Speechify Free vs ElevenLabs Free: Two Very Different $0 Plans

Verdict: Speechify Free is for listening to things you already have — articles, documents, email — with a small voice set and speed control. ElevenLabs Free is a synthesis allowance: 10,000 credits a month that you spend on generated speech, with a paid licence waiting at $6. They are both $0 and they are not interchangeable.

The shape of each free plan

Speechify’s pricing page presents the free plan as a reading experience: ten robotic-sounding voices, playback up to 1.5x, and “text to speech features only”. The Premium plan, at $29 a month billed monthly, adds 1000+ high-quality voices, 60+ languages, Scan & Listen and AI summaries. The free plan is a real listening plan; it is not a voice catalogue.

ElevenLabs’ free plan is denominated in credits: 10,000 a month, shared across its products. The pricing FAQ says text to speech costs about one credit per character, so the free allowance is roughly 10,000 characters of synthesis. It also describes rollover for paid subscribers only; the Free plan does not accumulate unused credits. The commercial licence appears on Starter, at $6 a month, alongside instant voice cloning.

That difference in units explains most of the buying confusion. Speechify sells access to a player; ElevenLabs sells a monthly budget of generated audio.

Side by side

The paid steps are worth reading twice. Speechify’s upgrade is a consumer subscription at $29; ElevenLabs’ first paid step is $6. The cheaper step is not automatically the better deal, because the products do different jobs, but it changes the trial maths for a creator on a budget.

When Speechify Free is enough

If your use case is “read this article to me while I walk”, the free plan does the job. Speed control up to 1.5x, a player that works across devices and a text-to-speech focus are the right features for consumption. You do not need 1000+ voices to listen to a PDF, and you do not need a commercial licence to listen privately.

The limit appears when you want to publish. Ten robotic-sounding voices are a listening set, not a production cast, and the pricing page does not state commercial rights for the free tier. A creator who wants narrated video should treat Speechify Free as a preview of the player, then price Premium or another tool for the actual release.

When ElevenLabs Free is enough

ElevenLabs Free is a good fit for short, high-value takes: a 30-second intro, a prototype voiceover, a handful of lines to test a script. With text to speech costing about one credit per character, 10,000 credits is a small but usable batch. The 74-language figure on the pricing page is a concrete coverage field, and the upgrade path to a commercial licence is a single $6 step.

The constraints are equally concrete. Credits do not roll over, so unused allowance disappears at the end of the cycle. The commercial licence is not on the free plan, so a monetised video needs Starter. And the free plan is not a document reader: there is no library, no OCR and no offline listening mode in the offer described on the pricing page.

The decision in practice

• Choose Speechify Free if you mainly listen, want speed control, and do not need to publish the audio.
• Choose ElevenLabs Free if you generate short takes, need a published language count, and can move to the $6 tier when a project becomes commercial.
• Do not choose either for long-form document workflow if PDF import, offline listening and MP3 export are requirements. A document-first reader handles that job better.
• Do not treat either free plan as a commercial licence unless the vendor page says so for that exact plan.

What the free plans do not tell you

Neither page publishes a listening benchmark, and this desk did not run one. “Robotic-sounding” is Speechify’s own description of its free voices, not a measured quality score. ElevenLabs’ naturalness is likewise a claim, not a field this site can reproduce. If voice quality decides the purchase, test both with the same paragraph and the same headphones.

The other missing field is consent. Neither plan is a licence to clone a person. If a project uses a real performer’s voice, the permission question sits outside the subscription and should be settled in writing before the first render.

Bottom line

Speechify Free is a listening plan with a $29 upgrade to a larger voice library. ElevenLabs Free is a 10,000-credit synthesis allowance with a $6 upgrade to a commercial licence. Pick by the job — listen or publish — and check the licence line before either plan becomes part of a paid deliverable.