TL;DR
- Choose ElevenLabs for the most natural voices, 90+ languages on its newest models, a full voice agent platform and enterprise compliance.
- Choose Fish Audio for the lowest API price on English text, open models you can run yourself, and a free development model.
- Many comparisons online are out of date. ElevenLabs' API now starts at $0.04 per 1,000 characters, so the gap is smaller than the "4 to 11 times cheaper" claims suggest.
- For non-Latin scripts, Fish Audio's byte-based billing can close the price gap almost entirely.
You're comparing ElevenLabs and Fish Audio, and every article gives you different numbers. One says Fish Audio is eleven times cheaper. Another says ElevenLabs supports 32 languages. A third says 70. Most of them were written before ElevenLabs released Eleven v4 on September 28, 2026, and several quote prices that no longer apply.
This AI text to speech comparison of ElevenLabs vs Fish Audio uses each company's own pricing pages and documentation, checked in November 2026. It covers voice quality, price, voice cloning, languages, voice agents, self-hosting and enterprise readiness, and ends with a clear recommendation for each type of user.
Haass is an official ElevenLabs implementation partner. Facts about Fish Audio come from Fish Audio's own website and documentation.
Which Is Better: ElevenLabs or Fish Audio?
ElevenLabs is the better choice for most businesses that care about voice quality, language coverage and production reliability. Fish Audio is the better choice if your main priority is the lowest cost for high-volume English audio, or if you want to self-host open models.
| If you need... | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The most natural, expressive voices | ElevenLabs | Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo led the Artificial Analysis Speech Arena when we checked |
| The lowest API price for English text | Fish Audio | $15 per million UTF-8 bytes on S2.1 Pro, against $40 per million characters for ElevenLabs' cheapest models |
| Real-time voice agents with telephony | ElevenLabs | A full agent platform with Twilio, SIP, workflows and testing |
| Free development and testing | Fish Audio | S2.1 Pro Free costs nothing |
| Hindi, Chinese, Japanese and other non-Latin scripts at scale | Compare both | Fish Audio's byte-based billing makes these languages cost more per character |
| Enterprise compliance (HIPAA, SOC 2, data residency) | ElevenLabs | A broad certification list and Enterprise terms |
| Self-hosting an open model | Fish Audio | Fish Audio publishes its models on GitHub (license limits apply) |
How Do ElevenLabs and Fish Audio Compare at a Glance?
| ElevenLabs | Fish Audio | |
|---|---|---|
| Main models | Eleven v4, v4 Turbo, v3, v3 Conversational, Multilingual v2, Flash v2.5 | S2.1 Pro, S2.1 Pro Free, S2 Pro, Drama 3 (S1 retiring December 31, 2026) |
| Languages | 90+ on Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo | 83 on S2.1 Pro |
| API price | $0.04 to $0.08 per 1,000 characters | $15 per million UTF-8 bytes (S2.1 Pro), $50 (Drama 3) |
| Billing unit | Characters | UTF-8 bytes |
| Voice cloning | Instant (Starter and above), Professional (Creator and above), Voice Design | Voice cloning, professional voice slots on paid plans, Voice Design |
| Real-time model | v4 Turbo and Flash v2.5 (~100ms median), per ElevenLabs | Real-time streaming over WebSocket |
| Voice agents | ElevenAgents, with telephony, workflows and testing | Agents API |
| Self-hosting | Private VPC deployments on AWS SageMaker and GCP Vertex AI | Models and code on GitHub under the Fish Audio Community License |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA (BAA on Enterprise), GDPR | Check terms directly with Fish Audio |
Prices from the ElevenLabs API pricing page and Fish Audio's API pricing documentation, checked November 2026.
Which Sounds Better, ElevenLabs or Fish Audio?
ElevenLabs has the stronger independent evidence on voice quality. When we checked the Artificial Analysis Speech Arena in November 2026, Eleven v4 and Eleven v4 Turbo held the top two places. Fish Audio's highest-ranked model, Drama 3, was seventh. The leaderboard ranks models by blind listening votes, where people choose between two clips without knowing which model made them.
Fish Audio's S2.1 Pro supports emotion and delivery tags written in brackets, such as [whispers sweetly], and multi-speaker dialogue, which suits expressive character voices.
