Voice layer · secondary to AI receptionists
Best AI Voice Generators for IVR & On-Hold Messages
Cartesia Pro ($5/mo) is the cheapest plan with a published commercial license for IVR prompts and on-hold audio. IVR menus and on-hold loops need clean audio in a format your phone system accepts, without paying for hours you will never use. Below are the prices, free credit and phone formats each vendor publishes, read 2026-10-28.
How do these voices compare on price and phone features?
Tools whose published plan includes a commercial license come first, by lowest published price; then the rest, by price. Affiliate status never changes the order. Not published means the vendor does not publish it, or we have not yet read it with a date.
Ordered by: commercial license published first, then lowest published price.
| # | Tool | Monthly price from (USD/mo) | Free tier | Commercial use | API | μ-law output | SOC 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cartesia | $5 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| 2 | ElevenLabs | $6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not published |
| 3 | WellSaid | $19 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not published | Not published |
| 4 | Deepgram | Not published | Yes | Not published | Yes | Not published | Yes |
| 5 | Murf | Not published | Yes | Not published | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Prices, sources and check dates for every value are in the full table.
See all fields (16 columns with sources and dates)
Ordered by: commercial license published first, then lowest published price.
| # | Tool | Monthly price from (USD/mo) | Annual billing (USD/mo equivalent) | Free tier | Included audio (minutes/mo) | Overage (USD per minute) | Price per 1,000 characters (USD) | Price per minute of audio (USD) | Commercial use | Voice cloning | API | μ-law output | 8 kHz output | Languages (count) | Voices (count) | SOC 2 | HIPAA BAA | Price source and date checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cartesia | $5 | Not published | Yes | — | Not published | Not published | Not published | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not published | Not published | — | — | Yes | Enterprise only | cartesia.ai/pricing, checked |
| 2 | ElevenLabs | $6 | $5 | Yes | — | Not published | Not published | Not published | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not published | 74 | — | Not published | Enterprise only | elevenlabs.io/pricing, checked |
| 3 | WellSaid | $19 | $10 | Yes | 20 | Not published | Not published | Not published | Yes | Not published | Yes | Not published | Not published | — | — | Not published | Not published | wellsaid.io/ai-voice-pricing, checked |
| 4 | Deepgram | Not published | Not published | Yes | — | Not published | $0.015 | Not published | Not published | Not published | Yes | Not published | Not published | — | — | Yes | Enterprise only | deepgram.com/pricing, checked |
| 5 | Murf | Not published | Not published | Yes | — | Not published | $0.01 | Not published | Not published | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not published | — | — | Yes | Not published | murf.ai/pricing, checked |
Telephony formats: 8 kHz is narrowband phone audio; μ-law (G.711) is the encoding most US phone lines use. A voice needs one of these to play on a phone line without resampling.
Audio samples coming
Top pick per use case
Prices come from each vendor pricing page, checked 2026-10-28. No partners in voice yet, so vendor names are plain text.
Chosen only on free tier, commercial rights, price, published phone formats and compliance claims.
| Use case | Top pick | Why (published facts) |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest subscription with commercial rights | Cartesia | Pro $5/mo |
| IVR prompts (format) | ElevenLabs | Docs list μ-law, A-law and PCM output |
| Cheapest per character (of the tools compared) | Murf | Falcon $0.01 per 1k characters |
| Long on-hold scripts, studio tools | WellSaid | Pro 180 download min/mo at $49, commercial rights, up to 48 kHz (Starter: 24 kHz) |
IVR format checklist
Most systems expect 8 kHz μ-law or 8-bit WAV. We confirmed μ-law output in the docs for ElevenLabs and Murf (ULAW). 8 kHz output is not confirmed for any vendor yet, and for the other vendors μ-law is not verified yet.
ElevenLabs
- API output formats include μ-law, A-law and PCM
Murf
- API: $10 free credit
- Falcon $0.01 / Gen2 $0.03 per 1k characters
- States HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001
Deepgram
- $200 free credit
- Aura-1 $0.015 per 1k characters
- SOC 2 Type 2; HIPAA BAA on Enterprise
WellSaid
- Pro $49/mo or $33/mo billed annually
- Up to 48 kHz
Cartesia
- Pro $5/mo, commercial use
What do people ask most?
These are the questions we get most, answered from published vendor data.
Is there a free IVR voice generator?
ElevenLabs, Cartesia and Fish Audio have free tiers, and Murf and Deepgram give free API credit. The free tiers of ElevenLabs, Cartesia and Fish Audio are non-commercial, so use a paid plan for audio on a business line.