Can you use free AI voice generators commercially?
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The Short Answer
- ElevenLabs — ElevenLabs' terms give every user their output — "you retain all rights in and to your Output" — while section 1(c) limits free users to non-commercial purposes.
- Murf — Murf's free plan card says it in two words each: "No Downloads" and "No Commercial Rights", so ten minutes of generation produces nothing you can keep or sell.
- Speechify — Speechify's section 4.4 states the Services "are not intended for your commercial use" apart from Voice Over Studio, whose output paying users may use commercially.
| Product | Best for | From | Free plan | Free-plan licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | You own the audio, you may not sell it | $5/mo (annual) | Yes | Non-commercial only |
| Murf | No download, no rights | $19/mo (annual) | Yes | Non-commercial only |
| Speechify | Free listening, non-commercial by clause | $29/mo | Yes | Non-commercial only |
What we checked, and what we did not test
A free text-to-speech tier is easy to evaluate on the wrong axis. Voice quality is what you notice first, and it is not what determines whether you can use the file. The licence is, and it is almost never on the pricing page — on two of these three products the answer lives in a numbered clause of the terms of service.
So we read the terms. On 6 August 2026 we opened ElevenLabs’ terms of use, Speechify’s terms, and Murf’s pricing page, and pulled the clause that says what free output may be used for. Each verdict below quotes it. We did not sign up or generate audio; a licence is one of the few things a document settles by itself.
All three answers came back the same, which is the finding. We had expected a spread — some free tiers commercial, some restricted, some requiring credit. Instead every free tier we could verify rules out commercial use in writing. The differences are in what the restriction costs you in practice: ElevenLabs still gives you the file and the ownership, Speechify carves out one product from the restriction, and Murf does not give you a file at all.
You own the audio, you may not sell it
1. ElevenLabs — You own the audio, you may not sell it
ElevenLabs separates ownership from permission more clearly than the others: the output is yours on every plan, and free use of it is restricted to non-commercial purposes.
Best for A free tier whose licence limit is written into the terms, not the pricing page
From $5/mo (annual). Free plan: Free — 10,000 credits a month.
- Starter — $6/mo, or $5/mo billed annually · 1 seat
- Creator — $18.33/mo billed annually · 1 seat (The page showed $11 as a first-month promotional rate against a $22 list price, so we are not printing either as the recurring monthly price)
- Pro — $99/mo, or $82.50/mo billed annually · 1 seat
- Scale — $299/mo, or $249.17/mo billed annually
- Business — $990/mo, or $825/mo billed annually
Section 1(c) of ElevenLabs' terms: "if you access or use our Services free of charge (such a user, a 'Free User'), you may only use the Services for non-commercial purposes". Section 4(c)(ii) still gives you the output — "as between you and ElevenLabs, you retain all rights in and to your Output" — so this is a use restriction, not an ownership one. Nothing in the terms we read imposed an attribution requirement, despite how often that claim is repeated elsewhere.
Pros
- You own the audio you generate on every plan, free included — the terms say so directly.
- The cheapest commercial-use plan is $5 a month billed annually, the lowest entry price on this page.
Skip it if
- Free accounts are limited to non-commercial use by section 1(c) of the terms, which the pricing page does not mention.
- The Creator tier's monthly price is presented as a promotional figure, so what you pay in month two is not stated plainly.
No download, no rights
2. Murf — No download, no rights
Murf answers the licence question by removing the file: on the free plan there is nothing to license because there is nothing to download.
Best for Knowing before you sign up that nothing leaves the free account
From $19/mo (annual). Free plan: Free — 10 projects, 10 minutes of voice generation, 1 editor, listed as "Everything in Business Plan (No Downloads)" and "No Commercial Rights".
- Creator — $19/mo, or $19/mo billed annually · 1 seat ($228 billed annually, which is the same $19 a month)
- Business — $66/mo, or $66/mo billed annually · 1 seat ($792 billed annually, which is the same $66 a month)
Murf's own Free plan card reads "Everything in Business Plan (No Downloads)" and "No Commercial Rights". This is not a licence you discover after generating — the free tier does not produce a file you can take away at all. Commercial Rights are marked as included from the $19 Creator plan up.
