AI take on Fish Audio
As of August 2026, Fish Audio stands out for script-level delivery control, though conflicting plan and capability claims weaken buying confidence.
Video & Audio comparison · 2026
Fish Audio vs Gladia
Compare Fish Audio and Gladia as Video & Audio tools on fit, pricing, and the capabilities that actually overlap in 2026. Pick Fish Audio for video narrators, audiobook producers, and game studios who need line-by-line emotion control in synthetic speech instead of one flat voice setting across a whole script. Pick Gladia for teams powering real-time transcription inside voice agents built on Pipecat, LiveKit or Twilio and building AI note-takers and meeting assistants that need diarized, summarized transcripts.
Updated Aug 23, 2026
Expressive real-time AI text-to-speech, voice cloning, and speech-to-text built on the S2.1 Pro model
Starts at $0/month·Video & Audio
AI audio infrastructure that transcribes and enriches every conversation through a single API
Starts at $0.61/hour·Video & Audio
At a glance
Fish AudioGladia
CategoryVideo & AudioVideo & Audio
PricingStarts at $0/monthStarts at $0.61/hour
Free tierYesYes
PlatformsWeb browser, REST API, On-premise deployment (Enterprise)Web
Suitable forVideo narrators, audiobook producers, and game studios who need line-by-line emotion control in synthetic speech instead of one flat voice setting across a whole scriptTeams powering real-time transcription inside voice agents built on Pipecat, LiveKit or Twilio and building AI note-takers and meeting assistants that need diarized, summarized transcripts
CompanyHanabi AI Inc.Gladia Inc.
Founded——
How they differ
Shared Video & Audio rubric, filled from each listing. Not a score.
Speech
Fish AudioGladia
Text to speechYesNo
Speech to textYesYes
Voice cloningYesNo
Voice libraryYesNo
Emotion / style controlYesNo
Pronunciation controlNot publishedLimited
Languages
Fish AudioGladia
Multilingual outputYesYes
DubbingNot publishedNo
Translated captionsNot publishedYes
Accent controlNot publishedNo
Speaker diarizationYesYes
Video
Fish AudioGladia
Text to videoNot publishedNo
Image to videoNot publishedNo
Timeline editingNot publishedNo
AI avatarsNot publishedNo
Lip syncNot publishedNo
Auto captionsNot publishedYes
Audio
Fish AudioGladia
Music generationNot publishedNo
Sound effectsNot publishedNo
Stem separationNot publishedNo
Noise reductionNot publishedLimited
MasteringNot publishedNo
Delivery
Fish AudioGladia
Realtime / streamingYesYes
Batch jobsNot publishedYes
Long-form rendersYesNot published
Export formatsNot publishedNot published
No watermark on paidNot publishedNot published
Access
Fish AudioGladia
Public APIYesYes
Official SDKYesYes
Self-serve signupYesYes
Free trialYesNot published
Team workspaceNot publishedNot published
SSO / SAMLNot publishedNot published
Mobile appsNot publishedNo
Browser extensionNot publishedNo
Self-host / on-premYesNot published
Commercial
Fish AudioGladia
Commercial licenseNot publishedNot published
Usage-based pricingYesLimited
Invoice / PONot publishedNot published
SOC 2Not publishedYes
GDPR / DPANot publishedYes
Audit logNot publishedNot published
Role-based accessNot publishedNot published
Features
These listings describe different capabilities. What each one ships:
Only Fish Audio
- S2.1 Pro real-time text-to-speech model
- Inline emotion tags: [angry], [sad], [embarrassed], [emphasis], [whispering], [soft], [breathy], [excited]
- Special performance tags: [laughing], [chuckling], [clear throat], [sobbing], [crying loudly], [sighing], [panting], [groaning], [crowd laughing], [pause], [long pause]
- Voice cloning advertised at 15 seconds on the API section and as little as 10 seconds in the FAQ
- Speech-to-text with multispeaker labels, emotion tags, and natural language description
- Voice library with 2,000,000+ user-uploaded voices
- Voice Design access on Plus and above
- Public, private, and professional voice slots
Only Gladia
- Async batch transcription and real-time streaming from a single API
- 100+ supported languages with native code-switching mid-sentence
- Speaker diarization with speaker-level confidence and timestamps
- Word-level timestamps on every transcript
