11 Labs: How's everyone feeling about the subscription

I don't get what you want to express. The post sounds like without ElevenLabs, there's no free access to reading anymore and sighted users can read for free.

Of course, I don’t like the subscription model, and I think they should follow the example of Speech Central — offering the app for free to users who rely on VoiceOver. Sighted people don’t have to pay to read, for example, a downloaded PDF ebook, whereas for us, this kind of app might be the only way to access lifelike narration.

I don’t know how many paid users they have, but I believe it could be enough to cover the cost of offering free access to blind users, who are a minority.

To make the subscription more worthwhile, they should improve the app’s accessibility with VoiceOver. For instance:

• Turn the buttons at the bottom of the screen into tabs
• Fix duplicate items in the interface
• Make the voice filters more effective — it claims there are over 1,600 voices, but only a few are visible in the app
• Add all the features available on the website, such as the audiobook studio, including built-in MP3 and/or M4B export

Lifelike narration is not the access to reading in my opinion and should not be compared as "the only access" to reading like sighted users can read pdf ebooks for free and so on. And that's what the thread starter seems to express here, at least it feels such for me.
You can read using VoiceOver directly.
Additionally, blind users are able to read using Braille, so if you want to read like sighted people "for free", read Braille.
This may sound hard, but for me, what I've read in this thread so far sends the wrong signals. For me, to be blind is no argument to get free access to lifelike narration service as this is the same comfort as it is for sighted users, it's not the only access.
If you want to read similar as sighted users do "for free", use a Braille display. And yes, it's sad and actually unacceptable that Braille displays are not free for private use in US as, for example, it's the case in my home country (Germany), where the health care service helps to afford this technology.

The ElevenLabs models consume an unimaginable amount of power during training and still a lot of power during inference. This cannot be offered for free, unfortunately.
Sorry for the hard words... But imo, blindness as argument doesn't count here.
In comparison to ElevenLabs, Speech Central uses speech synthesis engines that don't cost anything during use that's comparable to what's done by ElevenLabs. Sadly, that's a big problem of current AI hype that many seem to not be aware of. As you mentioned the third world, with current generative AI approach, they'll even fall behind noticeably further than ever before. And that's, undeniable, a bad thing!

Very good point you are making. Elevenlabs is simply a luxury tool, and one has voice over as a primary reading voice. Comparing the use of elevenLabs to free access to reading by sighted people is simply unfair.
I am also in the 3rd world, and I don't use the app. I have tested the app, and no doubt the voices are of good quality. However, the most important thing about reading is accessibility, and if you can read a pdf via your iBooks app, elevenLabs becomes a luxyry.

I think some people in this comunity treats Eleven Labs Reader as an app designed spesiphicly for blind users, which is not the case. Sure, the voice quality is high and lifelike and the teame surely should work on and improve voiceover compatibility. However, as I said this is not a book reading app designed for blind users. There are other ways to read books. For me, reading with voiceover is satisfying.

It's not well featured enough for me just yet to demand the cost. If it could read kindle books directly I'd be straight in there.

And, though I know this isn't an app expressly for blind users, it is expressly an app for people who want to listen to documents and books and it so happens blind folk are a subset of that. The accessibility is far from terrible, but, if I'm paying, I would like to see more improvement. Maybe now they have this as a revenue stream they will continue to develop it. I felt, prior to the subscription it was in a soft beta.

The more distracting it will be when it messes up.

Come on, guys, please don’t do this. I really thought this was going to be a serious, thoughtful, and intelligent conversation about the recent subscription price changes for ElevenLabs Reader. But from what I’ve seen, it’s gone completely off the rails. Let’s focus on the real problem: the change in Eleven Reader’s subscription model came out of nowhere. One day, there was a new plan—and that was it. No warning, no phased rollout. I can’t import those files into the Kindle app and use Alexa. Amazon limits Alexa’s reading capabilities to content bought directly from their store. It doesn’t work with uploaded documents. Plus, I don't have the raw book files since these are books you have to purchase.
Yes—I could pay for a subscription. I’m not against paying for quality. The problem is the limits . They’re giving you two hours per week for free. I emailed them and suggested they at least bump it to two hours per day , which would be much more reasonable. You can technically speed up the voice to squeeze in more reading time—but then the voice quality gets trashed. Static, distortion, and garbled words. It’s not a viable workaround. When I find a product that works , I want to support it. But right now, the limits make it hard to justify.

There’s already so little tech out there that’s fully accessible and works well for blind users. Microsoft Reader is free, but it doesn’t work for my specific case. There have been times I’ve tried it on a book and when I go back to try again, the buttons are greyed out. It also seems like it needs to be exactly on the first page of the book for it to function. If I skip ahead to page 10 and try to read from there, it struggles. I’ve only tried it with book previews so far, so I don’t know how it’ll handle a full-length book.

