Async vs ElevenLabs (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, we pick ElevenLabs: it is first in our ranking of AI voice generators, and it grades higher too, 3.0 against 2.2.
Checked Oct 18, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 · graded Oct 18, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA
ElevenLabs grades higher on features and ease of use. They get the same grade on value for money, the free plan and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Async
Chat-based video editor with AI voices, dubbing and music
ElevenLabs
AI voice platform for speech, voice cloning, dubbing and voice agents
Which one is for you
Pick Async if
- Fits if you make videos or podcasts and want to edit by typing what you want
- Works for creators who also want AI voiceover in the same tool
Look elsewhere if
- Tight if you stay free: allowances are lifetime, not monthly, at 1 hour and 10 credits
- Pricey if you want dubbing and lip sync, which start on Teams at $49.99 a creator
- Watch out: AI use burns credits fast, and premium models can use dozens per video
- Watch out: English-only subtitles on Essentials and Pro, and no desktop app
- Watch out: the trial's length isn't stated
Pick ElevenLabs if
- Fits if you voice videos, podcasts or audiobooks and will pay for a commercial license
- Works for apps that need an API and voice agents on the same account
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you're staying free, since the free plan carries no commercial license or cloning
- Tight if you dub a lot, as dubbing costs 2,000 to 10,000 credits a minute from the same pool as speech
- Not for you if you need a professional clone of a voice that isn't yours
- Pricey if you need more than 30 minutes a month: Creator is $22 monthly for about 121 minutes, Pro $99 for about 600
- Watch out: downgrading or cancelling forfeits rolled-over credits, and there's no desktop app
How we grade them
| 2.2GPAAsyncFair | 3.0GPAElevenLabsVery good | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CEssentials is $11.99 a month billed yearly, above the voices middle of $10. Credits meter all AI use, and 450 credits is about 61 videos from one premium model. | CAn hour of voiceover a month means Creator: $18.33 a month billed yearly ($22 monthly) for 121,000 credits, about 121 minutes of speech. Starter at $5 covers only about 30 minutes. That's the middle of what this category charges, and dubbing and music eat the same credits. |
| Free plan and trial | CThe Free plan is 1 hour of media for AI chat and 10 AI credits, both lifetime. Paid plans have a free trial of unstated length. | C10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes of speech, and 3 Studio projects. There's no commercial license and no cloning, so nothing you make on it can go in a video you publish. Enough to hear the voices, not to do the job. |
| Features | CChat editing, text to speech, voice cloning, generation, recording and clips. Dubbing and lip sync start at Teams, and subtitles are English only on Essentials and Pro. | AText to speech in 70+ languages, instant and professional cloning, voices designed from a prompt, dubbing, a long-form Studio, transcription, music, sound effects and voice agents. That covers more than any other tool here, and the listing shows no gap. |
| Ease of use | CNo store rating on record. You learn the credits and which model to spend them on. | A4.84 from 22,674 App Store ratings, the highest in this category. Paste text, pick a voice, press play. Working out what each product costs in credits is the fiddly part. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb and iPhone, with Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. | BWeb, iPhone and Android, with an API and SDKs, and Zapier, Make, n8n, Salesforce and Zendesk connections. No desktop app, which an A needs. |
| Best for | editing video by chatting with an AI | AI voiceovers, dubbing and voice cloning |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Async and ElevenLabs. How we grade
Price against what you get
Async starts at $11.99 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. ElevenLabs starts at $5 a month and scores 3.7.
ElevenLabs scores higher and starts $6.99 a month lower. Of the other AI voice generators on the chart, 6 score higher than Async for less, and none scores higher than ElevenLabs for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Async also covers video editing and image generation.
At a glance
| Async | ElevenLabs | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $11.99 per month, billed annually | $5 per month, billed annually ($6 billed monthly) |
| Free plan | 1 hour of media for the AI chat and 10 AI credits, both one-time. | 10,000 credits a month (about 10 minutes of text to speech) and 3 Studio projects. No commercial license and no voice cloning. |
| Free trial | A free trial is offered on the paid plans; the page does not state its length. | None listed |
| Web | ||
| iOS | ||
| Android | ||
| Made by | Async | Eleven Labs Inc. |
| Price read from | async.com | elevenlabs.io |
| Checked | Nov 12, 2026 | Oct 18, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Async
- Everything AI is metered in credits, and a single video from a premium model can use dozens; Essentials' 450 credits is about 61 Kling 3.0 videos or 900 Nano Banana 2 images.
- The Free plan's credits and media hours are lifetime allowances, not monthly ones.
- Dubbing and lip sync start on the Teams plan, and subtitles are English only on Essentials and Pro.
- The prices read are for yearly billing; the monthly-billing prices were not shown in the page text.
ElevenLabs
- The Free plan has no commercial license or voice cloning; both start on Starter, and Professional Voice Cloning starts on Creator.
- One credit pool covers every product: text to speech costs about 1 credit per character, and dubbing 2,000 to 10,000 credits per minute.
- Professional Voice Clones are limited to your own voice and need a voice check; for instant clones you must confirm you have the right and consent.
- Unused credits roll over for up to two months on paid plans, but downgrading or cancelling forfeits them at the end of the cycle.