- Any-to-any translation returned alongside the transcript in the same API call
- Named entity recognition for names, companies, emails and dates
- Custom vocabulary spelling for domain jargon
- Context-aware punctuation, casing and numeral formatting
Use cases
These listings describe different use cases. What each one ships:
Only Fish Audio
- Producing video voiceovers for YouTube, ads, and explainer content with scene-matched narration
- Narrating audiobooks with chapter-level control aimed at ACX/Audible specs
- Creating character voices and brand personas for games, animation, and interactive stories
- Giving customer support bots and virtual agents low-latency conversational speech
- Cloning a creator's own voice to produce narration without re-recording sessions
- Transcribing multi-speaker recordings with emotion tags for editing or subtitling
- Embedding speech synthesis into an app through the Fish Audio API
Only Gladia
- Powering real-time transcription inside voice agents built on Pipecat, LiveKit or Twilio
- Building AI note-takers and meeting assistants that need diarized, summarized transcripts
- Transcribing and scoring contact center calls for CCaaS and BPO platforms
- Adding multilingual subtitles and captions to media and content platforms
- Feeding clean, entity-tagged transcripts into RAG pipelines and CRM automations
- Running sentiment and action-item extraction on sales calls without a second LLM hop
- Serving European customers that require EU data residency for voice data
- Replacing self-hosted Whisper deployments with a managed transcription endpoint
Integrations
These listings describe different integrations. What each one ships:
Only Fish Audio
- Fish Audio REST API
- Fish Audio SDKs for developers
- Stripe (payment processing)
- Google sign-in via third-party account credentials
- Voice Agent API for conversational applications
- GitHub (fishaudio open-source repositories)
Only Gladia
Nothing exclusive in this list.
Plans
Fish Audio
Free Tier $0/mo or $0/yr
8,000 credits monthly · Up to 500 characters per generation · 3 public voice slots · Standard generation speed · Enhanced voice cloning · Commercial use · No credit card needed
Plus $15/mo or $66/yr
250,000 credits monthly · Up to 200 minutes generation · Up to 15,000 characters per generation · Unlimited public, 10 private voice slots · Priority generation on latest models · Access to Voice Design · 1 professional voice slot · Enhanced voice cloning · Commercial use allowed
Pro $100/mo or $450/yr
2,000,000 credits monthly · Up to 1,620 minutes generation · 3 team seats included · Up to 30,000 characters per generation · Unlimited voice slots · 5 professional voice slots · 7 days money back guarantee · Everything in Plus
Max $999/mo or $8988/yr
25,000,000 credits monthly · Up to 6,250 minutes generation · 10 team seats included · 15 professional voice slots · Everything in Pro
Enterprise Custom/mo or Custom/yr
Pay as you go with organization-level controls · Zero Data Retention · On-Premise Deployment · SOC2 Compliance · More Discount · Custom SSO (Coming soon)
Gladia
Enterprise Custom/mo or Custom/yr
Annual plan with custom models, fine-tuning, and debundled pricing · Everything in Growth · Unlimited concurrent requests · Default model training opt-out · Zero data retention · Enterprise support SLAs · Premium support with dedicated Slack and Account Manager · Custom hosting · Limitless scaling
Fish Audio strengths
- A $0 Free Tier with 8,000 monthly credits and no credit card required for testing S2.1 Pro
- Inline emotion and performance tags allow delivery changes mid-script instead of per-render only
- Public demo on the Fish Audio homepage generates audio before account creation
- Very large voice library of 2,000,000+ community-uploaded voices
- Plus at $5.5/mo billed annually is inexpensive for a 200-minute expressive TTS allowance
- Pro includes a 7-day money-back guarantee and 3 team seats
- Enterprise tier addresses compliance with zero data retention, on-premise deployment, and SOC2
- Open-source presence via the fishaudio GitHub organization
Watch-outs
