Home / Tools / Audio & Voice
Tools · 10 of 10

Best AI tools for voice, speech, and music

Six audio-generation tools compared — voice cloning and text-to-speech, plus full song generation — with real free-tier limits and each company's actual consent/training policy.

Audio & Voice tools compared

ElevenLabs Inc.

ElevenLabs

What it does

An AI audio platform covering text-to-speech (70+ languages), instant/professional voice cloning, dubbing (auto-translates video into 30+ languages preserving speaker voice), Conversational AI voice agents, and AI sound effects.

Best use case

Audiobook/podcast narration, video and e-learning voiceovers, media localization/dubbing, and IVR/customer-support voice agents.

Limitations

Usage is metered by credits (roughly 1 character ≈ 1 credit for standard models, though the ratio varies by model tier). Professional Voice Cloning requires identity verification; celebrity/high-risk voices are blocked from cloning.

Free tier (confirmed)

$0/month — 10,000 credits/month (roughly 10 minutes of audio at standard models), including TTS, Speech-to-Text, Sound Effects, and 3 Studio Projects.

Privacy

Users can opt out of model-training use anytime via account settings; once disabled, new data isn't used for training. Enterprise customers are excluded from training by default. Voice cloning requires consent/legal right to clone any voice.

OpenAI

ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode

What it does

Real-time spoken conversation with ChatGPT in the app, including live video/screen-share on mobile for subscribers — hands-free Q&A, tutoring, or visual assistance via camera.

Best use case

Hands-free conversational practice, tutoring, or live visual assistance via camera/screen share — not a standalone TTS/production tool.

Limitations

One voice session at a time; sessions auto-end after 1 hour idle. No image generation, file uploads, or Code Interpreter during voice. Video/screen-share is mobile-only.

Free tier (confirmed)

Runs on GPT-4o mini, capped at 2 hours/day — one of the few exact published numbers in this category. 9 selectable voices.

Privacy

No training on voice/video by default — opt-in required via Data Controls, available only on personal Free/Plus/Pro accounts (not Business/Enterprise/Edu). Audio/video retained 30 days.

Speechify Inc.

Speechify

What it does

A text-to-speech app converting documents, PDFs, web pages, and books into spoken audio, plus voice typing, AI podcast creation, and a Voice AI Assistant.

Best use case

Accessibility (dyslexia, visual impairment) and hands-free consumption of long-form text while multitasking or commuting.

Limitations

Free tier is explicitly described by Speechify as "10 robotic sounding voices," capped at 1.5x playback speed (vs. 5x paid). No AI Summaries, Scan & Listen, or Voice Typing on free.

Free tier (confirmed)

$0/month — 1.5x speed, 10 robotic voices, text-to-speech only.

Privacy

No explicit opt-in/opt-out language for training on user content was conclusively located on Speechify's public pages — a genuine transparency gap worth knowing before relying on any specific privacy claim.

Suno, Inc.

Suno

What it does

Generates full songs — vocals, lyrics, and instrumentation — from a text prompt in under a minute, including uploading/extending real audio on paid tiers.

Best use case

Fast, complete-song creation for hobbyists; commercial-release work on paid tiers only.

Limitations

Free tier is locked to the older v4.5-all model — the newer v5.5 is paid-only. No stem separation on free. No commercial-use rights on free-tier outputs at all.

Free tier (confirmed)

50 credits/day (roughly 10 songs/day), v4.5-all model only, no commercial use, no stems.

Privacy

Explicitly uses your submissions/content to train its models under "legitimate interest," with no self-serve training opt-out. Voice-cloning biometric data is retained up to 3 years.

Uncharted Labs, Inc.

Udio

What it does

Generates full songs from text prompts with strong support for extending, remixing, and "inpainting" — editing specific sections of an existing track.

Best use case

Iterative editing and remixing of longer (roughly 2-minute) song structures, rather than one-shot generation.

Limitations

Free tier is capped at 3 long-format (130-second) songs/day regardless of credit balance, and credits don't roll over. Udio's live pricing and privacy pages are JavaScript-rendered, limiting independent verification of some figures.

Free tier (confirmed)

10 credits/day plus a 100-credit/month pool; a 32-second song pair costs 2 credits, a 130-second pair costs 4 credits.

Privacy

Commercial-use rights and watermarking status on the free tier are unpublished/unconfirmed against a directly-verified official page — treat any specific claim here as unverified until checked live.

Google DeepMind / Google Labs

MusicFX / Lyria

What it does

MusicFX is Google Labs' free browser tool turning text prompts into music clips, powered by Google DeepMind's Lyria model family — also offered via Vertex AI (Lyria 2/3) and the Gemini API (Lyria RealTime) for developers.

Best use case

Casual prototyping of short original tracks for consumers; Lyria 3 Pro for full compositions with vocals inside apps, for developers.

Limitations

No vocals in free MusicFX or Lyria RealTime — vocals are limited to Lyria 3/3 Pro. Blocks prompts naming specific artists. Requires 18+ and is geo-gated to roughly 110 countries.

Free tier

Free with a Google account, but the exact daily generation cap is unpublished — Google's FAQ only confirms a limit exists. All outputs carry an inaudible SynthID watermark.

Privacy

Google trains on prompts/outputs by default ("legitimate interest"); users can opt out via disabling "labs.google/fx history" per tool — once disabled, data isn't used for training but is still retained up to 72 hours to run the service.

Flagged during research, not smoothed over: ElevenLabs, Suno, and OpenAI's voice mode all publish exact free-tier numbers. Speechify, Udio, and Google MusicFX/Lyria withhold at least one key figure — Speechify's exact voice/character limits, Udio's commercial-use and watermark terms, and Google's exact daily generation cap are all genuinely unpublished, not just unresearched. Major-label licensing settlements (Warner-Suno, UMG-Udio) are actively squeezing free-tier terms across AI music tools through 2026 — expect these figures to keep changing.
Next: Playbooks

Now — full workflows that chain these tools together.

Ten step-by-step playbooks: manual → semi-automated → fully implemented, with real KPIs.

Continue to Playbooks →