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ElevenLabs vs Gandr

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. ElevenLabs starts at $6, Gandr at $10. Both have a free tier. Both ship a public API.

ElevenLabsSynthetic voices, cloning and dubbing sold by the creditGandrText-to-speech and voice-cloning API billed by concurrent stream instead of by character or minute.

Side by side

FactElevenLabsGandr
CategoryText-to-SpeechText-to-Speech
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$6 month$10 month
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsWeb, API, iOS, AndroidWeb, API
CompanyElevenLabsGandr
Launched2022—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 2026

What our research says

ElevenLabs

The quality bar for synthetic speech and the easiest voice API to start on, but the credit meter is the actual product and it empties faster than the plan names imply.

Pros

  • Output quality and language coverage remain ahead of most rivals
  • One account spans speech, dubbing, recognition, effects and agents
  • The first paid tier is $6, so testing commercially costs almost nothing

Cons

  • Credits rather than minutes, so cost per finished second shifts with model and settings
  • Commercial licence and instant cloning are both withheld from the free tier
  • Professional voice cloning starts only at Creator ($22)
  • Team seats do not appear until the $299 Scale plan

Gandr

Gandr's stream-based pricing is the notable design choice here: instead of metering every character or minute, it charges for reserved concurrent capacity, which favors applications with heavy, unpredictable usage on a fixed number of simultaneous calls, like a phone-based voice agent. That same model works against low-volume or bursty use cases, where a per-character competitor could end up cheaper.

Pros

  • Voice cloning needs only about ten seconds of reference audio with no separate training step
  • 146ms first-audio-byte latency is fast enough for live conversational use
  • Stream-based pricing gives predictable cost regardless of how heavily a stream is used
  • Direct integration with common voice-agent frameworks such as LiveKit, Pipecat, and Vapi

Cons

  • Stream-based billing can cost more than usage-based competitors for light or unpredictable workloads
  • It is API-first infrastructure rather than a consumer app, so it requires development work to use

Which one fits

Choose ElevenLabs if you need

  • Product teams adding narration or voice agents without training a model
  • Creators dubbing video into other languages with the speaker's timbre kept
  • Audiobook and podcast producers who need a licensable cloned voice

Choose Gandr if you need

  • Voice-agent builders needing predictable per-stream cost regardless of usage volume
  • Applications requiring low end-to-end audio latency
  • Teams already using LiveKit, Pipecat, or Vapi for voice infrastructure

More comparisons

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