Fish Audio vs ElevenLabs for Chinese Voiceover

Most Fish Audio vs ElevenLabs comparisons online argue about which sounds more human. That is hard to reproduce: the same Chinese line comes out differently with another voice, another model or another way of marking it up. This page compares only what the official sites and docs state, and gives you a short Chinese test script to run on both and judge by ear.

Pronunciation: pinyin vs IPA

Fish Audio's docs say you can replace a Chinese character or syllable with tone-numbered pinyin to fix its reading, and it has separate text-normalization rules for Simplified (zh-CN) and Traditional (zh-TW) Chinese that handle numbers and dates. ElevenLabs' pronunciation dictionaries accept IPA and CMU notation, and using them for languages other than English requires the v3, v4 or v4 Turbo model; the pages we read don't mention pinyin. Chinese drama scripts are full of polyphonic words like 行长, 重来 and 长大, so this is worth testing.

Emotion: different tag styles

Fish Audio's homepage lists tags such as [angry], [sad], [whispering], [sobbing], [sighing] and [pause]; its newer Drama 3 model also takes a plain-language description of the delivery, and the docs say directions can be in English or your own language, with a Chinese example meaning "as if holding back tears while forcing a smile". ElevenLabs uses Audio Tags such as [whispers], [hesitant], [excited] and [laughs], written into the script.

Voices: community library vs curated library

Most of Fish Audio's 2 million-plus voices are uploaded by users, and the Story Studio templates on its Chinese site come with Chinese voices; but the pricing page says paid users may use verified voices that they own commercially, so check the rights before using someone else's upload in a commercial drama. ElevenLabs' library has 20,000+ voices, and its language list includes Chinese and Mandarin Chinese.

Run these lines once on each

Offers change often: on the day we checked, Fish Audio's English pricing page showed 50% off the first month and ElevenLabs offered Starter at $1 for the first month. For yearly billing, Fish Audio says you save at least 25%, and ElevenLabs charges ten months for a year. Fish Audio also says credits reset monthly and unused credits do not roll over.

Fish Audio's API is billed separately, pay as you go: s2.1-pro costs $15 per million UTF-8 bytes, and s2.1-pro-free is free within fair-use limits. In UTF-8 a Chinese character usually takes 3 bytes, so with byte-based billing the same number of Chinese characters uses more than English text would. Our own prices are not quoted here; see the pricing page.

Fish Audio has a Simplified Chinese site (fish.audio/zh-CN) with Chinese interface text, templates and FAQ, and its footer names Hanabi AI Inc. Its terms' export-control section mentions only US-embargoed countries and restricted-party lists, not China; but whether it can be accessed or signed up for directly from mainland China is not disclosed, and real-world speed and stability depend on your network. ElevenLabs is similar: it has Simplified Chinese pages, its terms' restricted regions don't list China, and direct use from China is likewise not disclosed; see the ElevenLabs alternative.

Payment is the more practical barrier. Fish Audio's pricing page says it takes Visa, Mastercard, American Express and other credit and debit cards, plus "various regional payment methods" without naming them, so Alipay and WeChat Pay are not disclosed; ElevenLabs lists only credit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Creators without a foreign-currency card should check the checkout page before committing.

Both can clone. Fish Audio's cloning page says ten seconds of clean speech is enough, the cloned voice can speak 13 languages zero-shot, and paid plans include commercial rights; ElevenLabs' Instant Voice Cloning starts at Starter and Professional Voice Cloning at Creator. Quality depends heavily on the sample, so clone the same 30-second clean recording on both rather than trusting reviews.

Once you have settled Fish Audio vs ElevenLabs, a Chinese short drama raises one more question: both read the text you give them, so the "character: line" format, narration and inner voice have to be split by you, with a voice picked for each role (ElevenLabs Audiobooks and Studio can assign them; in Fish Audio's Story Studio you choose); for Thai or Vietnamese versions you also need a translation in each language first. AI Drama Voice turns that part into a ready workflow: paste a Chinese script, get a cast list, an emotion on every line, line-by-line rewriting into local speech for the languages you tick, the same cast voicing all nine languages, and MP3 plus SRT for each.

• What we don't do: voice cloning, a public API, letting users choose the model, or a pronunciation dictionary
• We cover nine languages only: Chinese, English, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean
• What we add: automatic casting of Chinese scripts, an emotion per line, built-in translation, one SRT per language, Alipay and WeChat Pay

Everything here was checked on 5 November 2026. Fish Audio prices, allowances, commercial terms and payment methods come from its Chinese and English pricing pages; languages, emotion tags, pronunciation control, multi-speaker dialogue and API prices from its official docs; cloning details from its voice cloning page; export controls from its terms (effective 18 August 2024). Its site gives three different language counts (8 and 30+ on the homepage, 83 in the docs), which we quote with their sources. ElevenLabs details come from its pricing, text-to-speech, Audiobooks and pronunciation dictionary pages and its terms. We have not reused either company's audio and do not quote the user testimonials on their sites. More at AI voiceover tools compared and Hailuo vs Jianying.