- Vendor contradiction: the Free Tier plan card lists "Commercial use" while the homepage FAQ says the free plan is personal use only and the terms restrict unpaid use to personal, non-commercial use
- Vendor contradiction: the annual toggle promotes "3 months off + anniversary 50% off when billed annually" but the billing FAQ says yearly billing saves 33% versus monthly
- Vendor contradiction: cloning is advertised at 15 seconds in the API section and as little as 10 seconds in the FAQ
- Vendor contradiction on languages: 30+ languages in the API section, 8 named languages in the FAQ, and 8 languages in the meta description
- Unused minutes and credits do not roll over; monthly quotas reset at the start of each billing cycle
- Free Tier caps each generation at 500 characters, too short for long-form narration
- Credit math is indirect, with roughly 600 to 625 credits consumed per minute of generation
- Professional voice slots are rationed by tier (1 on Plus, 5 on Pro, 15 on Max)
Gladia strengths
- Gladia charges by audio hour rather than per seat, so cost tracks actual usage
- Gladia publishes multi-provider WER tables including datasets where Solaria-3 loses or regresses
- Gladia supports async and real-time work through the same endpoint, SDKs and credit wallet
- Gladia includes diarization, sentiment, translation and entity recognition without separate premium add-ons
- Gladia offers 50€ in free credits so a team can test before topping up
- Gladia documents GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and 100% EU data residency
- Gladia ships native connectors for Pipecat, LiveKit, Twilio, Retell, Zapier, Make and n8n
Watch-outs
- Gladia's 50€ credit grant is one-time with no monthly reset, so testing beyond roughly 80 hours of pre-recorded audio requires
- Gladia plan limits come from the published pricing table.
Fish Audio vs Gladia verdict
Who each product is for, then labeled AI takes. Not a generic winner.
Bottom line
Pick Fish Audio for video narrators, audiobook producers, and game studios who need line-by-line emotion control in synthetic speech instead of one flat voice setting across a whole script. Pick Gladia for teams powering real-time transcription inside voice agents built on Pipecat, LiveKit or Twilio and building AI note-takers and meeting assistants that need diarized, summarized transcripts.
Who Fish Audio is for
Video narrators, audiobook producers, and game studios who need line-by-line emotion control in synthetic speech instead of one flat voice setting across a whole script
Expressive real-time AI text-to-speech, voice cloning, and speech-to-text built on the S2.1 Pro model
Who Gladia is for
Teams powering real-time transcription inside voice agents built on Pipecat, LiveKit or Twilio and building AI note-takers and meeting assistants that need diarized, summarized transcripts
AI audio infrastructure that transcribes and enriches every conversation through a single API
AI take on Gladia
As of August 2026, Gladia stands out for integrated speech intelligence and candid benchmarks, though model selection and contract review matter.
Fish Audio vs Gladia FAQ
Common questions when choosing between Fish Audio and Gladia.
Is Fish Audio or Gladia the better Video & Audio tool?
Pick Fish Audio for video narrators, audiobook producers, and game studios who need line-by-line emotion control in synthetic speech instead of one flat voice setting across a whole script. Pick Gladia for teams powering real-time transcription inside voice agents built on Pipecat, LiveKit or Twilio and building AI note-takers and meeting assistants that need diarized, summarized transcripts.
Which is cheaper, Fish Audio or Gladia?
Fish Audio starts at $0/month. Gladia starts at $0.61/hour. Confirm current pricing on each vendor site.
Who should choose Fish Audio?
Video narrators, audiobook producers, and game studios who need line-by-line emotion control in synthetic speech instead of one flat voice setting across a whole script
Who should choose Gladia?
Teams powering real-time transcription inside voice agents built on Pipecat, LiveKit or Twilio and building AI note-takers and meeting assistants that need diarized, summarized transcripts
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