NaturalReader uses the regular text-to-speech voice on the iPhone, but it reads very choppy. Speechify is too expensive. $140 per year? They don't have any monthly plans. I want an app that can pull the content of the book directly from the website and read it. Very few apps can do this effectively—at least in my case. I’ve been looking into other apps, but so far I haven’t found anything. For me, Eleven Reader solves a specific problem—and it does it well. But I’m stuck because I don’t know how long the books I want to read will take. I can’t afford to pay a monthly fee just to hit a reading wall halfway through the month. If there were an unlimited plan —say $25 or $30 per month with no time limits—I’d sign up today. But this current model isn’t sustainable for serious readers.

At this point, my best bet might be to buy the books on Amazon and read them through Alexa or using the assistive text to speech reader on the Kindle app directly so that I'll have access to the page turning feature since it doesn't work correctly with speak screen anymore. But I didn’t want to do that—because if I can get those same books elsewhere for free or as part of another subscription, why would I pay for them individually? So now I’m looking at Everand and Kobo . Both of them offer 30-day free trials, and I was thinking of using those to access the specific books I want—books that aren’t on Kindle Unlimited—and then use another tool or app to read them aloud.
Now, if I’m reading the comments correctly, some persons are saying, “Well, people with their eyesight get to read for free, so we as blind people should have access to Eleven Reader for free.” That’s not what I'm saying here. If you want to read for free, you have the built-in text-to-speech voices on the iPhone. Not all of the books we want are available in Braille or accessible formats. I honestly don’t even know where these arguments are coming from, because they literally make no sense in relation to the points being made. The fact of the matter is: nobody is forcing you to use Eleven Reader or any similar product on the market. It’s optional. But if you do want to use it and pay for it, you should at least get value for your money—without being capped by arbitrary time limits that don’t reflect how long most books take to read.
To be clear, I don’t have a problem paying for the subscription—that’s not the issue. The issue is that I cannot work within the current time limit. Obviously, I’m not saying the developers shouldn’t get paid. The primary reason I use this application isn’t out of luxury or because I don’t enjoy reading with VoiceOver. It’s because some of the books I want to read are on platforms that aren’t screen-reader friendly. Having that third-party access through 11labs Reader was incredibly helpful. Yes, I can survive without it—I’ve been doing this for years. If I really need to, I can always purchase a monthly subscription for the apps I want, and flip through the pages manually. Even with the inconvenience. But if there’s an option for third-party access—which I used to get in 11labs Reader—then I don’t see the issue. It worked. It helped. That’s why I used it.
Someone earlier in the thread brought up the idea that we should get access to the recording studio for free. I want to clarify: that’s a completely separate model they’re working on. That’s going to be a different app altogether. I don’t think it’s officially out yet, but from what I understand, it’ll be launching June 30th—if not in June, then probably early July. But I’m pretty sure it’s June. The recording studio is going to be a separate application focused on podcast creation and building your own AI voices. That’s not part of the current reader app. And I’m assuming that part of the reason for the subscription changes in the reader is to help fund the recording studio app. They already have a website for it, and now they want to bring the studio experience to mobile too—which, I’m guessing, will come with its own subscription plan. That’s up to each person whether they want to pay for that or not.

Personally, I would’ve preferred if everything stayed in one app, so I wouldn’t need to download multiple apps for these tasks. But I get it—they’re probably trying to keep the two functions separate for development and business reasons. I wish them all the best with their ventures. Again, I don’t mind paying for the subscription. I’m more than willing to pay $20 or even $30 per month if it gave me completely unlimited access to the reader. But the current system, where you’re being limited by hours? That’s not a model I want to pay for. Most audiobooks run for eight hours or more. If I’m using a voice to read them, it could be faster or slower than a human narrator—it depends. I don’t know how long the books I need are going to take. What if I fall asleep while it’s running? What if I have to do something else and I leave the phone going in the background? That time gets eaten up, and it’s gone.

It was never planned to be free forever. That's what they said in their discord. It is important to keep up with these kinds of things from their sources of conversation. Also there's always Voice Dream Reader lol, whenever it decides to work, and Speech Central, which is like eating a cheese sandwich as far as accessibility goes. And there's always the Apple Books app, which is relatively usable compared to Android's Play Books app which TalkBack can't even read the text of books anymore lol.

Also Eleven Reader basically helps pay for better models too. I will, however, expect better voices from them in the future, since I'm paying now. However, if we can get them and Bookshare to team up, maybe then it can be subsidized for us. But again, there was always going to be a payment for this app, it's just now that it's coming into effect, and no one seems to have looked at their Discord where they announce stuff, so that's why it seems to have come from nowhere.