Test both on your own scripts. The best AI voice generator for your project is the one that handles your hardest lines, and a voice that wins a leaderboard can still mispronounce your product names.
What Does Each Cost? Fish Audio Pricing vs ElevenLabs Pricing
API pricing
| Model | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs Eleven v4, v3, Multilingual v2 | $0.08 per 1,000 | Characters |
| ElevenLabs Eleven v4 Turbo, v3 Conversational, Flash v2.5 | $0.04 per 1,000 | Characters |
| Fish Audio S2.1 Pro and S2 Pro | $15 per million | UTF-8 bytes |
| Fish Audio Drama 3 | $50 per million ($10 promotional rate through November 30, 2026) | UTF-8 bytes |
| Fish Audio S2.1 Pro Free | $0 | UTF-8 bytes |
Why "4 to 11 times cheaper" is out of date
Several comparisons say Fish Audio is 4 to 11 times cheaper, based on older ElevenLabs prices. ElevenLabs' current API page lists $40 per million characters for v4 Turbo, v3 Conversational and Flash v2.5, and $80 for v4, v3 and Multilingual v2.
For English text, where one character is roughly one byte, Fish Audio S2.1 Pro at $15 per million works out to:
- About 2.7 times cheaper than ElevenLabs v4 Turbo or Flash v2.5
- About 5.3 times cheaper than Eleven v4
Fish Audio is still cheaper for English. The gap is real, but smaller than older articles suggest.
Watch the billing unit for non-Latin scripts
Fish Audio bills by UTF-8 bytes, and ElevenLabs bills by characters. In English, the two are almost the same. In many other scripts, they aren't. Devanagari (used for Hindi), Chinese and Japanese characters typically take three bytes each in UTF-8, so a million characters of Hindi text is roughly three million bytes.
At $15 per million bytes, that's around $45 per million Hindi characters on Fish Audio S2.1 Pro, compared with $40 per million characters on ElevenLabs v4 Turbo or Flash v2.5. For non-Latin scripts at scale, run the numbers on your own text before assuming Fish Audio is cheaper.
Subscription plans
Fish Audio's subscription plans include a free tier and paid Plus and Pro plans for its web app, with API usage billed separately on a pay-as-you-go basis. ElevenLabs offers a free plan and paid plans for its web tools and agent platform, plus pay-as-you-go API pricing. Check the current offer on each pricing page.
For broader context, see our comparison of the best TTS APIs in 2026.
Which Has Better Voice Cloning? Fish Audio Voice Cloning vs ElevenLabs
Both platforms clone voices, with different trade-offs.
ElevenLabs offers Instant Voice Cloning from a short sample, starting on the Starter plan, and Professional Voice Cloning, which trains a dedicated model on longer recordings, starting on the Creator plan. Eleven v4 supports Professional Voice Clones. Voice Design creates new voices from a text description.
Fish Audio offers voice cloning and Voice Design, with professional voice slots depending on the plan. Its Plus plan includes one professional voice slot and Pro includes five, according to Fish Audio's pricing page.
Whichever you choose, only clone voices you have written consent to use. For a full walkthrough of choosing a voice inside ElevenLabs, see our guide on how to choose an AI voice agent voice in ElevenLabs.
Which Covers More Languages?
ElevenLabs covers more languages on its newest models. Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo support 90+ languages, according to ElevenLabs' models documentation. Fish Audio's S2.1 Pro supports 83 languages, according to Fish Audio's documentation.
Older comparisons list ElevenLabs at 32 or 70 languages. Those figures describe Flash v2.5 (32) and Eleven v3 (70+), not the current flagship models. If you need a specific language, test both, because quality varies by language on every platform.
Which Is Better for Voice Agents and Real-Time Apps?
ElevenLabs is the stronger choice for production voice agents. ElevenAgents combines speech recognition, a language model of your choice, ElevenLabs voices and turn-taking, with Twilio and SIP telephony, workflows, knowledge bases, tool calls, automated testing and batch outbound calling. ElevenLabs lists both v4 Turbo and Flash v2.5 at around 100ms median latency.
