Play.ht shut down. Here's an alternative built to stay.
FreeTTS is a flat-rate text-to-speech studio: 2,250+ neural voices across 149 languages, multi-voice dialogue with per-line retakes, and one honest price — $19/month for 1 million characters. No credits to ration, no per-render billing, and no files held hostage: every render is a standard audio file you download and keep. If the closure caught your projects mid-flight, start free — 5,000 characters per generation, no card required.
Updated September 5, 2026 · Shutdown facts and all pricing verified July 2026
- What happened to Play.ht
- Meta acquired PlayAI in July 2025 (reported by TechCrunch and Bloomberg); the platform was sunset on December 31, 2025. Both play.ht and play.ai no longer resolve (verified July 2026)
- Files and voice clones
- Per third-party migration guides, no export or recovery tooling was provided, and voice clones were not portable — users report re-cloning from their original samples elsewhere
- Closest replacement
- FreeTTS PRO — $19/month for 1,000,000 characters (~23 hours of audio), 2,250+ neural voices, 149 languages, commercial license, no credits or overage
- File portability
- Every FreeTTS render downloads as a standard file: MP3 on every plan, WAV and OGG/Opus on PRO and Creator, captions as plain SRT — no proprietary project format
- Free tier
- FreeTTS: 2,250+ voices, 5,000 chars/generation, 15,000 chars/month, no card required · ElevenLabs: 10K chars, non-commercial · Murf: trial only
Play.ht Replacements Compared
Eight dimensions that matter when you're rebuilding a voice workflow after a shutdown — starting with the ones that keep you from getting stuck again.
| Tool | FreeTTS | ElevenLabs | Murf | Speechify | LOVO | Hume |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price floor w/ commercial rights | $19/mo (PRO) | $22/mo (Creator) | $29/mo (Basic) | $24/mo (Studio, $288/yr) | Paid plan required | Usage-based |
| Pricing model | Flat — 1M chars/mo | Credits (100K/mo cap) | Credit/time-based | Annual subscription | Credit-based | Pay-per-use |
| Regeneration cost | Only the line you redo | Each render spends credits | Draws from plan allowance | Plan-dependent | Draws from credits | Billed per use |
| Dialogue / multi-voice | Yes — dialogue scenes | Yes | Yes (multi-speaker) | Studio only | In Genny editor | Via API |
| Per-line retakes | Yes — regenerate one line | In Studio, spends credits | Block-level edits | Limited | Block-level | API-level only |
| Captions export | Plain SRT files | Plan-dependent | On paid plans | Studio only | In video editor | Not a focus |
| Free tier | 1,000 chars/gen, no card | 10K chars, non-commercial | Trial only | Reader app only | Limited trial | Free API credits |
| Web-based | Yes — nothing to install | Yes | Yes | Yes + mobile apps | Yes | API-first + playground |
6 Best Play.ht Alternatives Reviewed
Matched to what you actually used Play.ht for — narration, dialogue, cloning, or API calls. Pricing checked July 2026.
Best for: former Play.ht users who want flat pricing and files they keep
2,250+ neural voices across 149 languages, a browser studio with multi-voice dialogue and per-line retakes, and one flat price: PRO is $19/month for 1,000,000 characters (about 23 hours of audio) with a commercial license. There are no credits to ration and no overage — hit the cap and you simply drop to free-tier limits until the cycle resets. Every render downloads as a standard file the moment it finishes, so your library lives on your disk, not on our servers. Creator ($39/month) adds 5 million characters, batch processing, and background audio mixing.
- Flat $19/mo for 1M characters — no credit meter, no overage charges, no surprise bills
- Multi-voice dialogue with per-line retakes: redo one line without re-rendering the scene
- Every render is a standard download: MP3 on all plans, WAV and OGG/Opus on PRO and Creator
- Captions export as plain SRT files that open in any video editor
- Free REST API — free key, 10 requests/minute
Honest gap: no real-time streaming API — for live conversational agents, look at Hume or ElevenLabs. FreeTTS also does not offer voice cloning; see ElevenLabs for that.
Best for: voice cloning fidelity and expressive delivery
The quality leader for ultra-realistic voice cloning, with a huge voice marketplace and a streaming API for real-time applications. If your Play.ht clone was central to your work and you still have the source samples, ElevenLabs will get you the closest sound. Pricing is credit-based: Creator is $22/month for 100,000 characters with overage at $0.30/1,000 — the same metering model Play.ht users know, so budget for it.
- Best-in-class voice cloning — the pick if the clone is the product
- Large voice library and marketplace
- Streaming API for real-time and conversational use
Credit metering and monthly caps make high-volume narration expensive, and the free tier (10K characters) is non-commercial.
