At a glance
| Tool | Price to start (paid) | Free plan | Best for | Main limit | Rating |
|---|
| ElevenLabs | Starter $6/mo ($5 billed annually) | Yes: 10,000 credits a month, non-commercial | Narration, dubbing, voice cloning | Credit-metered; costs climb with volume | 9.0 / 10 |
|---|
| Suno | Pro $10/mo ($8 billed annually) | Yes: 50 credits a day, no downloads, no commercial rights | Background music, idea sketches | Open training-data lawsuits; no copyright guarantee | 8.1 / 10 |
|---|
| Synthesia | Starter $19/mo ($14 billed annually) | Yes: watermark, share link only | Training video, localization | Avatars can read as avatars to some viewers | 7.5 / 10 |
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| Recraft | Basic $12/mo ($10 billed annually) | Yes: public images that Recraft owns | On-brand AI illustrations | Credit model is confusing; photoreal output is not its strength | 8.0 / 10 |
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Ratings are our published review scores. Recraft prices exclude VAT.
Start with the job you repeat every week, not the most impressive demo.
- You narrate, but don't want to record every take. ElevenLabs. Starter adds a commercial licence and Instant Voice Cloning, which ElevenLabs says needs 1 to 2 minutes of audio. Professional Voice Cloning starts on Creator.
- You need music you won't hear on every other channel. Suno. Pro gives you 20 song downloads a month and commercial rights. Premier adds Suno Studio and a third stem type, which helps if you mix music under a voiceover.
- You teach, and the lesson matters more than your face. Synthesia. Every plan includes 10 minutes of video a month, and paid plans add credits on top. Personal avatars of you start on Starter (3) and Pro (5).
- Your visuals don't look like one brand. Recraft. Its pitch is saving a style and reusing it, with real vector export for icons, stickers and merch art.
If you need an on-screen presenter, also compare HeyGen. If you mostly edit recordings of your real voice, Descript fits better than a voice generator.
Can you use the free plans for monetized content?
No, not for any of the four. ElevenLabs' free plan is non-commercial under its terms. Suno's free plan has no song downloads and no commercial rights. Synthesia's free Basic plan adds a watermark and allows sharing by link only, with no MP4 download. Recraft's free images are public, owned by Recraft and not licensed for commercial use.
Treat every free plan here as an audition. If the output will sit in a monetized video, a sponsored post or a product you sell, budget for the first paid tier.
What it costs
Example 1: a faceless channel, one 10-minute video a week (ElevenLabs). Assumptions: about 1,000 credits per minute of speech (ElevenLabs' own estimate), 10% extra for retakes, no dubbing. Four videos is 40,000 credits, about 44,000 with retakes. Starter's 30,000 falls short, so it's Creator at $22 a month or $18.33 billed annually. Creator also adds Professional Voice Cloning.
Example 2: a weekly podcast with new beds and a quarterly intro (Suno). Assumptions: about five keeper downloads a month. That fits Pro's 20 downloads at $10 a month, or $8 billed annually ($96 a year). Premier ($30, or $24 billed annually) only makes sense if you need Studio, the extra stem type or more than 20 downloads.
Example 3: a course creator, four 10-minute lessons a month (Synthesia). Assumptions: about 100 credits per finished minute, per Synthesia's help center, and no dubbing. By the help center's math, Starter covers about 27 minutes (10 included minutes, plus 1,250 plan credits and the 500 free-allowance credits); Synthesia's pricing page estimates less, about 22. Forty minutes needs Pro: $89 a month, or $59 billed annually, which covers about 75 minutes (about 70 by the pricing page's estimate). Two lessons a month fits Starter.
Example 4: one creator on Recraft Basic for a year. $144 billed monthly versus $120 billed annually, before VAT.
The whole stack. If you used all four on their entry paid plans, monthly billing comes to $47 a month ($6 + $10 + $19 + $12). Annual billing brings that to $37 a month ($5 + $8 + $14 + $10). Most creators should pay for one or two, not four.
What to check before you subscribe
- Rights on paid plans. Suno assigns you its rights in songs made on Pro and Premier, but its terms make no promise that copyright will exist in a generated song, and remixes can't be used commercially. Recraft says images made while subscribed stay private and remain yours after you cancel.
- Training on your content. ElevenLabs' terms let it use your content to improve its services by default, with an opt-out under Data use in settings that isn't retroactive. Recraft's terms allow training on your inputs and outputs by default, with an opt-out. Set both before you upload anything sensitive.
- Credits that expire. ElevenLabs rolls unused paid credits over for up to two months. Suno and Recraft subscription credits don't roll over, though Recraft's top-up credits never expire.
- Legal overhang. Universal and Sony's training-data lawsuits against Suno are still open. If a client's legal team will ask how a track was made, check before you use it.
When to pick something else
- You want stronger default image aesthetics and don't need vectors: Midjourney.
- You design from templates, not prompts: Canva or Adobe Express.
- You need AI video generation rather than a talking presenter: Runway.
- You want a writing and research assistant: Claude.
- You need clips cut from long videos: Opus Clip or CapCut.
Browse every review in AI tools for creators.
