Murf, WellSaid Labs, Play.ht and LOVO all show up on "ElevenLabs alternatives" lists. What those lists rarely tell you is that they bill in three different units — generation time, downloaded minutes, and characters — and that, as of late 2026, two of the four can no longer be bought at all. This guide compares the published specs, converts the pricing to one common yardstick, and starts with the status check.
Play.ht and LOVO stay in this guide as historical records — their last published prices are marked as such — because former users are still searching for what happened and where to move. They are not presented as products you can buy.
Creator plan, billed annually ($228/year). Monthly billing is $29/mo. Studio plans — the API is priced separately.
Starter plan, billed annually ($120/year). Monthly billing is $19/mo. Now branded "WellSaid".
Last published prices (2025): Creator was $39/mo ($31.20/mo billed annually). Historical information only.
Last published prices: Basic was listed around $24–$29/mo with 2 hours of generation a month. Historical information only.
| Murf | WellSaid Labs | Play.ht | LOVO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Status (Nov 2026) | Operating | Operating (branded "WellSaid") | Shut down Dec 31, 2025 after Meta acquired the team | Chapter 7 liquidation filed May 27, 2026; site offline |
| Best for | Creators and educators narrating videos and courses, including in Japanese | Teams producing English training and marketing voiceovers with many retakes | Former users looking for a replacement (historical) | Former Genny users looking for a replacement (historical) |
| How it bills | Per minute of audio generated — every render, including discarded takes, uses your allowance | Per minute of audio downloaded — generation and retakes are unlimited | Per character generated (historical) | Per minute of audio generated (historical) |
| Free option | 10 minutes of generation in total; previews only — no downloads, no commercial rights | Trial: 3 download minutes/month, no commercial rights | Was 12,500 characters/month, non-commercial, attribution required | Was a 14-day trial (~20 minutes); no downloads on free |
| Paid plans from | Creator $19/mo billed annually ($29 monthly) | Starter $10/mo billed annually ($19 monthly) | Was Creator $39/mo ($31.20 annual) — 2025 prices | Was Basic ~$24/mo billed annually ($29 monthly) — sources differ |
| What's included at entry | 24 hours of generation/year, 100 projects, all voices, commercial rights, downloads | 240 download minutes/year, 10 projects, all English voices, commercial rights, MP3 at 24 kHz | Was ~250,000 characters/month and 10 instant voice clones | Was 2 hours of generation/month and commercial rights |
| Voices & languages (published) | 200+ voices, 35+ languages | 240+ voices (some pages say 280+), licensed voice actors; English on self-serve plans | Was marketed as 800–900+ voices, 140+ languages | Was marketed as 500+ voices, 100+ languages |
| Japanese voices | Yes — Japanese voices (e.g. Kei, Sakura, Reo) listed in the regular voice library | Enterprise plan only. Starter, Pro and Business are English voices only | Was included in the 140+ languages (historical) | Was included in the 100+ languages (historical) |
| Downloads & formats | Free plan cannot download at all; downloads start with paid plans | Starter / Pro export MP3 only; WAV, OGG and TXT start at Business; 96 kHz is Enterprise | Downloads were available, with attribution on free | Free could not download — watermarked share links only |
| Trade-off to know | Re-rendering after every script tweak burns your generation allowance; the Studio and the API are priced separately and easy to confuse | Cheapest entry price, but Starter works out to the highest cost per finished minute here (see the math below); Japanese requires an Enterprise contract | Nothing left to buy. Ignore any 2026 page still quoting Play.ht prices as current — and any lookalike site asking for your card | Nothing left to rely on. Any page still selling LOVO plans as normal is recycling pre-bankruptcy information |
Prices are USD, before tax. Murf and WellSaid prices were checked in November 2026; Play.ht and LOVO figures are their last published prices (2025 and early 2026 respectively) and are shown for the record only — neither service can be purchased today. Plans change — always confirm the current price and what's included on the vendor's site before you buy. Prices checked November 2026 — always confirm on the vendor's site.