Best for: polished multi-speaker studio production
A studio-style editor with multi-track timelines, background music mixing, and scene management — the strongest production UI of the group. Murf also published its own Play.ht transition guide, so the onboarding path for former users is well documented. No ongoing free tier (trial only), and caps are time/credit-based rather than flat.
- Best studio editor of any TTS tool — multi-track, music, scenes
- Multi-speaker support for conversations and interviews
- Documented migration path for Play.ht users
$29/mo entry price with capped output — not ideal for high-volume simple narration or zero-budget rebuilds.
Best for: listening to documents, with a creator Studio on the side
Two different products under one brand. Speechify Premium ($139/year) is a reader app for listening to PDFs, articles, and books — polished and mobile-first, but the audio stays in the app. Speechify Studio ($288/year) is the creator product with voiceover, cloning, and commercial rights. If your Play.ht use was really "read this to me," Premium fits; if you export files for videos, Studio or a flat-rate tool fits better.
- Best mobile listening experience of the group
- Studio product includes voice cloning and commercial rights
- Polished apps across web, iOS, and Android
Premium doesn't export audio files, and Studio costs more per year than FreeTTS PRO ($288 vs $228) with a smaller voice library.
Best for: video-first teams who edit voiceover and subtitles together
LOVO's Genny editor pairs TTS with a video timeline and subtitle workflow, aimed at YouTube creators, e-learning producers, and ad agencies. Commercial rights require a paid plan (Pro and above), and plans are typically billed annually. We haven't independently pinned down every 2026 plan detail, so check current pricing at lovo.ai before moving a client workflow over.
- Voiceover and video editing in one timeline
- Subtitle workflow built into the editor
- Positioned for teams and agency work
Commercial use is gated to paid plans and annual billing is the norm — verify current terms before committing a production pipeline.
Best for: developers building expressive, conversational voice apps
Hume takes a different angle: an expressive speech model and empathic voice interface aimed at developers, with usage-based API pricing rather than a monthly editor subscription. It's a fit if your Play.ht use was API calls inside a product — less so if you want a web studio for narration. Check hume.ai for current per-use rates and free developer credits.
- Expressive, emotion-aware speech model
- API-first with streaming for real-time agents
- Free developer credits to prototype with
Not a narration studio — there's no timeline editor workflow like Play.ht had, and costs scale with usage rather than staying flat.
Your work leaves with you
The one guarantee that matters most after December 31, 2025.
Portability isn't a feature here — it's the default. Every render downloads as a standard file the moment it finishes: MP3 on every plan, uncompressed WAV and OGG/Opus on PRO and Creator. Captions export as plain SRT files that open in any video editor. Dialogue scenes and Timeline merges come out as one ordinary MP3 — there's no proprietary project format that only opens on our servers. Cancel any time from the dashboard, and every file you've downloaded is still yours. If you ever leave FreeTTS, you leave with everything.
If the Play.ht sunset taught creators anything, it's that the file on your disk is the only copy that's truly yours. FreeTTS is built around that assumption: the download is the product, not a preview of it.
Which Replacement Should You Pick?
Match what you used Play.ht for to the right successor.
Play.ht Alternative: Common Questions
Shutdown Facts & Pricing Sources
Acquisition & Shutdown
Meta's acquisition of PlayAI in July 2025 was reported by TechCrunch and Bloomberg. The platform was sunset on December 31, 2025. We verified in July 2026 that both play.ht and play.ai no longer resolve.
Migration Guides
Claims about the API going offline ahead of the sunset, missing export tooling, and non-portable voice clones are attributed to third-party migration guides and user reports: Murf's Play.ai transition guide and Inworld's migrate-from-PlayHT guide.
FreeTTS Pricing
PRO $19/month for 1,000,000 characters; Creator $39/month for 5 million characters. Verified July 2026 at freetts.org/pricing. No overage charges on any plan.
ElevenLabs & Murf Pricing
ElevenLabs Creator $22/month for 100K characters, verified at elevenlabs.io/pricing July 2026. Murf Basic $29/month, verified at murf.ai/pricing July 2026.
Speechify, LOVO & Hume
Speechify Premium $139/yr and Studio $288/yr checked at speechify.com. LOVO plans at lovo.ai/pricing and Hume usage rates at hume.ai/pricing, checked July 2026 — where a plan detail couldn't be pinned down, the table says so rather than guessing.
Start Rebuilding — Free, No Card
2,250+ neural voices, flat $19/mo for 1 million characters on PRO, and every render is a file you download and keep. Start free — 5,000 characters per generation.