Aievalu vs Play.ht: billing per word or per character, and why it matters
Prices checked on 12 October 2026, excluding promotions, subject to change. Play.ht is a trademark of its owner; Aievalu is not affiliated with it.
Play.ht is one of the longest-running voice generators on the market, with a wide catalogue, cloning and an API used by developers. Its particularity is billing per word, on an annual quota. Aievalu bills per character, with a pack valid for twelve months or a monthly subscription. Comparing the two means converting, and that is what this page does, with the minute of voice-over as the common unit (about 1,000 characters; method detailed in our price comparison). Prices are the public ones on the same date.
The table
| Criterion | Aievalu | Play.ht |
|---|---|---|
| Paid entry price | €9 pack (100,000 characters) or Starter €4.99/month | $39/month billed monthly; Personal $19/month billed annually |
| Billing unit | The character, spaces included | The word (240,000 words/yr on Personal, 600,000 on Professional) |
| Price per minute (about) | €0.09 with the pack; €0.062 to €0.083 on subscription | $0.13 on Professional annual, estimated at 6 characters per word |
| Credit validity | Pack: 12 months. Subscription: the month, no roll-over | Annual word quota |
| Languages | English (US, UK) and French | Dozens of languages, including French |
| French voices | Marie, 3 tones (Voxtral) | Several voices, standard or premium depending on plan |
| Voice cloning | No | Yes |
| Commercial use | Included with any paid credit | From Professional |
| API | No (web app only) | Yes |
| Free trial | 160 characters, 1 play a day, no account | Limited free tier, with an account |
Where Play.ht wins
The breadth of the catalogue, first: dozens of languages and many voices per language, where Aievalu offers four voices in two languages. Voice cloning, next, to produce with your own timbre. The API, finally, which lets you integrate synthesis into an app, a site or an automated flow, with proven documentation. The upper plans add team work and bulk production. If you need a rare language, your own voice, or to automate thousands of files, Play.ht does what Aievalu does not.
Where Aievalu wins
Price, once converted. Play.ht's Professional plan, $39 a month on an annual commitment, gives 600,000 words a year, about 50,000 words a month; at six characters per word on average, that is in the region of 300,000 characters, so about $0.13 per minute. The Aievalu pack works out to €0.09 per minute with no commitment, and the Pro subscription drops to €0.062. The billing method matters too: per character, a number, an acronym or a date costs what it weighs, with no conversion surprise, and the counter is visible before you generate (see the FAQ on counting). The trial needs no account, just two sentences, and commercial use is included from the first euro, where Play.ht reserves it for Professional (answer on usage rights).
Aievalu's voices are the presets of Voxtral, Mistral AI's model, and are judged by ear on the voices page, each reading the same text. They are few, three tones per voice, and limited to 1,500 characters per generation: a narration tool, not a library.
A worked example
A podcaster produces an intro, an outro and a five-minute narrated segment per weekly episode, about 7,000 characters a week, 30,000 a month. At Play.ht, the Personal plan billed annually ($19 a month, 240,000 words a year, standard voices) is enough but excludes commercial use; for a monetised podcast that means Professional, $468 a year. At Aievalu, the Starter subscription at €4.99 covers 60,000 characters a month, €60 a year, or a 300,000-character pack at €24.99 for ten months. The podcast voice-over guide details the workflow.
Who should pick which
Pick Play.ht if you need a wide catalogue, a language other than English or French, cloning or an API, and if your volume justifies an annual subscription. Pick Aievalu if you produce in English or French, want to pay per character for what you use, publish at an irregular pace, and prefer a price you can see before you click. The overview of the best AI voice tools places both among eight others, and the Aievalu vs ElevenLabs and Aievalu vs Murf AI head-to-heads cover the other common choices.
Try before you choose
The same 150-character script on both, listened to with headphones. Play.ht's free tier needs an account and stays limited; Aievalu's trial takes two sentences a day without an account. For a real test, the €9 pack commits you to nothing else. The full pricing and the free AI voice page round out this comparison.
Questions we get asked
Why six characters per word? It is an average for everyday English and French, space included; technical text rises to seven or eight, dialogue drops to five. The conversion is therefore an estimate, and it is flagged as such. Are unused Play.ht words lost? The quota is annual; at Aievalu the pack lasts twelve months and the subscription resets every month. What about quality? Play.ht's premium voices and the Voxtral presets are both recent neural models; only a headphone test, on your own text, decides. Can I export WAV? Yes at Aievalu, MP3 or WAV with every generation. To understand what happens under the hood, read our page on how an AI voice generator works.
Sources (consulted on 12 October 2026)
- Play.ht — play.ht/pricing
- Mistral AI, Voxtral TTS — mistral.ai/news/voxtral-tts and mistral.ai/pricing