, what you can use them for, and what the benefits of using them are.

These are the top AI voice generators that we tested:

1. Play.ht
2. Listnr
3. Murf
4. ReplicaStudios
5. BigSpeak
6. Synthesys
7. Speechelo
8. Dragon Home
9. Sonantic
10. Lovo

Ready to see what these tools can do and find out which ones are the best?

Let’s dive right in!

Quick Comparison: 5 Best AI Voice Generators We Tested

Read on for our full reviews and examples of the audio we created with these AI voice generators!

Current Landscape: The State of 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 to read digital text out loud, to becoming a method of creating audio voice recordings for a multitude of use cases.

AI voice generators are now used for everything that once required the physical recording of human speech. 

AI voice generators help produce automated voiceovers in various languages, accents, and tones for:

• Video ads
• Film narration
• Instructional videos
• Explainer videos
• Slideshows
• Podcasts
• Audiobooks
• Online courses
• YouTube and social media content
• Online games
• And more

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!

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 are valuable today because of how advanced these tools have become.

You can 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 AI voice generators are, we decided to test them ourselves and see what can do. 

But first, let’s look at what AI voice generators are, exactly, how they work and what the benefits of using them are:

Source: Edy Chandra

What Is an AI Voice Generator?

An AI voice generator 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. TTS software and AI voice generators allow you to customize the language, gender, accent, tone, and speech rate for the audio it creates.

The end result is an AI-generated voice that sounds remarkably natural and expressive, and some of the top AI voice generators are capable of producing a voice that is indistinguishable from a human voice!

AI voice generators are becoming better and better and ever easier to access and use. Much like AI copywriting tools, people are now using them regularly for a vast number of use cases. From marketing material to teaching online courses, internal training material to audiobooks, animations, and everything else in between.

No matter what you need, you can use an AI voice generator to produce a high-quality voiceover 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 is perfectly in sync with the visuals you’re using.

What Can AI Voice Generators Do?

AI voice generators automate converting text to speech. We use these tools to create automated voiceovers for explainer videos, video ads, podcasts, and similar projects. 

In this review, we focused on comparing how the best AI voice generators produced voiceovers and how many features each tool makes available for these projects. 

The most common features of AI voice generators include:

• An extensive media library with loads of professional voices.
• Audio analytics to track the performance of your audio files compared to others.
• Tools to edit and fine-tune voice tones and audio sound.
• Audio and text input support to make usability easy.
• Voice emotions and countless different accents and languages.

Creating the perfect voiceovers for your videos takes a lot of time. Not to mention recruiting talent and recording all that audio!

Fortunately, AI voice generators make 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.

What Are the Benefits of Using an AI Voice Generator?

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. And it is one that requires some expertise and a lot of time. 

The biggest benefit of using an AI voice generator is how much time and money you can save while still creating a high-quality voiceover!

You can speed up your productivity by 40% thanks to AI voice generators. 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 an AI voice generator include:

• Accessibility: AI voice generators are easy to learn, making them accessible to everyone, regardless of technical knowledge.
• Communicate with users who have language-based challenges and visual impairments: Audible web content allows you to connect with users who have language-based disabilities and visual impairments. 
• Offer an alternative learning style: If you offer online courses, AI voice generators can help you offer another learning style. Some remote learners prefer listening instead of reading, and you can make this possible.  
• Lower costs for producing voiceovers: You can cut down on hefty fees like paying for recording equipment, studio team, and recruiting and compensating talent.
• Multilingual functions: AI voice generators allow you to communicate with users from across the globe because of their multilingual functions. You can use automated subtitles and voiceovers in several languages for your videos.

Right, now that you know what some of the advantages of using AI voice generators are, let’s explore what these tools can do!

Testing and Evaluating the Top AI Voice Generators

To test and evaluate the top AI voice generators, we considered what features and functions you need to produce top-quality voiceovers and then worked out some evaluation criteria from there. 

So, what must AI voice generators offer to create the best voiceovers for your videos?

This is what we were looking for when we tested the AI voice generators:

• Customization options for voice, tone, and speech rate: Your voice-over software must allow you to set the tone and speed of your voiceovers. The tone should be super clear and express your desired emotion.
• A variety of accents to help you connect with your target audience: You must use voiceovers that connect with your target buyers. Ensure your voiceover tool can support the accents you need.  
• Fluid speech with minimal mispronunciations and breaks in voice: When your audience listens to your voiceover, the speech should have minimal mispronunciations and breaks. Top-quality voice generator software can ensure this. 
• Organic dialogue between two or more voices:  You may have to record two or more voices in an organic dialogue. We considered if the best voice-over generators could support multiple voices talking to each other vs. talking alone. 
• Options to edit and adjust the audio/voice: There’s nothing more frustrating than struggling to edit and perfect your voiceovers. The best AI voice generators should make it editing your voiceovers seamless.
• Functions that make it easier to integrate the voice audio with accompanying visual content: Most voiceovers will be paired with some kind of visual content, be that a creative video, slide show, or demonstration. Pairing an audio recording with your visual content can be quite tricky, so if the tool has features for that, it is a big plus.

