Honest comparison. See which TTS service fits your needs.
Last updated: July 2026. Verified July 2026.
Vendor status — Verified July 2026
Play.HT's API servers have been offline since December 31, 2025 (re-verified July 2026). The marketing site still loads, but API calls fail — production integrations built on Play.HT are currently dead, with no restoration timeline published.
| Feature | EasyVoice | PlayHT |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | 5K chars/day (~150K/mo) | API offline since Dec 31, 2025 |
| Pro Price | $9.99/mo | $29–$99/mo (historical) |
| Voices | 66 | 800+ (while operational) |
| Languages | 9 | 142 |
| API Access | ✓ | ✓ |
| Voice Cloning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open Source | ✓ | ✗ |
Play.HT built the largest voice library in the market — 800+ voices across 142 languages. But its API servers went offline on December 31, 2025 and have not come back (re-verified July 2026). If your integration is down, the least-code replacement is an OpenAI-compatible endpoint: EasyVoice takes a base-URL change plus a voice-ID remap, costs $9.99/mo flat unlimited, and has a free tier so you can test before routing production traffic.
| Provider | Price | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Play.HT | $29–$99/mo (historical) | API offline since Dec 31, 2025 — $/1M is moot while requests fail |
| EasyVoice Pro | $9.99/mo flat | Unlimited characters — the bill is $9.99 at any volume |
| DeepInfra (Kokoro-82M) | $0.62/1M | Cheapest metered API; raw endpoint only — no app, no long-form studio, no cloning |
| OpenAI tts-1 | $15/1M | No free tier — bills from the first character |
| ElevenLabs API | $50–$100/1M | Creator plan: $22/mo = 121K credits (≈$182/1M effective) |
| AnySpeech | $9.99/mo = 50K chars | Copies the price, meters the characters (≈$200/1M effective) |
1. Get a free API key
Sign up at easyvoice.ae (no card required) and create a key in the dashboard — under a minute end to end.
2. Swap the base URL
EasyVoice's endpoint is OpenAI-compatible: POST /api/v1/audio/speech with a Bearer key and an 'input' field. If your code already speaks the OpenAI TTS shape, it's a one-line change. If it speaks Play.HT's shape, the 5-line diff at /openai-tts-alternative/migration-guide covers Python and JavaScript.
3. Remap voice IDs
Play.HT voice names don't exist here. Browse /voices, listen to the free samples, and pick the closest match — am_michael for a measured male narrator, af_heart for a warm female voice — then hard-code the mapping.
4. Test on the free tier
5,000 characters/day free is enough to A/B your real production scripts before you switch traffic.
5. Upgrade when volume does
Pro is $9.99/mo unlimited characters — monthly billing, cancel in-app anytime.
The marketing site loads, but Play.HT's API servers have been offline since December 31, 2025 — we re-verified this in July 2026. API calls fail, and there is no published restoration timeline. If your product depends on the Play.HT API, it has been down for months.
Point your TTS calls at EasyVoice's OpenAI-compatible endpoint: POST https://easyvoice.ae/api/v1/audio/speech with a Bearer API key and an 'input' field for the text. If your code already uses the OpenAI TTS request shape, the migration is a base-URL change plus a voice-ID remap. If it uses Play.HT's SDK, the 5-line stdlib-HTTP diff at /openai-tts-alternative/migration-guide is the fastest path — most teams are generating audio again within an hour.
No. EasyVoice covers 9 languages (Arabic, American and British English, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese) with a focus on per-language quality. PlayHT advertised 142 — but breadth doesn't help while the API is offline. If you genuinely need long-tail languages, you'll need a different vendor either way; for the high-volume locales most apps actually ship to, EasyVoice covers you at $9.99/mo flat.