Key features
Async
- Chat-based video editing
- You tell the editor what to cut, pace or polish and it makes the edit, including removing filler and pauses, syncing cuts to music, and adding captions.
- Text to speech and voice cloning
- Voices can be generated in chat or through the standalone text-to-speech and voice cloning tools. Paid plans include monthly text-to-speech hours.
- Dubbing and lip sync
- AI dubbing and lip sync, with multilingual voices, are listed from the Teams plan.
- Video, image, music and sound effects generation
- Credits are spent on third-party models such as Kling, Veo, Seedance, Nano Banana and GPT Image; the pricing page lists credit costs per video or image.
- Recording, audio cleanup and hosting
- The former Podcastle studio records remote guests, removes noise with Magic Dust, edits audio by transcript and publishes to Spotify, Apple and YouTube.
- Clips and subtitles
- Finds strong moments to turn into short clips for social platforms and adds subtitles, English only on lower plans.
ElevenLabs
- Text to speech
- Generate speech from text in more than 70 languages with Eleven v3 and other models, using stock voices, the shared voice library or voices you design from a prompt.
- Instant and Professional Voice Cloning
- Instant clones are made from a short sample and start on Starter. Professional clones are trained on longer recordings, start on Creator and must be of your own voice.
- Dubbing
- Translate a video's speech into another language automatically, or edit the result line by line in Dubbing Studio, which starts on the Starter plan.
- Studio editor
- A long-form editor for audiobooks, podcasts and voiceovers. The Free plan allows 3 Studio projects and Starter allows 20.
- Speech to text, music and sound effects
- Transcribe audio, generate music and sound effects, isolate voices from noise and change one voice into another, all paid from the same credit pool.
- ElevenAgents and API
- Build voice and chat agents for phone, chat and WhatsApp, or call the speech, transcription and dubbing models from your own app through the API and SDKs.
Plans
Async
Free$0
1 hour of media uploaded to AI chat (lifetime) and 10 AI credits (lifetime).
Essentials$11.99
per month, billed annually
450 credits a month, 4 hours of recording, 2 hours of text to speech, 20 GB of storage and English-only AI subtitles.
Pro$23.99
per month, billed annually
1,200 credits a month, 20 hours of recording, 10 hours of text to speech, 120 GB of storage and AI video enhancement.
Teams$49.99
per creator / month, billed annually
3,000 credits a month, 40 hours of text to speech, 1 TB of storage, dubbing and lip sync, brand kit and basic user management.
BusinessCustom
Custom credits, hours and storage, advanced user management, priority support and security and compliance. Sold through sales.
ElevenLabs
Free$0
10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes of text to speech, and 3 Studio projects. Not licensed for commercial use.
Starter$5
per month for 30,000 credits, billed annually ($6 billed monthly)
About 30 minutes of speech a month, a commercial license, Instant Voice Cloning, Dubbing Studio and 20 Studio projects.
Creator$18.33
per month for 121,000 credits, billed annually ($22 monthly)
About 121 minutes of speech a month, 1 Professional Voice Clone and the option to buy more credits. The first month is $11 on monthly billing.
Pro$82.50
per month for 600,000 credits, billed annually ($99 monthly)
About 600 minutes of speech a month, 192 kbps audio and 44.1 kHz PCM output through the API.
Scale$249.17
per month for 1.8M credits, billed annually ($299 monthly)
About 1,800 minutes of speech a month, 3 workspace seats, team collaboration and 3 Professional Voice Clones.
Business$825
per month for 6M credits, billed annually ($990 monthly)
About 6,000 minutes of speech a month, 10 seats and 10 Professional Voice Clones. Enterprise above it is custom-priced, with SSO and BAAs.
Ways to pay less
Async
- Annual discount
Save 40% with yearly plans
The pricing page shows a Yearly toggle labelled 40% off, and shows savings of $96 on Essentials, $192 on Pro and $420 on Teams per year.
ElevenLabs
- Annual discount
Two months free with annual billing
ElevenLabs prices a year at ten times the monthly price: Starter works out to $5 a month instead of $6, and Creator to $18.33 instead of $22.
- Other savings
First month of Creator for $11
The pricing page shows Creator at 50% off for the first month on monthly billing.
- Startups
Startup Grants: 12 months free
Startups building conversational AI agents can apply for a grant of 33 million characters, valid for 12 months.
- Nonprofit
Impact Program for nonprofits
The Impact Program gives free access to nonprofits in healthcare, education and culture, and to people with accessibility needs or permanent voice loss.
- Education
Impact Program for professors and students
Professors and their students can apply to the Impact Program for free access to ElevenLabs.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Async or ElevenLabs?
As of Nov 12, 2026, ElevenLabs is cheaper to start with: $5 a month, against $11.99 a month for Async. Async starts at $11.99 per month, billed annually, and ElevenLabs starts at $5 per month, billed annually ($6 billed monthly).
Which has a free plan, Async or ElevenLabs?
As of Nov 12, 2026, both Async and ElevenLabs have a free plan.
Which platforms do Async and ElevenLabs run on?
As of Nov 12, 2026, only ElevenLabs lists an Android app. Both list a web app and an iOS app. A platform missing from a listing is one its maker's pages did not mention.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.