ElevenLabs vs Fish Audio
Fish Audio S2 now beats ElevenLabs in blind listening tests and costs roughly 6× less on the API. Here is which one to pick, by use case, with the benchmark data behind the verdict.
Last verified: April 24, 2026
All ratings based on our testing methodology
| Tool | Quality | Speed | Ease | Overall | Price | Languages | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | | | | 9.2 | $0/month | 29 | Review |
| Fish Audio OSS | | | | 8.8 | $0/month | 30 | Review |
Our Verdict
Fish Audio S2 wins on quality benchmarks and price (roughly 6× cheaper API). ElevenLabs still wins on voice library breadth, UI polish, and built-in dubbing/SFX. Pick Fish Audio for production TTS and voice cloning. Pick ElevenLabs if you need its studio-style tools.
At a Glance
| Feature | Fish Audio S2 | ElevenLabs |
|---|---|---|
| Blind-test ranking | #1 on TTS-Arena (Apr 2026) | ~#3 |
| Blind A/B vs each other | Won 60–40 vs ElevenLabs V3 | Lost 40–60 |
| Voice cloning input | 15 seconds | ~60 seconds |
| Languages | 30+ (cross-lingual cloning) | 32 |
| Inline emotion tags | 50+ tags, word-level control | SSML + presets |
| API price (per 1M chars) | ~$15 | ~$165 |
| Free tier voice cloning | Yes | Limited |
| Free tier monthly volume | 8,000 credits (~7 min) | 10K characters |
| Open source | Yes (Apache 2.0) | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes (consumer GPU) | No |
| Built-in video dubbing | No | Yes |
| Text-to-sound-effects | No | Yes |
| Voice library size | 2,000,000+ community | 10,000+ curated |
| Starting paid tier | $11/mo (Plus) | $5/mo (Starter) |
Bottom Line First
Fish Audio S2 is the better default in 2026. It wins on naturalness benchmarks, costs roughly 6× less on the API, and is the only #1-ranked TTS that is also open source. Pick ElevenLabs only if you specifically need its built-in dubbing studio, sound-effects generator, or its larger curated voice library.
Quality: What the Benchmarks Actually Show
Fish Audio published blind A/B testing in early 2026 showing S2 Pro beat ElevenLabs V3 at 60% vs 40% in listener preference. The older S1 model beat V3 even more decisively at 64% vs 36%. Independent benchmarks confirm the lead:
- TTS-Arena blind listening tests: Fish Audio S1 / S2 ranked #1, beating ElevenLabs on overall listener preference (October 2025 → April 2026)
- Audio Turing Test: S2 scored 0.515 — surpassing Seed-TTS (0.417) by 24% and MiniMax-Speech (0.387) by 33%
- Seed-TTS Eval: S2 achieved the lowest Word Error Rate among all evaluated models, open or closed source
- EmergentTTS-Eval: S2 won 81.88% of comparisons against gpt-4o-mini-tts, with a 91.61% win rate on paralinguistic content (laughter, sighs, breath sounds)
- MiniMax Multilingual Testset: S2 achieved the best WER in 11 of 24 languages and the best speaker similarity in 17 of 24
Where ElevenLabs still has a quality edge: long-form English narration with consistent prosody. For a 90-minute audiobook in English, ElevenLabs' tighter prosody control still wins side-by-side listening tests with most users. For everything else — character voices, multilingual, conversational, expressive — Fish Audio is ahead.
Pricing: The 6× Story
The pricing gap is the part most comparisons get wrong. The headline is the API:
| Tier | Fish Audio | ElevenLabs |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 8,000 credits/mo (~7 min), voice cloning included, non-commercial | 10K chars/mo, instant cloning, 3 voices |
| Entry paid | $11/mo (Plus) — 200 min, commercial, premium cloning | $5/mo (Starter) — 30K chars |
| Mid paid | $75/mo (Pro) — high-volume + batch | $22/mo (Creator) — 100K chars |
| Top paid | API pay-as-you-go on top | $99/mo (Pro) — 500K chars |
| API rate | ~$15 per 1M chars | ~$165 per 1M chars |
For solo creators, the practical gap is smaller: Fish Audio Plus at $11/mo covers a regular-volume creator completely. ElevenLabs Creator at $22/mo covers a similar creator. Fish Audio is half the price; both are affordable.
Voice Cloning Compared
Fish Audio clones from a 15-second reference. ElevenLabs typically wants 60+ seconds (or several minutes for Professional Voice Cloning). Both produce recognizable clones from short input.
