ElevenLabs is the industry-leading AI audio platform, offering over 5,000 lifelike AI voices - 50 times the selection available from Amazon Polly. With exceptionally low latency at 75ms and superior voice customization capabilities, ElevenLabs is perfectly suited for Conversational AI, Voice AI applications, and premium content creation.
ElevenLabs
Voice quality
Highly natural, human-like voices with rich emotional expressiveness, often indistinguishable from real speech.
Latency
Very fast TTS (~75ms for flash model & ~300ms for highest quality); great for real-time and conversational use.
Languages supported
70+ languages
Customization
Advanced controls for voice style (speed, stability, similarity, style). Ability to create entirely new voices.
Voice cloning
Yes – instant cloning with ~10s of audio, or high-fidelity clones with longer samples.
Voice library
5,000+ curated, high-quality voices
Pricing
Transparent per-character pricing
Pronunciation accuracy
Built-in prosody support & SSML with custom pronunciation
Custom Lexicon
Yes, custom dictionaries for brand names, etc.
Amazon Polly
Voice quality
Robotic or neutral tone; less emotional range.
Latency
Responsive but can vary (~100ms - 1s) + network time.
Languages supported
29 languages
Customization
Basic SSML adjustments
Voice cloning
Voice library
100
Pricing
Complex pricing (per-million, varying costs per voice)
Pronunciation accuracy
Partial or basic SSML support
Custom Lexicon
Features
ElevenLabs
Amazon Polly
Voice quality
Highly natural, human-like voices with rich emotional expressiveness, often indistinguishable from real speech.
Robotic or neutral tone; less emotional range.
Latency
Very fast TTS (~75ms for flash model & ~300ms for highest quality); great for real-time and conversational use.
Responsive but can vary (~100ms - 1s) + network time.
Languages supported
70+ languages
29 languages
Customization
Advanced controls for voice style (speed, stability, similarity, style). Ability to create entirely new voices.
Basic SSML adjustments
Voice cloning
Yes – instant cloning with ~10s of audio, or high-fidelity clones with longer samples.
Voice library
5,000+ curated, high-quality voices
100
Pricing
Transparent per-character pricing
Complex pricing (per-million, varying costs per voice)
Pronunciation accuracy
Built-in prosody support & SSML with custom pronunciation
Partial or basic SSML support
Custom Lexicon
Yes, custom dictionaries for brand names, etc.
Voice quality
ElevenLabs is superior as shown by independent benchmarks.
ElevenLabs leads in independent benchmarks, including HuggingFace TTS Arena Leaderboards. Across nearly 20,000 blind test votes, ElevenLabs achieved a listener preference of 75.3%, significantly outperforming other models.
Latency
ElevenLabs has the lowest latency and real-time support
Natural human conversations occur at around 200 milliseconds latency. For genuinely immersive, real-time conversational interactions, AI speech must fall below this threshold.
Latency comparison - Model time (excl. Network Latency)
ElevenLabs: 75ms
Amazon Polly: 200ms
ElevenLabs maintains a faster, more consistently low-latency experience essential for real-time applications.
Expressiveness
ElevenLabs is contextually aware and gives you full control
ElevenLabs uniquely provides contextual control, meaning fewer manual adjustments yield superior, naturally expressive results. While other platforms like Amazon Polly offer basic adjustments, ElevenLabs delivers consistently high-quality, contextually nuanced speech output, including speed adjustments.
Explore samples
In the ancient land of Eldoria, where skies shimmered and forests, whispered secrets to the wind, lived a dragon named Zephyros. [sarcastically] Not the “burn it all down” kind... [giggles] but he was gentle, wise, with eyes like old stars. [whispers] Even the birds fell silent when he passed.
294/1000
Voice selection
ElevenLabs has 1,000s of human-like voices
ElevenLabs offers an extensive voice library featuring over 5,000 AI-generated voices, plus advanced tools like Voice Design, enabling you to create entirely new voices tailored to your needs. Amazon Polly, in comparison, provides a limited set of 100 pre-made voices with no capacity for new voice creation.