When you combine all these factors, you can produce quality voiceovers to make your videos sound natural, emotive, and polished.

So, can an AI voice generator really do all the above and produce a convincingly human-sounding voiceover? 

Here is how we tested them to find out:

Evaluation Criteria & How We Tested the Top AI Voice Generators

We chose a selection of popular AI voice generators that offer a robust set of features and have good user reviews, both on the tool’s site and on third-party review sites. We chose the ones that looked like the best and then signed up and put each one to the test 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, to get as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible, we used the same script for all the tools.

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:

• How many useful features the tools provided
• Customization options for the voice in terms of gender, accent, tone and speech rate
• How many editing options the tools provided, and how much you could edit and refine the voiceover
• The number of options they provided for accents and languages
• How natural and human-like the voices they generated were
• Usability of the platform, onboarding, and user experience
• The capability of supporting multiple voices in a dialogue 
• Our overall impression of the software and its ‘value-for-money’
• The quality of the final result – the voiceover we created

The main objective of our test was to determine the quality of the voiceovers you can produce, how user-friendly the platform is, and how much control you have in terms of customizations and editing.  

The AI Voice Generator Tools We Tested

These are the top 10 AI generator tools that we tested to find the best of the best:

1. Play.ht
2. Listnr
3. Murf
4. ReplicaStudios
5. BigSpeak
6. Synthesys
7. Speechelo
8. Dragon Home
9. Sonantic
10. Lovo

After using all ten AI voice generators, we selected the ones that stood out as the best (see the detailed reviews on those below) based on our evaluation criteria and the quality of the final product.

Overall, 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 with some playing around to switch out words and edit punctuation, we managed to get some pleasing results.

With more time and flexibility, we could have improved the quality further, and if you’re going to use your AI voice generator for anything professional or commercial, we recommend that you set aside some time to test out all your options when it comes to the customizations the tool offers.

The tools that did not make it into our selection of the top AI voice generators 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:

5 Best AI Voice Generator Tools

1.Play.ht

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:

• An extensive library of voices with different accents, tones, and languages
• Tracking analytics to track your projects’ performances
• Team collaboration and projects to organize your audio files 
• A pronunciation library to refine your voiceovers 

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. On the left-hand menu, you’ll notice navigation to your AI voices, team, analytics, podcast hosting, and resources.

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, and 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 they provide and how few pronunciation problems we encountered in comparison 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. To customize our voiceover, we chose the high-quality audio option 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:

• There aren’t a lot of customization options for the speed and tone of your AI voices.
• It’s not ideal for solo marketers, creators, and developers but rather for teams.
• The dashboard takes some time to learn. 

Play.ht’s Pricing:

• Personal: $19 p/m for 20,000 words, standard voices, audio previews, and audio downloads monthly 
• Professional: $39 p/m for 50,000 words, standard and realistic voices, audio previews, and audio downloads monthly 
• Premium: $99 p/m for 20,000 words, standard voices, audio previews, audio downloads, and unlimited projects monthly 
• Team: $198 p/m for unlimited voice generation, clone voices, standard voices, realistic voices, unlimited projects, unlimited previews, and centralized billing monthly 
• Enterprise: Custom Price

Website: https://play.ht/

2.Listnr

When it comes to top-tier voice generation software, Listnr is among the very best! This AI voice generator is ideal for podcasts and explainer videos, and it offers plans for individuals and teams.

The features for voiceovers Listnr offers include:

• Editing tone, speed, and emotion for voiceovers.
• Intuitive dashboard for beginners. 
• Audio embeds to seamlessly add voices to your website. 
• A function to request features from Listnr’s developers!

Lisnr doesn’t walk you through an onboarding form. You simply create an account and start producing voiceovers!

The dashboard is super intuitive. On the left-hand menu, you have navigations to podcasts, voiceovers, audio player settings, TTS voices and APIs, and your general settings. 

To create a voiceover, click “Create a Voiceover” on the dashboard.

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.

We used a female voice with a UK accent for this test, 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 to do.

We also found that the accents were not great, and the user interface was a bit clumsy to use. All in all, it’s a very good tool but maybe not quite as polished or advanced as the others in the list. That said, the quality of the voiceover is good, and it could be used professionally with some tweaks and edits.

The biggest drawbacks to Listnr include:

• The functions are very basic, which isn’t ideal for high-level projects and teams. 
• The features are a little clunky.
• The voices are a little outdated/bland. 
• The accents aren’t accurate.

Listnr’s Pricing:

• Student: $4 p/m for 4000 words, unlimited downloads, 10GB storage, and 600+ voices every month 
• Individual: $9 p/m for 10,000 words, unlimited downloads, 25G storage, and 600+ voices every month 
• Solo: $19 p/m for 30,000 words, unlimited downloads, 50GB storage, and 600+ voices every month 
• Startup: $39 p/m for 100,000 words, unlimited downloads, 100GB storage, and 600+ voices every month 
• Agency: $99 p/m for 300,000 words, unlimited downloads, 250GB storage, and 600+ voices every month 

Website: https://www.listnr.tech/

3.Murf.ai

Murf.ai is the most popular and reliable AI voice generator, with an impressive range of features and high-quality voiceovers.

