If you used Play.ht (PlayHT) for AI voiceover, you have probably noticed the standalone product is no longer a dependable home. Creators who built a text-to-speech workflow around it now need a replacement they can sign up for and start using today, without a sales call. AltSpeak is that swap: a hosted AI text-to-speech studio with 200+ voices across 100+ languages, credit-based pricing with no per-seat fees, and up to 50,000 characters per generation. Paste your scripts and keep producing voiceover the same day.
According to TechCrunch (July 2025), Meta acquired the PlayAI and Play.ht team, and the standalone play.ht service went offline soon after. Existing customers had to move their text-to-speech work elsewhere. The lesson for creators: pick a tool with a clear owner and self-serve pricing you can read off the page. AltSpeak is built and run by Torpenhow Technologies, an independent software company, and you can sign up directly without a sales process.
Play.ht was built around a large voice catalog and an API for developers. AltSpeak keeps the parts creators actually used and drops the setup. The voices come from two engines, Inworld TTS-2 (signature voices Lauren, Graham, Hades, Ashley, and Carter) and Google Chirp3-HD, so the narration holds up for audiobooks, e-learning, YouTube, ads, and IVR. Everything runs in the browser, so there is no install, no GPU, and no API key to get started.
Competitor prices verified June 2026. ElevenLabs Creator is $22/month at its regular rate.
AltSpeak fits creators and small teams who want predictable monthly pricing measured in credits (roughly one credit per character) rather than per-seat or per-character API billing. If you produce long-form content, the 50,000-character per-generation limit means you can voice a whole audiobook chapter or a long YouTube script in one pass instead of stitching clips together. Paid plans include commercial rights, so you can publish and monetise the audio. If you only ever used Play.ht for programmatic API generation, a raw cloud API may still be cheaper per character; but for a studio interface with ready-made voices, AltSpeak is the closer like-for-like swap.
There is nothing to import. Open AltSpeak in the browser, paste your script, choose a voice, and generate. Because AltSpeak is credit-based with a free starting balance, you can test the voice quality on your real content before paying anything. Most creators settle on the Creator plan at $11/month, which is about half the price of comparable creator tooling such as ElevenLabs at $22/month.
Per TechCrunch (July 2025), Meta acquired the PlayAI/Play.ht team and the standalone play.ht service went offline, so existing users had to migrate their text-to-speech workflow to another provider. AltSpeak is a self-serve alternative that does not require a sales call: 200+ voices, credit-based pricing, and a free tier of 10,000 one-time credits.
For most creators, AltSpeak. It offers 200+ voices, credit-based pricing with no per-seat fees, up to 50,000 characters per generation, and a free tier of 10,000 one-time credits. Creator is $11/month for 100,000 credits with commercial rights included.
Related: TTS cost calculator, AltSpeak vs ElevenLabs, AltSpeak vs Murf.