2 hours per week is a rather high amount that they give for free. If you use ElevenLabs directly, you have 10,000 credits per month. That are 10,000 characters. With 8 hours that you get per month with a free plan on eleven Reader, this is actually a great deal.

I think I explained myself pretty clearly earlier in terms of why I use this application and what it offers me personally. But there’s something else I want to say here. I don’t spend much time on Discord. In fact, I’m not even sure I knew the company had a Discord server until recently. I’m not on social media much these days either. Every now and then, I’ll pop over to Twitter and take a glance at what’s happening in the AI space. I don’t know if they have a Facebook page—haven’t checked. I have an Instagram account, but I don’t use it. Same with YouTube—my feed isn’t tailored for this type of content. TikTok? Not even on it.

So the point I’m trying to make is this: if you’re going to introduce a subscription model, then relying only on Discord, Twitter, or blog posts to announce it isn’t enough. I know some people will say, “Well, they made a blog post. They mentioned it on Discord. You should’ve checked.” Okay, sure—do your research, stay updated, fine. But here’s the thing: everyone signed up with an email . That’s what I’m saying. Every user had to use an email to sign up for the service. So why not send out an email about the subscription changes? That’s literally what email notifications are for. I’m not trying to complain—I genuinely mean that—but it does come across as shady business practice to roll out a subscription model without directly informing your users. Did anyone get an email saying, “Hey, there’s going to be a subscription plan”? Or did we all open the app one day and see a message telling us we now had a time limit?

Yes, I know they have a blog. And I think I saw a post about the change there. But again, not everyone follows blogs. If you’re introducing a subscription model, put the message in front of your user base , where the majority of people will actually see it. That means: in the app, or via email. Not hidden away in Discord. Now, maybe Discord is where they get the most engagement—I don’t know, because I don’t use it. But what I do know is that everyone who signs up has an email. I’m sure of that. And if you’ve checked the box for emails—like I did—you’d expect to receive major service updates there. I’m not saying the app should stay free forever. I never expected that. I don’t mind paying. In fact, I want to support the Eleven Labs team. But the way this was introduced lacks transparency. At the very least, there should’ve been a pop-up in the app itself saying: “We’re moving to a subscription model. You’ll get 2 hours of access per week on the free plan. Here’s how that will work.” Something. Anything. Yes, I'm sure they have some legal mumbo-jumbo in the terms of service that says they can change the pricing anytime they want from free to paid, but, still.
If the other suggestions others have made worked for my specific use case, I’d switch in a heartbeat. But that’s not the reality. Speech Central, for example, doesn’t pull book content from websites in a way that’s legible. The layout gets messy and the reading is choppy. And regarding Voice Dream Reader, I honestly don’t understand what’s happening over there. From what I’m seeing, you have the main application, and then there’s what looks like a separate voice package available on the App Store. I’m assuming that’s where the high-quality voices are? So what exactly am I paying for? First I buy Voice Dream Reader, and then I have to pay for high-quality voices separately in a completely different app? If that’s the case, why are the voices in a separate app from the main reader? That literally makes no sense.
With that said, I’m still willing to give the application a try. I’ve also emailed them with some of the accessibility issues I’ve encountered, and they usually send back a pretty quick reply. Hopefully, It’s a person reading the emails—not one of those AI customer service bots where your message gets dumped into the void and never seen again. I don’t think change is always a bad thing. What we’re getting right now might not be exactly what I personally would like it to be, but to be fair, I haven’t properly tested it yet. So my thing is, I’m gonna still try it out—test it—and who knows? Maybe I’ll find that the current limit is enough for me. Or maybe I’ll end up paying the five dollars here and there for some extra hours. I don’t know yet. I haven’t started reading the books on the other platforms I wanted access to, so I’m still open to trying it out and even paying for at least the first month to see how it goes. Then I can decide afterwards if it still makes sense for me.

I do think, though, that a lot of people need to remember this is still new. We’re going from free to paid, and that in itself isn’t a bad thing. We all know the company needs to make money. Personally, I’m not entirely satisfied with the direction they’re taking the app in, and from what I’ve been seeing online, a lot of other people feel the same. But then there are others who fall somewhere in the middle—and that’s fine. That’s the whole point of conversations like this: to be able to share your thoughts, your views, your experiences, and to have those heard and respected. But regardless of what they do, I genuinely do wish them all the best. I hope that both the current app and the one they’re working on become more accessible, that the screen reader experience improves. Even if I don’t end up using the product now—or for a while—I want them to be successful. I want the best for them, all things considered.

I read epic fantasy. Think Brandon Sanderson. In print, his books are doorstoppers. in digital format, when I use VoiceDream his books can run to the 20-hour mark. This subscriptions isn't designed for serious readers. maybe a quick ride in a car or a cooking session in the kitchen. A dedicated reading session simply wouldn't work with this subscription model.