Pros
- The restriction is stated on the pricing card itself, in the two places a buyer actually looks.
- Commercial rights and unlimited downloads both start at the lowest paid tier, $19 a month.
Skip it if
- No downloads at all on the free plan — 10 minutes of generation you can listen to and not keep.
- Annual billing costs the same per month as monthly billing on both consumer tiers, so prepaying buys nothing.
Free listening, non-commercial by clause
3. Speechify — Free listening, non-commercial by clause
Speechify’s free tier is built for reading rather than producing, and its terms draw the commercial line around one product rather than one plan.
Best for Free listening, with commercial use ruled out in the terms
From $29/mo. Free plan: Free — listening at up to 1.5×, 10 robotic-sounding voices, text-to-speech features only.
- Premium — $29/mo · 1 seat (A SAVE 60% annual toggle is shown but the annual price itself is not displayed)
Section 4.4 of Speechify's terms: "The Services, with the exception of Speechify Voice Over Studio, are not intended for your commercial use", with commercial use permitted for Voice Over Studio output "subject to your compliance with these Terms". The terms do not address downloading generated audio at all, on any tier.
Pros
- The free tier is a genuine reading tool rather than a trial that expires.
- The commercial-use carve-out for Voice Over Studio is stated explicitly rather than implied.
Skip it if
- Everything outside Voice Over Studio is declared non-commercial by section 4.4 of the terms.
- Neither the terms nor the pricing page says whether free users can export an audio file.
- The annual price is hidden behind a discount badge that never resolves to a number.
What this means if you are choosing today
If the voice is going into anything a client pays for, an ad, a product video, or a paid course, none of these free tiers covers you, and pretending otherwise is the kind of mistake that surfaces after publication rather than before. The cheapest legitimate route among the three is ElevenLabs’ Starter plan at $5 a month billed annually, which its pricing page lists with a commercial licence attached.
If you are only auditioning voices, the ranking flips. ElevenLabs and Speechify both let you hear the result and keep working; Murf’s free tier will not hand you a file at all, which makes it useful for evaluating voices and useless for evaluating a workflow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you use ElevenLabs free-tier audio commercially?
No. Section 1(c) of the ElevenLabs terms says that a user accessing the service free of charge "may only use the Services for non-commercial purposes". Ownership is separate and more generous: section 4(c)(ii) says you retain all rights in your output on any plan. The cheapest plan that lifts the commercial restriction is Starter, at $5 a month billed annually.
Does ElevenLabs require attribution on the free plan?
Not according to the terms we read. The attribution requirement is repeated widely on review sites, but we could not find it in the terms of use on 6 August 2026 — what we found there was the non-commercial restriction in section 1(c). We are not repeating a claim we could not source to the vendor.
Can you download audio from Murf's free plan?
No. Murf's own pricing card describes the free plan as "Everything in Business Plan (No Downloads)" with "No Commercial Rights" listed underneath. You can generate ten minutes of speech and listen to it inside the product. Unlimited downloads and commercial rights both begin at the $19 Creator plan.
Is any free text-to-speech tier here usable for a client project?
None of these three, by their own terms. ElevenLabs restricts free use to non-commercial purposes, Speechify's section 4.4 says the services other than Voice Over Studio are not intended for commercial use, and Murf does not produce a downloadable file for free at all. For paid work, the entry prices are $5 a month for ElevenLabs annually and $19 for Murf.
Did you test these tools yourselves?
No. These verdicts come from reading each vendor's terms of service and pricing page on 6 August 2026, and each one quotes the clause it rests on. We did not create accounts or generate audio, so nothing here is a hands-on result. A licence question is answered by the licence, which is one of the few claims a document can settle on its own.
How We Keep This Updated
Prices move and vendors rewrite their plan tables, so every value on this page carries the date we read it. When a page changes, the change lands here rather than being edited away quietly. The procedure is on the methodology page; if something above is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will re-check it.
- 2026-08-06 — First published. Licence language read in the ElevenLabs terms of use (section 1(c)) and Speechify terms (section 4.4); Murf's restriction read on its own pricing card.