In this post, we look in-depth at Smallest.ai and ElevenLabs, two leading platforms in the text-to-speech space. We carefully examine and compare their capabilities, including the quality of their text-to-speech output, the range of features they offer, pricing structures, and much more. By the end of this comparison, you’ll better understand which platform aligns better with your specific requirements, whether you prioritize superior audio quality, cost-effectiveness, or unique features tailored to your use case.

Smallest.ai vs Elevenlabs, a quick overview

Comparing Text to Speech Samples

Both ElevenLabs and Smallest.ai offer AI-powered Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Voice Cloning technologies, providing solutions for creating natural and high-quality voice outputs.

The following text features a diverse phoneme distribution and symbols, evaluating the ability to handle complex structures with multiple clauses.

To ensure a 75% profit, the company set the product price at $19.99 while balancing cost efficiency.

let's see how both of the TTS perform.

Smallest.ai

ElevenLabs

Supported languages

Smallest.ai currently supports 50+ languages, whereas ElevenLabs supports 32+ languages.

Size of voice library

Smallest support 100+ voices with rich languages and dialects. ElevenLabs allows people across different ages, regions, languages, and accents have share their voice and contains over 3000+ distinct voices.

Latency

Smallest is powered by the Lightning Model, which is the fastest text-to-speech model in the world, delivering sub-100ms latency for 10 seconds of audio. In comparison, ElevenLabs takes over 300ms for the same duration of audio.

Comparing Voice Cloning

Both platforms provide Instant Voice Cloning. However, smallest.ai supports 1 free voice clone on their free tier whereas ElevenLabs requires a subscription. The voice clone samples along with the reference audio are provided below.

Here is the audio that was used as the reference:

Let's listen to the Voice clone generated.

Smallest.ai

ElevenLabs

Smallest successfully cloned the voice by just using 5 seconds of audio, while ElevenLabs needs around 30 seconds. Smallest was able to generate the voice clone with virtually no latency, whereas Elevenlabs takes more than 10 seconds to produce the clone.

Smallest produces a more refined voice that closely replicates the speaker's tone, rhythm, and flow. On the other hand, ElevenLabs generates a natural-sounding voice but often includes background noise from the reference audio and doesn't perfectly match the speaker's tone.

API Support

Both platforms provide production-grade API for businesses to integrate TTS and Voice Cloning services into their product.

Here is an example of both API's in Python.

smallest.ai and Elevenlabs both provide an SDK in python.

pip install smallestai

from smallest import Smallest

client = Smallest(api_key="SMALLEST_API_KEY")
client.synthesize(
  text="I am feeling so tired, मुझे थोड़ी देर आराम करना चाहिए।", 
  voice="mithali", 
  save_as="smallestai.wav"
)

Make sure to Install the Elevenlabs SDK first. Find the official repo here.

pip install elevenlabs

from elevenlabs import play
from elevenlabs.client import ElevenLabs

client = ElevenLabs(
  api_key="ELEVENLABS_API_KEY", 
)

audio = client.generate(
  text="I am feeling so tired, मुझे थोड़ी देर आराम करना चाहिए।",
  voice="Brian",
  model="eleven_multilingual_v2"
)
play(audio)

Pricing

In the table below, you can find the pricing plans for both Smallest.ai and ElevenLabs. Please visit their respective websites for the most up-to-date information. Smallest offers 30 minutes of audio for free, but Elevenlabs charges 5 USD for the same.

Smallest.ai

ElevenLabs

Others

1. Censorship - Elevenlabs is known to ban accounts without a proper explanation. This could lead to users losing all of their information and work. Smallest maintains 100% transparency and does not ban accounts.

2. Professional Studio - Elevenlabs has a highly comprehensive professional studio with support for voice to voice conversion, projects, descriptive sound generation and much more. Smallest AI is comparatively more lean and does not support all workflows, however they plan to release the same very soon.

3. Data Compliance - Both Smallest AI and Elevenlabs maintain the highest standards of data compliance across the industry, ensuring 100% data privacy.

4. Community - Smallest AI has a very active discord community where the core team members respond and interact with all their users. Eleven labs is comparatively less effective in community reachout.

Conclusion

Smallest.ai delivers ultra-fast, high-quality Text-to-Speech (TTS) and voice cloning at a much lower cost than ElevenLabs. Its optimized models ensure low latency, superior voice quality, and efficient performance even on limited hardware. With excellent developer support and affordable pricing, Smallest.ai matches ElevenLabs in TTS quality while offering better pricing, faster speeds, and more accessibility.

In comparison, ElevenLabs provides high-quality voice solutions with a larger voice library. For users seeking a wide range of voice options and willing to pay a higher cost, ElevenLabs may be the better choice. However, for those looking for a natural-sounding TTS service at a lower cost, Smallest.ai is the ideal option.