American
Whispering
Mysterious
Gaming
Lively
Irish
Soothing
Audiobook
Nicole
Voice cloning & design
ElevenLabs support professional voice cloning
ElevenLabs boasts a suite of powerful voice cloning and design capabilities. With Instant Voice Cloning, you can replicate voices quickly from just 30-second audio samples. Professional Voice Cloning offers hyper-realistic, high-fidelity voice clones based on extensive audio inputs. Additionally, the Voice Design tool allows the creation of entirely new voices from a single text prompt.
Amazon Polly, conversely, does not offer voice cloning or design capabilities, limiting users to the voices already provided.
OriginalVoice clone
Lily
Original
Lily
Clone
Chris
Original
Chris
Clone
Laura
Original
Laura
Clone
Create a replica of your voice that sounds just like you.
Language support
ElevenLabs supports 70+ languages
ElevenLabs supports voice generation across 70+ languages, enabling global reach for multilingual applications. With precise accent control and natural fluency, ElevenLabs allows creators to tailor voices to specific regional audiences with remarkable authenticity. In contrast, Amazon Polly supports 29 languages and offers more limited accent and dialect options, making ElevenLabs the clear choice for diverse, high-quality international voice output.
ElevenLabs supports additional controls with Voice Changer
ElevenLabs offers a Voice Changer product, allowing you to dynamically control emotional tone, speech pace, and overall delivery. Perfect for scenarios requiring on-the-fly adjustments such as interactive storytelling, gaming, and real-time conversational AI, this feature significantly enhances user engagement and emotional resonance—capabilities not found with Amazon Polly.
Enable mic access, record yourself reading some prompts and generate the sample in different voices
As a scientist and educator, I've always believed that the best scientific and health information should be accessible to everyone—not just English speakers. That's why I'm excited to share that we're working with @elevenlabsio to begin exploring dubbing of Huberman Lab content,… pic.twitter.com/QHZv4Inyro
Text-to-speech (TTS) is a technology that converts written text into spoken words using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning. It enables computers, apps, and websites to generate human-like speech, making digital content more accessible and engaging for people who want to have their content read aloud.
TTS works by analyzing text input and converting it into phonetic representations, which are then processed by speech synthesis models. Early TTS systems sounded robotic because they relied on pre-recorded speech units. However, modern AI-driven text to speech generators, like ElevenLabs, use neural networks and deep learning models to create natural-sounding AI voices with intonation, emotion, and context awareness.
The key components of a TTS system include:
• Text processing: Breaking down input text into words, phonemes, and linguistic units.
• Prosody modeling: Determining speech rhythm, intonation, and pitch to ensure natural flow.
• Voice synthesis: Generating realistic AI voices by mimicking human speech patterns.
TTS technology is used in a wide range of applications, including:
• Accessibility tools for visually impaired users (screen readers, audiobooks).
• AI voiceovers for YouTube videos, podcasts, and commercials.
• E-learning and training modules to provide engaging narration.
• AI assistants & chatbots that offer human-like interactions.
ElevenLabs AI text to speech takes this to the next level by producing highly realistic voices in 70+ languages, supporting emotional speech synthesis for more natural conversations.
ElevenLabs voice AI combines proprietary methods for context awareness and high compression to deliver ultra-realistic, high-quality speech across a range of emotions. Our contextual text to speech model is built to understand the relationships between words and adjusts delivery accordingly. It also has no hardcoded features, meaning it can dynamically predict thousands of voice characteristics
ElevenLabs supports 70+ languages with high-quality accent rendering. Polly supports 29 languages with fewer accent variations.
ElevenLabs offers simpler, per-character pricing. Polly uses a per-million character model with varying costs per voice.
Yes, ElevenLabs provides commercial usage rights in all paid tiers.
Only with ElevenLabs. Use Voice Design to generate voices from text prompts.
Eagr.ai transformed sales coaching by integrating ElevenLabs' conversational AI, replacing outdated role-playing with lifelike simulations. This led to a significant 18% average increase in win-rates and a 30% performance boost for top users, proving the power of realistic AI in corporate training.
BurdaVerlag is partnering with ElevenLabs to integrate its advanced AI audio and voice agent technology into the AISSIST platform. This will provide powerful tools for text-to-speech, transcription, and more, streamlining workflows for media and publishing professionals.