Where Fish Audio uniquely wins: cross-lingual cloning. Upload 15 seconds of your English voice; generate Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, or any of 30+ languages with the same vocal identity. ElevenLabs supports multilingual generation but its cloning fidelity drops noticeably outside English-family languages.
For Premium clone quality, both tools want 1–3 minutes of clean reference audio. At that input length, Fish Audio's S2 captures more emotional consistency across regenerations; ElevenLabs captures slightly more prosodic detail in the source language.
Inline Emotion Tags vs SSML
Fish Audio S2 added word-level emotional control through inline tags. Drop `[laugh]`, `[whispers]`, `[chuckle]`, `[long pause]`, `[excited]`, or `[breathy]` directly into your text and the model honors them at that exact spot. The full set covers 50+ emotions and special effects.
ElevenLabs supports SSML and emotion presets but nothing matches the granularity of inline natural-language tags. For character work, audiobook narration with multiple emotions per paragraph, and conversational AI agents, Fish Audio's approach is the practical winner. ElevenLabs' Voice Design feature handles the simpler "consistent voice with consistent tone" case better.
Open Source vs Closed
Fish Audio open-sourced S2 on March 9, 2026 under Apache 2.0 — model weights, training code, and the SGLang-based inference engine. It runs on a consumer GPU. For teams with privacy requirements, data sovereignty needs, or volume high enough to justify the operational overhead, self-hosting eliminates the API line item entirely.
ElevenLabs is closed source and API-only. There is no self-hosting option, and there will not be one.
Where ElevenLabs Still Wins
- Built-in dubbing studio. ElevenLabs' AI Dubbing preserves the source speaker's voice across languages. Fish Audio doesn't ship this feature.
- Sound effects generator. ElevenLabs has a text-to-SFX model. Fish Audio doesn't.
- Voice Isolator. ElevenLabs ships a noise-removal model. Fish Audio's audio separation tool exists but is less polished.
- Curated voice library. ElevenLabs has ~10,000 hand-curated voices. Fish Audio has 2M+ community-uploaded voices, which is bigger but messier.
- UI polish. ElevenLabs' creator UI is more refined and easier for non-technical users to navigate.
Our Recommendation
Pick Fish Audio if you:
- Want the highest-ranked TTS quality available in 2026
- Build a product on the API and care about per-character cost
- Make multilingual content (clone English, generate Japanese / Spanish / Arabic)
- Need word-level emotional control for character voices or audiobooks
- Want to self-host for privacy or unlimited usage
- Specifically need built-in video dubbing or text-to-SFX
- Prefer a larger curated voice library over benchmark wins
- Already have a workflow built around ElevenLabs' studio features
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Fish Audio actually beat ElevenLabs?
Yes, on the public benchmarks. Fish Audio S2 ranks #1 on TTS-Arena blind listening tests as of April 2026, and Fish Audio's own published blind A/B testing showed S2 Pro beating ElevenLabs V3 60% to 40%. S2 also achieved the lowest Word Error Rate on Seed-TTS Eval among all evaluated models, open or closed source.
How much cheaper is Fish Audio than ElevenLabs?
On the API, roughly 6× cheaper. Fish Audio charges about $15 per 1 million UTF-8 bytes; ElevenLabs charges roughly $165 per 1 million characters at comparable quality. On subscriptions, Fish Audio Plus is $11/mo for commercial-use voice cloning and 200 minutes; the equivalent ElevenLabs Creator tier is $22/mo for 100K characters.
Is Fish Audio a good alternative to ElevenLabs?
It is the strongest one in 2026. Fish Audio matches or beats ElevenLabs on naturalness benchmarks, costs ~6× less on the API, and is the only #1-ranked TTS with an open-source model (Apache 2.0). The only categories where ElevenLabs still leads are voice library size, UI polish, and built-in dubbing/SFX features.
Can Fish Audio be self-hosted?
Yes. The S2 model was open-sourced March 9, 2026 under Apache 2.0, including model weights, fine-tuning code, and an SGLang-based inference engine. It runs on a consumer GPU. ElevenLabs has no self-hosting option — it is API-only.
Which has better voice cloning quality?
Fish Audio, at 15 seconds of reference audio, matches what ElevenLabs produces from longer samples. With 1–3 minutes of reference audio (Premium clone), Fish Audio leads in multilingual cloning fidelity — its cloned voice works across all 30+ supported languages from a single English sample. ElevenLabs still has a slight edge on long-form English narration.
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