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Text-to-speech services have become indispensable tools for creating audio content. They help to turn text into natural speech, which is useful for bloggers, YouTube video authors, teachers, and visually impaired people.
With the help of such services you can easily create voiceovers for videos, audiobooks or presentations. They work on the basis of artificial intelligence and speech synthesis, offering a wide range of voices and languages. In this article, we will take a look at the top 5 free text-to-speech voiceover services, their features and limitations.
If you need a quality text dubbing tool, ElevenLabs is one of the best options. It offers realistic synthesized speech, ideal for creating audiobooks, dubbing videos, and other tasks. Thanks to artificial intelligence technology, the service provides natural sounding voices and supports more than 40 languages. Let’s take a look at its features and limitations of the free version.
ElevenLabs is one of the best text-to-speech tools based on artificial intelligence. It supports more than 40 languages, including Ukrainian, which allows you to create high-quality audio with natural intonation. The service offers:
In addition, ElevenLabs provides the ability to flexibly customize intonation, speech rate and voice expressiveness, which makes it a versatile tool for both bloggers and businesses.
The free version of ElevenLabs has certain limitations. The main limit is 10,000 characters per month for speech synthesis. Need more than that? You’ll have to subscribe, which gives you access to more text and additional features – improved voice models and advanced audio editing options.
Voicemaker is one of the most feature-rich services for text voicing. It supports 120 languages and has a large database of voices. Thanks to it, you can create high-quality audio for videos, presentations or educational materials. This tool is especially useful for those who work with multi-lingual content.
The main advantage of Voicemaker is a large database of voices with the ability to customize intonation, speech rate and voice expressiveness. The service supports multi-language voices, which allows you to mix different languages in one audio file. You can also change the sound parameters, adding pauses, accents and other effects for more natural text reproduction.
The free version of Voicemaker has a number of limitations. First, there is a limit of 250 characters per request, which makes it difficult to work with long texts. Secondly, the voiced audio can only be used for personal purposes – commercial use is available only in paid plans. If you need advanced functionality, you will have to subscribe.
NaturalReader is a convenient text dubbing service that supports more than 50 languages and offers different voices and accents. Its main feature is the availability of a mobile app, which makes it easy to read out texts anywhere. With support for different languages and flexible settings, NaturalReader is suitable for learning, working and voicing content.
Yes, NaturalReader is great for reading books. The mobile app has a page scanning function – you can take a photo of the printed text, and the service will dub it. This is convenient for students, people with visual impairment or those who just want to listen to books on the go. In addition, NaturalReader supports dubbing in the player mode, which allows you to conveniently control the playback speed and transitions between sections.
The free version of NaturalReader has certain limitations. You can use voiceovers in the player mode, but downloading audio files is only available in the paid version. Also, a limited set of voices is available in the free mode, and you will have to subscribe to get more options.
Microsoft Edge Read Aloud is a text-to-speech voice service built into the Microsoft Edge browser. It allows you to listen to web pages, documents and articles without having to install additional programs or register. It is a great option for those who want to convert text to speech for free without restrictions.
Microsoft Edge Read Aloud works text-to-speech and supports unlimited text-to-speech voicing. The user can choose between two voices – male and female. The feature is especially useful for people who consume content on the go or have difficulty reading. The service allows you to control the speed of speech and also highlights words during voiceovers, which helps to better perceive information.
Microsoft Edge Read Aloud is officially built into the Edge browser, so it is not possible to use it directly in other browsers. However, there are alternative ways to access this technology – it can be run through the Hugging Face platform, where enthusiasts have integrated similar speech synthesis tools. This extends the service’s capabilities and allows it to be applied outside of the Microsoft ecosystem.
OpenVoice is an innovative text dubbing service that stands out for its voice cloning capabilities. It allows you to create synthesized speech as close as possible to a real voice using audio reference. Thanks to this technology you can get a unique sound, choose intonation and customize the style of speech.
OpenVoice uses advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to clone your voice and dub your text. Its operation is based on three main steps.
First, the user adds a voice sample in the form of an audio file. The system analyzes it, determines the timbre, speech rhythm, accent and other features of the sound.
After processing the reference, the user can select the desired speech style. OpenVoice offers several intonation options – neutral, emotional, formal or conversational. This allows you to create a voiceover that matches the context of the text.
The service then turns the entered text into speech that is as close to the original voice as possible. Thanks to deep analysis of speech patterns, the AI system is able to preserve the natural sound and correct pronunciation of words.
One of the key features of OpenVoice is its ability to adapt intonation and emotionality of speech, which makes voiceovers more realistic. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the free version has limitations on the number of characters to generate and only supports English.
The free version of OpenVoice has a few important limitations that you should consider before using it:
In free mode, you can only voice up to 200 characters at a time. This makes it difficult to work with large texts, as you have to break them into parts and process them separately.
At the moment, OpenVoice works only with English texts. If you need to voice content in Ukrainian or other languages, you will have to look for alternative services.
In the free mode, the number of attempts to download references is limited. This can be inconvenient if you want to experiment with different voice samples.
Free users can listen to the result online, but cannot save it in MP3 or WAV format. Audio download is only available in the paid version.
Although OpenVoice allows you to change the style of speech, the choice of intonation is significantly limited in the free mode.
If you need to voice long texts, use other languages, or upload results as audio files, it’s worth considering a subscription to the paid plan, which removes most of these limitations.
Artificial intelligence-based text-to-speech services open up a wide range of possibilities for creating audio content. They allow you to easily convert text to speech, use different voices, change intonation and pace of speech. In this article, we have reviewed the top 5 free text-to-speech services, each of which has its own features and limitations.
One of the most popular services for dubbing videos and generating voices, but the free version has a 10,000 character limit.
Supports 120 languages and allows you to customize the timbre and speed of speech, but the free mode is limited to 250 characters.
Great for reading books and word processing, has a mobile app, but for free it only allows you to listen to text in player mode.
An unregistered service built into the browser that provides unlimited read aloud, but it can’t be used outside of Edge.
Allows voice cloning and intonation reproduction, but works only with English texts for free and has a limit of 200 characters per generation.
If you’re looking for a free text voiceover tool, it’s worth paying attention to the functionality and limitations of each service. For working with short texts or experimenting with voices, OpenVoice or Voicemaker will do. If you need free voicing without symbolic limitations, Microsoft Edge Read Aloud is the best choice.
Depending on your needs, you can find the right service that will help you make high-quality voiceovers for videos, audiobooks or other projects.