Speechify sells one paid plan, Premium at $29/mo, and the jump from Free is steep: the free tier caps reading at 1.5x speed with 10 robotic voices, and there's no mid-tier. Voice cloning isn't part of Premium itself either; it's pay-as-you-go via the API or in the separate Speechify Studio product.
ElevenLabs is the cheaper paid route to natural-sounding text-to-speech, from $6/mo with a commercial licence and voice cloning. NotebookLM turns your documents into Audio Overviews for free. To produce narrated audio rather than listen, use Descript.
| App | Free tier | Paid from | Top plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speechify | Yes | $29/mo | $29/mo | Readers, students, and professionals who want articles, books, and documents read aloud in natural voices |
| ElevenLabs | Yes | $6/mo | $990/mo | Developers and studios needing voice cloning, dubbing and TTS, with music as a bonus feature |
| NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) | Yes | $4.99/mo | $99.99–199.99/mo | Students, researchers, and analysts who need grounded answers and audio summaries from their own documents |
| Descript | Yes | $24/mo | $65/mo | Podcast and video editing, transcript-based cutting, voice cloning for solo creators |
| ChatGPT | Yes | $8/mo | $500/mo | Everyday writing, brainstorming, image generation, casual coding |
Monthly prices in US dollars before tax, from each vendor's official pricing (US list price; weekly-billed plans converted to a monthly figure). Updated November 2, 2026
ElevenLabs Free includes 10,000 credits a month of text-to-speech; Starter ($6/mo) raises that to 30,000 and adds a commercial licence and instant voice cloning, which Speechify keeps out of Premium.
Pick it if: you want high-quality voices for your own audio, or need a cloned voice.
Where it falls short: It's built for developers and studios rather than as a reading app, and credits burn fast at scale.
Full ElevenLabs pricing →NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook) turns your uploaded sources into Audio Overviews: 3 a day on Free across 100 notebooks of 50 sources each, and 20 a day with Google AI Pro.
Pick it if: you listen to readings to study them and a spoken summary is enough.
Where it falls short: Audio Overviews summarise your sources rather than reading them word for word.
Full NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) pricing →Descript pairs voice cloning with transcript-based audio and video editing. Hobbyist ($24/mo) includes 10 media hours a month and watermark-free 1080p export.
Pick it if: you want to create narrated podcasts or videos, not listen to documents.
Where it falls short: It's an editor, not a reading app, and larger projects can lag.
Full Descript pricing →ChatGPT Free includes voice mode and file uploads, so you can upload a document and discuss it out loud.
Pick it if: you'd rather ask questions about a text by voice than have it read to you.
Where it falls short: There's no listed equivalent of Speechify's 5x speed control or Scan & Listen.
Full ChatGPT pricing →Speechify is a reader: it plays text back at up to 5x speed in 1,000+ voices and scans printed pages with Scan & Listen. ElevenLabs is a production tool, which is why its plans are framed in credits, projects and commercial licences. Decide which side you're on before comparing monthly prices, because they measure different things.
ElevenLabs Free includes 10,000 credits a month of text-to-speech (no commercial use), and NotebookLM turns documents into Audio Overviews for free, up to 3 a day.
For creating voiceovers, cloning voices or dubbing, yes. For having books, articles and documents read aloud with speed control and Scan & Listen, Speechify is the more convenient app.
How we choose: prices come from each vendor's official pricing page and are re-checked every week. We take no affiliate fees, so rankings aren't for sale.