Speechify Studio for Audiobooks: What It Costs and What the Terms Allow

Speechify Studio costs $100 a year for the Starter plan and $300 a year for Creator, as listed on 2026-11-08, with commercial rights on paid plans and credits that are spent at one per second of voiceover. It is a fixed-cost option for MP3 files, but Spotify and Voices by INaudio do not name it, and its terms say new cloned voices are not currently available.

Speechify Studio is not the Speechify reader app

Speechify Studio is a voiceover product, separate from Speechify's consumer reader app, and the two have different pages, prices and terms. The consumer pricing page shows Free and Premium at "$29/Month, or $139 billed yearly", as listed on 2026-11-08, with 1000+ voices and 60+ languages, and states no credits, commercial rights or cloning. Its general Terms (updated July 1, 2025) say the services are generally not for commercial use except Speechify Voice Over Studio. If you plan to sell audio, you need a Studio plan, and the consumer price is not the Studio price.

Where this tool's file can go

On 2026-11-08, Speechify is not named by Spotify or Voices by INaudio, and a tool a store does not name is "not named", not refused. ACX requires human narration unless authorized. Spotify accepts digital voice narration from "providers like Google Play Books, ElevenLabs, and more", without listing the rest. Voices by INaudio accepts only unmodified LPF packages from Google Play Books, ElevenLabs and Spoken Press. Kobo's audiobook FAQ, as captured on 2026-11-08, accepts AI narration with a "Synthesized Voice" contributor label and does not name providers; a follow-up read of that FAQ was blocked. We found no audiobook publishing claim from Speechify on the pages we read.

What Studio costs and what a book uses

Studio's pricing page lists these plans, all displayed per year, as read on 2026-11-08:

Voiceover costs 1 credit per second, dubbing 3 and avatar 30. An MP3 download needs a paid plan. The page's credit rules matter for a book: new speech generation costs credits even with the same voice and a new script; changing volume only is free; changing pitch, speed or emotional prosody costs credits; and exporting already-generated content, including re-exporting unchanged speech, is free.

For a 90,000-word novel, ACX's 2013 rule of thumb of about 9,300 words per finished hour gives roughly 9.7 hours, or about 34,800 credits for one clean pass. The sums below are our arithmetic on the listed numbers, estimates not measurements:

• Starter's 86,400 credits equal 24 hours of voiceover a year (86,400 / 3,600), so one clean pass of the novel uses about 40% of it.
• If you regenerate the whole book once more, say after pronunciation or pacing changes, that is about 69,600 credits, roughly 80% of Starter. We have not measured how many retakes a book needs.
• Creator's 345,600 credits equal 96 hours a year.
• At the full allowance, Starter works out to about $4.17 per hour of audio ($100 / 24) and Creator about $3.13 ($300 / 96). Those are ceilings on unit cost if you use every credit, not a quote for your book.

Change the numbers in the cost calculator. One conflict is worth resolving before you pay. The pricing page shows credits per year, while the Studio terms say "Any unused limits do not transfer over to the next month." If the allowance is released monthly, 86,400 credits would be 7,200 a month, about two hours of audio, which would not cover a 9.7-hour book in one month. Ask Speechify which applies.

What the Studio terms allow

Studio's terms, updated October 9, 2026, allow output to be used "for commercial purposes" if you hold the needed IP rights. Free-plan or non-signed-up users are asked to attribute Speechify when publishing outside the platform, and you may not build a competing product. The terms have no audiobook-specific restriction. The terms say you keep the rights you hold in your content and that Speechify claims none, and they note that identical or similar outputs may be produced for other users, which are not your content. The pricing page's FAQ says you own the audio output and commercial rights in perpetuity, which conflicts with the Free plan's listing of no commercial rights, so rely on the terms.

On your text, the terms grant Speechify a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store and process your content, and say Speechify "may use this content to improve our Services and models". They also say Speechify will not use uploaded files to independently generate content. Decide whether that is acceptable for an unpublished manuscript.

Audio from Studio carries an imperceptible machine-readable AI watermark that you may not remove, and you must disclose AI audio where law requires; the terms name Article 50 of the EU AI Act. Separately, the general terms warn that audio generated for resale or public distribution without a proper Studio commercial licence may lead to suspension. This is general information, not legal advice.

Cancelling and refunds

The terms say you can end a subscription at any time, effective at the end of the billing period. Refunds apply only to Enterprise plans requested within 30 days and used for no more than 5 minutes of the monthly limit, and "Monthly subscriptions are non refundable, regardless of usage." EEA-based consumers may withdraw within 14 days of accepting the terms. So a $100 or $300 plan is a commitment: use the Free plan's 600 credits (ten minutes of voiceover, by our arithmetic of 600 / 60) to listen to a voice first.

Cloning

Cloning is the sharpest limit. The Studio terms say new cloned voices are "not currently available" in Studio, except Original Voice dubbing for business customers under a separate written agreement. They require prior explicit informed consent, 18 or older, and bar cloning well-known political figures or deceased persons. Third-party price lists conflict with Speechify's Studio page, so none is used here. If you want to narrate in your own voice, see voice cloning for authors.

Downsides

The drawbacks are specific:

• Not named by Spotify or INaudio. Kobo accepts AI narration with a label (a store rule, not tool-specific), and we read no store rule that names Speechify.
• No new clones in Studio.
• A watermark you cannot remove. It is imperceptible, but it is in the terms.
• Training wording. The terms say content may be used to improve Speechify's services and models.
• No audiobook statement in the pricing or terms; audiobooks appear only as a use case ("Podcasts and Audiobooks").
• A yearly commitment and non-refundable monthly plans.
• Silent on the rest. Export formats beyond MP3 and maximum project length were not on the pages read. The pricing page lists pause, pitch, speed and pronunciation controls and 20+ voiceover languages.

Decision table

Who should and should not choose it

Studio suits an author who wants a fixed yearly cost and MP3 output, and who has accepted the training wording and the watermark. It does not suit someone who needs cloning, wants the Spotify or INaudio routes by name or needs Audible. To hear it against other voices, use the same-chapter method. For side-by-side facts see ElevenLabs vs Murf vs Speechify, and for other options the best AI audiobook generators and the AI audiobooks hub. See Speechify Studio plans.

Last verified 2026-11-08. Rules and prices change: check the linked primary page before you rely on this.