The headline prices can't be compared directly, because each vendor meters something different. So we converted the published annual prices into two common units. The conversion assumes roughly 800 characters ≈ 1 minute of English narration (about 130 words a minute at ~6 characters per word including spaces), so 10,000 characters ≈ 12.5 minutes. This is arithmetic on published prices — you can re-run it with your own scripts.
| Plan (annual billing) | Published price | What the meter counts | Cost per finished hour | Cost per 10,000 characters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Murf Creator | $228/year | 24 hours generated / year | $9.50 | ≈ $1.98 |
| Murf Business | $792/year | 96 hours generated / year | $8.25 | ≈ $1.72 |
| WellSaid Starter | $120/year | 240 minutes downloaded / year | $30.00 | ≈ $6.25 |
| WellSaid Pro | $396/year | 2,160 minutes downloaded / year | $11.00 | ≈ $2.29 |
| Play.ht Creator (2025, historical) | $31.20/mo | ~250,000 characters / month | ≈ $6.00 (converted) | ≈ $1.25 |
| LOVO Basic (historical) | $24/mo | 2 hours generated / month | $12.00 | ≈ $2.50 |
Three things fall out of the math. First, the cheapest doorway is not the cheapest output: WellSaid Starter has the lowest entry price of the operating tools ($10/mo billed annually) but the highest cost per finished minute, because it only includes 20 minutes of downloads a month; WellSaid Pro drops to about $11 per finished hour. Second, retakes are priced differently: on Murf, every re-render — including takes you throw away — spends your allowance, so scripts that need many revisions cost more than the table suggests; on WellSaid, generation is unlimited and only the final download counts, so heavy revision is effectively free. Third, language changes the math on character-based pricing: Japanese narration runs at roughly 350–500 characters per minute, so 10,000 Japanese characters produce about 20–28 minutes of audio — character-metered plans get cheaper per finished minute in Japanese, while time- and download-metered plans cost the same in any language.
Murf is a browser-based voiceover studio: you paste a script, pick a voice, adjust emphasis, pitch and pauses on a timeline, and export the audio. Its published library is 200+ voices across 35+ languages, and Japanese is part of the regular library — the vendor's own voice list names Japanese voices such as Kei, Sakura and Reo — rather than an enterprise add-on. The free plan is a demo: 10 minutes of generation in total, preview only, with no downloads and no commercial rights. Creator ($19/mo billed annually, $29/mo monthly) is the real entry point: 24 hours of generation a year, 100 projects, downloads and commercial rights. Business ($66/mo billed annually, $99/mo monthly) raises that to 96 hours a year and 500 projects, and Enterprise is custom-priced with unlimited generation. One trap to know: Murf sells its Studio and its developer API separately, and the main pricing URL currently shows the API's per-character rates — make sure you are looking at Studio plans before comparing. Voice cloning sits in the upper tiers; published sources disagree on exactly which tier unlocks it, so confirm before you buy for that purpose.
WellSaid (the company is WellSaid Labs; the site now runs as wellsaid.io) builds its voices from licensed recordings of professional voice actors, and sells that licensing clarity to training, marketing and e-learning teams. Its pricing model is the unusual one in this comparison: generation is unlimited on paid plans, and only the minutes you actually download are metered. The free Trial gives 3 download minutes a month with no commercial rights. Starter ($10/mo billed annually, $19/mo monthly) includes 240 download minutes a year, 10 projects, all English voices, full commercial rights and MP3 exports at 24 kHz. Pro ($33/mo billed annually, $49/mo monthly) jumps to 2,160 download minutes a year, unlimited projects and up to 48 kHz. Business ($160/user/mo, annual only) adds team seats, WAV exports and an Adobe Premiere Pro integration. Unused download minutes do not roll over. The catch for international teams is on the pricing page itself: Starter, Pro and Business all list "all English voices" — other languages, including Japanese, plus translation, are Enterprise-only at custom prices.
Play.ht, later rebranded PlayAI, was a text-to-speech platform marketed on a large library — 800+ voices in 140+ languages — plus instant voice cloning and a developer API. Its last published pricing (2025) was a free tier of 12,500 characters a month with attribution required and no commercial use, Creator at $39/mo ($31.20/mo billed annually) for roughly 250,000 characters a month with a commercial license, and an "Unlimited" tier at $99/mo that carried a fair-use ceiling of about 2.5 million characters a month. None of that can be bought today. Meta acquired the PlayAI team in July 2025; the API went offline within weeks, and the studio, API and voice-agent products were shut down permanently on December 31, 2025, with accounts, saved audio and voice clones deleted and no export tool provided. As of our November 2026 check, play.ht and play.ai sit on Meta's nameservers and serve no website. If you find a similarly named site selling "PlayHT" plans today, treat it as unverified: independent checks could not confirm any connection to the original company.