With Murf.ai, you can use features for voiceovers like:

• Editing your voiceover’s accent, tone, pitch, and speech rate.
• Templates with loads of different voices.
• Transcription for your videos.
• An intuitive filter to find the perfect voiceover based on language, gender, accent, and age.

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 the onboarding process, Murf.ai will take you to an interface where you can start creating your project. 

The dashboard boasts a simple and clean user interface, making this tool ideal for beginners. You can create a project or workspace in a few clicks or navigate to Murf.ai’s templates in the left-hand menu.

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. 

Next to the button where you choose your voice, you can also set your desired tone and pace. In the bottom editor, you can seamlessly add your chosen voices and media files like 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:

• It takes a long time for media files to load and preview.
• The features might be too basic for high-level projects, but this tool is ideal for beginners.
• There aren’t many available features in the free plan.
• The pronunciation isn’t always accurate.
• You may have to go over different lines in dialogue.
• It isn’t easy to edit the voices and keep background music in your videos. 

Murf.ai’s Pricing:

• Free Forever: For no downloads, 120+ voices, 10 minutes of voice generation, and 10 minutes of transcription
• Basic: $19 p/m, per user for unlimited downloads, 120+ voices, 10 languages, and chat and email support
• Pro: $39 p/m, per user for unlimited downloads, 120+ voices, all languages, and accents, AI voice changer, and workspaces 
• Enterprise: $49 pm, per 5 users for everything in Pro Plan + unlimited voice generation and transcription, dedicated account manager, and onboarding support 

Website: https://murf.ai/

4.ReplicaStudios

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 AI voice generators, 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:

• AI voice actors that produce unique speech patterns based on your ideal voice acting. 
• Pronunciation and emotional range for signature voiceovers.
• Voice cloning.
• An extensive voice library.
• Digital rights, so you have ownership of your voiceovers.

The dashboard is crowded but easy to navigate. Scrolling down, you can find online community integrations for Discord, YouTube, and Twitter, integrations, and plugins. On the left-hand bar, you can find your projects and AI voices.

To test this tool, we clicked “Start a New Project” 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 voice generators!

For this test, we chose to use three different voices, two female and one male, with UK accents (English and Scottish). All the voices were set to a lighthearted tone, and we left the default pace settings.

The results were… Interesting.

Click here to Listen to the Voiceover We Created with Replica.

For specific use cases, this can work 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 product that is still evolving, we really liked what ReplicaStudios are 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, adding characters and inputting their words, adjusting the style (charming, angry or distraught) and pace. For animators and game developers, this will be awesome when the features are finalized! As is the fact that 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:

• It takes time to learn how to use all the tools and functions.
• Functions cater to specific niches, and it won’t be the best for people who needs an all-rounder tool.
• Only large teams or super high-level projects would find value in all ReplicaStudios offers.
• A lot of functions are still in beta and not yet ready to use for professional projects.

ReplicaStudio’s Pricing:

• For Creatives: $24 p/m for 4 hours of speech generation, entire replica voice library, unlimited projects, and unlimited exports
• For Business: $300 p/m for 100 hours of speech generation, entire replica voice library, basic support, unlimited exports, replica studio tools, and commercial use 
• For Enterprise: Custom quote

Website: https://replicastudios.com/

5.BigSpeak

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:

• Audio transcription
• Voice cloning
• A moderate library of automated AI voices

There’s no onboarding process when you register a BigSpeak account, and you can get straight to developing 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 variety of voices.

Users love BigSpeak because you don’t need any experience to use this software. 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, making 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, there are limited customization and editing options, and the voice does not sound convincingly human. It’s pretty monotone and a little robotic.

That said, you can use these voiceovers for a very quick solution for simple projects where emotion and human-ness are not so important, like slideshows or instructional videos. BigSpeak is a free AI voice generator that’s very easy to use, which is perfect for simple projects.

The main cons of BigSpeak are:

• This tool is too basic for high-level projects.
• The voices are a little outdated.
• You can’t create a dialogue of two or more voices.

BigSpeak’s Pricing:

• Free Forever: For 10,000 TTS characters and 30 minutes of audio transcription every month
• Premium: $19 p/m for 50,000 TTS characters, 180 minutes of audio transcription, and email support every month

Website: https://bigspeak.ai/

Final Thoughts After Testing the Top AI Voice Generators

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 voice generators, 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 to help you create professional voiceovers for video ads, explainer videos, podcasts, and much more.

What will you create first?

References

Medium: Top Industries Getting Revolutionized by Artificial Intelligence

PWC: PwC’s Global Artificial Intelligence Study: Exploiting the AI Revolution

Polestar: Ways to Boost Enterprise Productivity By 40% With AI and ML Adoption