For the person who claimed that ibraille is the answer:

1. does the reader have ready access to braille material? For most of the world the answer is no.
2.Does the reader have access to a braille display or other reading technologies? Same answer as above, only even more so. Thing have improved a lot with the addition or Orbit Readrs to the braille display selection, but not so much that someone earning a minimum wage in a Third World country could casually purchase one.
This is not to say that braille material shouldn't, ideally, be accessible to all. But the reality is that it simply isn't. ElevenLabs filled a niche, providing lifelike narration for those who preffered text and didn't want to download large audiobook files. Now it can no longer so easily fill that need; As I understand it, the AI voices provided by VoiceDream don't even come close; I've never actually used them since I don't want to get locked into yet another subscription.

My previous comment was only intended to show that the amount of free voice time you get through the Reader app is much higher than what you get via ElevenLabs directly. This post was not intended to judge whether this is enough or not. I just wanted to point out that. Nothing more.
And don‘t compare this to VoiceDream or anything else, it‘s completely different technology.

The thing is that all AI companies want to make money. That‘s what they actually strive for. And that‘s just how economy works.
That hans‘t to be great, however. I totally understand that hq voices are important for enjoying books through speech but that is the same comfort that sighted people also have and no „enabler“ to actually do this. And sighted people need to pay the same amount, on both North and South. That‘s not a blindness thing.
You should rather criticize how AI with its inefficient and exploitative approach lead to even more exclusion, which is not what technology should do, it should rather empower everyone throughout the whole world.

I agree with parts of what you said—particularly around the lack of direct communication about the new subscription. It absolutely would’ve been better to include a notice inside the app or send an email, at least to those who opted in for updates. But here’s the flip side: it’s practically impossible to notify every user on every platform. From a business standpoint, companies typically focus outreach where the majority of their users actually are. If that’s Discord, then yeah, the announcement is going to hit there first.

And about email—yes, everyone signs up with one. But not everyone checks the box to receive news or updates. A lot of users skip marketing opt-ins entirely. They sign up, use the service, and that’s it. So while an email blast would have been a smart move, it still wouldn’t have reached everyone. No communication method will.

Now on to the Kindle/Amazon point. The reason most third-party apps don’t let you import books directly from Kindle or iBooks comes down to one thing: DRM (Digital Rights Management). Major platforms like Kindle, iBooks, and Kobo lock down their content specifically to prevent that kind of access. And unless a developer strikes a deal or partnership with Amazon or Apple—something that’s rare and expensive—it’s not legally or technically feasible to allow book imports from those sources. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t make business sense. You’d essentially be encouraging users to bypass the official apps and ecosystems, which undermines those companies’ business models. No platform is going to willingly support that.

So yeah, in a perfect world, it’d be great to pull in any book from anywhere and read it in your app of choice. But between DRM, licensing restrictions, and business interests, the reality’s just a lot more complicated.

And if repurchacing or not wanting to; is the problem... Look for drm free books; aka, not amazon, apple, etc; more and more platforms are offering drm free alternatives.

Honestly, it would’ve been a lot more transparent if they had sent out an email about the subscription changes. If they did send one and I missed it, then that’s on me—but if no email went out at all, then I think it’s completely fair to be frustrated. And someone correct me if I’m wrong, but based on what I’m seeing online, it’s also unclear whether the hours on the Ultra plan roll over from month to month. That plan is $22 a month, and it seems to offer the most for what you’re paying, but it’s still not truly unlimited. What makes this even more confusing is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to check your remaining hours or credits within the app. Maybe that’s changed recently—if so, great—but from what I can tell, there’s no obvious way to track it.

Now, as for how I actually intended to use the app: I wasn’t trying to download the books or keep a copy. My whole plan was to either paste the link of the book’s webpage directly into the app and have it read the content to me live , or go to the website within the app itself and let it read the pages out loud while flipping through them automatically. Once I exited the app, that would be it—no downloaded files, nothing stored. I’m aware that some platforms allow you to download the audio after generating it from text, but that’s not what I want. And I’m sure, with the right security protocols, they could design it so that the DRM is preserved. But as things stand, it’s not possible. I’ve already contacted the book platforms I use about their accessibility issues. It baffles me that they don’t even offer basic text-to-speech functionality or any voice reading option, let alone automatic page turning. And I get it—DRM restrictions, licensing. It would honestly be great if the original platforms offered better built-in functionality. Then I wouldn’t even need to look for third-party apps to begin with. But I understand how it is—sometimes you’re stuck working around what’s missing.

At this point, I’m exhausted. I’m not about to jump through hoops to read a few books. So either I’ll buy them outright and use Alexa to read them to me, or I’ll subscribe to the book platforms and flip through the pages manually. But even that’s a chore. These books are 200 or 300 pages long, and reading them page by page is slow. Still… it is what it is.