Fish Audio offers real-time streaming over WebSocket and an Agents API, which suits developers building their own voice pipeline. Its API concurrency starts at 5 requests and rises with total spend, to 15 at $100 and 50 at $1,000, according to its documentation.
If you're building a phone agent and want the telephony, testing and handover features in one place, ElevenLabs saves a lot of engineering work. Our guide to cutting ElevenLabs agent latency covers how to keep responses under a second.
Can You Self-Host or Use Fish Audio's Open Models Commercially?
Fish Audio publishes its models and code on GitHub, which is a real advantage if you need to run speech generation on your own hardware. They're released under the Fish Audio Community License, not a standard permissive open-source license. It allows commercial use only while your annual revenue is under US$500,000, and it doesn't cover offering the model as a hosted service at any revenue level. Larger businesses, and anyone running a hosted service, need a separate written license from Fish Audio.
ElevenLabs is cloud-first. It offers private VPC deployments on AWS SageMaker and GCP Vertex AI for organisations that need data to stay inside their own cloud environment.
Which Is More Ready for Enterprise?
ElevenLabs has the broader published compliance list. Its Trust Center lists SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA and GDPR, along with data residency options including the US, EU, India and Singapore. For Enterprise customers, it offers HIPAA-eligible configurations with a Business Associate Agreement, and SSO.
Fish Audio's free S2.1 Pro model comes with no latency or data processing agreement guarantees, according to its documentation, so it isn't suited to production work with personal data. If compliance matters, ask Fish Audio for its current certifications and terms directly.
Where Fish Audio Is the Better Choice
ElevenLabs is the stronger default for most teams, but Fish Audio wins in some cases:
- High-volume English audio on a tight budget, where per-byte pricing makes a real difference
- Self-hosting for smaller organisations, where its models give you full control within the Community License terms
- Prototyping, where the free S2.1 Pro model lets developers test without spending anything
- Character and creator content, where its emotion tags and multi-speaker dialogue suit experimental work
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Fish Audio better than ElevenLabs?
Fish Audio is better for low-cost English audio and self-hosting, while ElevenLabs is better for voice quality, language coverage, voice agents and enterprise compliance. Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo led the Artificial Analysis Speech Arena when we checked in November 2026. The right choice depends on whether price or quality matters more for your project.
Is Fish Audio cheaper than ElevenLabs?
Yes, for English text. Fish Audio S2.1 Pro costs $15 per million UTF-8 bytes, against $40 per million characters for ElevenLabs v4 Turbo and Flash v2.5, about 2.7 times cheaper. For non-Latin scripts such as Hindi or Chinese, Fish Audio's byte-based billing can make it cost about the same or more per character.
Which has better voice cloning, ElevenLabs or Fish Audio?
Both offer voice cloning and Voice Design. ElevenLabs offers Instant Voice Cloning from the Starter plan and Professional Voice Cloning from Creator. Fish Audio includes one professional voice slot on Plus and five on Pro. Test both with your own recordings, and only clone voices you have written consent to use.
Can I use Fish Audio commercially?
Yes, on paid plans. Fish Audio's pricing page says free plan users can only use generated content for personal, non-commercial projects, while premium subscribers can use verified voices they own commercially. Its self-hosted models are under the Fish Audio Community License, which allows commercial use only for organisations with under US$500,000 in annual revenue and excludes hosted services.
Which is better for AI voice agents?
ElevenLabs is better for most voice agents. ElevenAgents includes telephony through Twilio and SIP, workflows, knowledge bases, testing and outbound calling, with v4 Turbo at around 100ms median latency. Fish Audio offers real-time streaming and an Agents API, which suits developers who want to build their own pipeline.
Which Should You Choose?
If your voice is part of your product, whether that's a support agent, an audiobook or a branded assistant, ElevenLabs is the safer choice in the ElevenLabs vs Fish Audio decision. If you're producing high volumes of English audio on a tight budget, or you're a smaller organisation that needs to self-host, Fish Audio is worth testing.
As an official ElevenLabs implementation partner, Haass helps teams choose models and voices, build voice agents and move to production. If you're weighing ElevenLabs alternatives and want to test ElevenLabs against your own scripts, talk to our team, or read what ElevenLabs is and what it includes.