LOVO's product, Genny, combined text-to-speech with a built-in video editor, an AI writer and subtitle tools in one browser workspace, marketed with 500+ voices in 100+ languages. Its last published pricing offered a 14-day trial with about 20 minutes of generation, then Basic at around $24/mo billed annually ($29/mo monthly) for 2 hours of generation a month — third-party sources never fully agreed on the exact Basic price, because LOVO's own pricing page was script-gated — with Pro at 5 hours a month and Pro+ at 20 hours a month for $75/mo billed annually. Paid plans were published as including commercial rights; the free tier could not download at all and shared projects carried a watermark. That is all historical now. LOVO, Inc. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on May 27, 2026 (Southern District of New York, case 26-11249) while defending a lawsuit from voice actors. Chapter 7 is liquidation: the business is wound down, not restructured. Checks from August to October 2026 found lovo.ai and the Genny app returning errors on every endpoint, with no shutdown notice and no way to export projects. If you still hold a LOVO subscription, treat any remaining prepaid period as unrecoverable and move your scripts to an operating tool.
In 2026 this stopped being a joke step: two of the four tools on standard "alternatives" lists shut down or entered liquidation. Before comparing features, confirm the vendor's own pricing page loads, the signup works, and there is no shutdown or bankruptcy news. This guide's status box is dated November 2026 — re-check it before you commit.
If you revise scripts a lot, WellSaid's download-only metering means retakes cost nothing. If you generate clean, final narration in few takes, Murf's per-hour generation cost is lower. Never compare headline monthly prices across different meters — convert to cost per finished hour first, as in the table above.
Need Japanese narration? Murf includes Japanese voices on standard plans; WellSaid reserves every non-English language for Enterprise contracts. Need WAV for broadcast or an ad network? On WellSaid that starts at Business. Need captions for e-learning? Confirm SRT / VTT export on the tier you're buying.
Annual billing is cheaper per month everywhere here, but 2026 showed what happens to prepaid time when a vendor disappears. Start on monthly billing, download and back up every finished file and script outside the platform, and only switch to annual once the tool is part of your routine.
As of November 2026: Murf and WellSaid Labs. Play.ht shut down on December 31, 2025 after Meta acquired its team, and LOVO entered Chapter 7 liquidation in May 2026 and is offline. Most "alternatives" articles still list all four with prices because they were written before those events and never updated — check the date and the vendor's own site before trusting any of them, including this one.
It depends on the meter. The lowest entry price is WellSaid Starter at $10/mo billed annually, but it includes only 240 download minutes a year — about $30 per finished hour, the most expensive output here. For steady production, Murf Business works out to about $8.25 per generated hour and WellSaid Pro to about $11 per downloaded hour on annual billing. Light, occasional use favors WellSaid Starter; regular volume favors Murf or WellSaid Pro. The full conversion is in the cost table above.
No — none of the four free tiers included commercial rights. Murf's free plan can't even download audio (preview only), WellSaid's Trial downloads up to 3 minutes a month but without commercial rights, and the historical Play.ht and LOVO free tiers barred commercial use as well (Play.ht also required attribution). Commercial rights start at the first paid tier on both operating tools. Always confirm the current license terms on the vendor's site, especially if you plan to resell or transfer the audio.
On published specs, Murf: Japanese voices are part of its regular library and standard paid plans. WellSaid is the opposite case — Starter, Pro and Business are English-only, and Japanese is available only on a custom Enterprise contract. We make no claim about which Japanese voices sound better; that judgment would require listening tests this guide doesn't do. Use each vendor's free preview to listen to the specific voices you would actually use.
Based on the public record, no. Play.ht deleted accounts, saved audio and voice clones at its December 31, 2025 shutdown, with no export tool. LOVO's site and app returned errors throughout late 2026 with no export path announced. Treat audio and clones held only inside those platforms as lost, rebuild from your own script files if you kept them, and — the lesson for whichever tool you move to — keep local copies of scripts and finished audio from day one.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published specifications and pricing, not from hands-on testing, and we won't dress that up as listening experience. Judgments that do appear — like the per-hour costs — are arithmetic on published prices, shown with the working so you can check them. For how a voice actually sounds, every vendor here offers a free preview; your ears on your own script are a better test than any reviewer's score.