I Cloned My Voice With a Free Tool and With ElevenLabs. Then I Tried Hindi.
Two AI copies of my voice, one paid and one free from GitHub. In English you can barely tell them apart. In Hindi, one of them changed what I said.
Both of the voices in this video are mine. I did not record either of them.
One came from ElevenLabs, which is paid. The other came from VoiceStudio, a free open-source project on GitHub. I gave both the same job: copy my voice in English, then say the same thing in Hindi.
Round one: English cloning
The test line was simple:
Hello my dear friend, how are you? This voice is generated using AI. Let me know how this sounds.
Listen to both in the video. They are close. Not "close for a free tool". Just close. If you played me either one on a phone speaker with no warning, I would assume I had recorded it and forgotten.
Result: a draw. For cloning a voice in English, the free tool does the job.
Round two: Hindi dubbing
This is the real test, because cloning a voice and translating what it says are two different skills. A voice clone only has to sound like you. A dub has to understand you first.
ElevenLabs produced Hindi that kept the meaning of the line.
VoiceStudio translated word by word, and somewhere in that process it flipped my sentence. "Let me know how it sounds" came out as "I know how it sounds".
That is a small change in words and a complete change in meaning. I asked a question. The dub made a statement. In a longer video, that kind of error does not show up as a glitch you can hear. It shows up as you confidently saying something you never said, in a language your audience speaks better than the tool does.
Result: ElevenLabs, clearly.
The score
| ElevenLabs (paid) | VoiceStudio (free) | |
|---|---|---|
| English voice clone | Sounds like me | Sounds like me |
| Hindi dub: sounds natural | Yes | Stiff, word by word |
| Hindi dub: keeps the meaning | Yes | No, it reversed a line |
| Cost | Subscription | Free |
So what should you use?
My answer from the video still stands: clone with the free one, dub with ElevenLabs.
- If you only need your own voice reading an English script, a free tool is enough. Spend nothing.
- If you are going into Hindi, or any language where a word-by-word translation falls apart, pay for the dub. The translation is the hard part, and it is the part you are paying for.
- Either way, have someone who speaks the language listen before you publish. I caught the flipped line because I speak Hindi. If I had been dubbing into Tamil, it would have gone out like that.
If you want to try the paid side cheaply, I wrote up what ElevenLabs' $1 Starter month gets you.
A word on doing this responsibly
I cloned my own voice. That is the only kind of voice cloning I am comfortable recommending. Cloning someone else without their permission is not a clever content trick. It is a way to hurt people, and in many places it is against the law.
And when the voice in your video is AI, say so. I do: the narrator in this video is AI too, and it says so at the end. Viewers forgive an AI voice. They do not forgive finding out later.
Not sponsored by either tool.
