PlayHT vs Udio: Features, Pricing and Verdict
PlayHT shut down on 31 December 2025, so PlayHT vs Udio is no live contest. Here is what happened, what Udio costs, and what to buy for voice work instead.
By Galactic News Editorial · Published 2026-11-13T19:28:08+00:00 · Updated 2026-11-13T19:28:08+00:00
PlayHT vs Udio: Features, Pricing and Verdict
PlayHT vs Udio has one clear answer in 2026. PlayHT is gone. Udio is live. PlayHT shut down permanently on 31 December 2025 after Meta acquired its parent company. Udio still sells song generation on Free, Standard and Pro plans. This guide explains what happened, what each tool did, and what to buy instead.
PlayHT vs Udio: the short answer
There is no live contest here. PlayHT no longer exists as a product you can buy, log into or use. Udio is the only live option of the two. The comparison also mixes two different jobs. PlayHT was a text-to-speech and voice cloning platform. Udio is a song generator that turns prompts into full songs with vocals. A buyer choosing between them was really choosing between spoken audio and music. If you need spoken audio today, pick ElevenLabs or Murf. If you need songs, Udio is a live option, with one major limit explained below.
What happened to PlayHT
PlayHT, later branded PlayAI, was a voice platform with more than 900 voices across 140-plus languages, voice cloning and a real-time API. Its end came fast. Meta confirmed it had acquired the PlayAI team in July 2025. The team was about 35 people. The deal was a talent acquisition. The product was never part of the plan.
The public API went offline around 26 July 2025, about two weeks after the acquisition. New sign-ups stopped in August 2025. The full platform closed on 31 December 2025. Accounts, saved audio, voice clones and API keys were permanently deleted. No export tool was provided. No migration path was offered. The play.ht domain stopped resolving in 2026. PlayHT's own docs site stayed up with no shutdown notice, which is why some teams only learned from failing requests.
Do not enter card details on any site trading under the PlayHT name in 2026. Researchers in October 2026 could not verify any connection between surviving lookalike sites and the original company or Meta. If you had PlayHT voice clones, they are gone. Re-clone from your original recordings on a live platform.
What Udio does
Udio generates songs from text prompts. It adds vocals, lyrics and style controls. It offers editing tools, style references and voice control on paid plans. It also offers uploads of existing audio and songs built from an uploaded track as a style reference. Udio is a music tool. It does not do text-to-speech narration or voice cloning for spoken audio.
Udio changed sharply after its music licensing deals. On 29 October 2025 it announced a partnership with Universal Music Group. Downloads of audio, video and stems were disabled the same day. A help article from February 2026 still lists the change. Warner Music Group followed with its own partnership post dated 19 November 2025. Songs now play inside Udio's own player and library. They cannot be downloaded or published elsewhere. That limit applies to every plan, including Pro.
Udio pricing in 2026
| Plan | Monthly price | Credits a month | Key limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 (10 a day) | 3 full-length songs a day, 4 songs at once |
| Standard | $10, or $8 billed yearly | 2,400 | 6 songs at once, no daily song cap |
| Pro | $30, or $24 billed yearly | 6,000 | 10 songs at once, premium artist styles |
Credits do not roll over. Top-up credits cost $3 for 100 or $25 for 1,000. Standard includes a free seven-day trial. Udio also lists student pricing on Pro, but the amount is not published on the pricing page. Prices are in US dollars before tax. The pricing page does not mention downloads or commercial rights at all. Check Udio's terms before you plan to release anything made there.
PlayHT vs Udio features compared
| Feature | PlayHT | Udio |
|---|---|---|
| Main job | Text to speech and voice cloning | Song generation with vocals |
| Status in 2026 | Shut down 31 December 2025 | Live |
| Free plan | None, service closed | Yes, 100 credits a month |
| Entry paid price | Not for sale | $10 a month (Standard) |
| Audio downloads | Not available | Disabled on all plans since 29 October 2025 |
| Voice cloning | Was available, now deleted | Not offered |
| Commercial use | Not available | Not stated on the pricing page |
| API | Offline since July 2025 | No official public API |
The table shows why the head-to-head is misleading. The tools share one trait only. Both turn text into audio. Everything else differs. PlayHT spoke words. Udio sings songs. A podcaster needed PlayHT. A songwriter trying ideas needs Udio.
What PlayHT used to cost
These prices are history, not a buying guide. They show what PlayHT charged before the shutdown. Free cost $0 and gave about 12,500 characters a month, one instant clone and non-commercial use with attribution to PlayHT. Creator cost $39 a month for about 250,000 characters a month, 10 instant clones and a commercial licence. Unlimited cost $99 a month and advertised unlimited generation with a fair-use ceiling of 2.5 million characters a month and 30 million a year. It included three high-fidelity clones and priority support. Enterprise was custom priced. Annual billing cut Creator to about $31.20 a month.
Those figures matter only for one reason. They set the price anchor for replacements. ElevenLabs Creator at $22 a month undercuts old PlayHT Creator. Murf Creator at $19 a month billed yearly is cheaper still. Cartesia Pro at $5 a month is the cheapest developer route. No replacement needs to match PlayHT's old prices to win.
If you need what PlayHT did, buy this instead
- Voice cloning and studio narration: ElevenLabs. Free gives 10,000 credits a month. Starter costs $6 a month and adds a commercial licence and instant cloning. Creator costs $22 a month and adds professional cloning.
- Voiceover studio work: Murf AI. Creator costs $29 a month, or $19 billed yearly, for 2 hours of voice generation a month. It includes commercial rights and unlimited downloads.
- Voice in an app or agent: Cartesia. Pro costs $5 a month for 100,000 credits. It adds a commercial licence and instant cloning from a 10-second clip.
- Cloning with safety controls: Resemble AI. Flex is pay as you go with no subscription fee. Text to speech is reported at about $0.0005 per second.
Export your old PlayHT audio first if you still have local copies. Anything stored only in PlayHT is gone. Rebuild voice IDs on the new platform. Test the same script on two replacements before you pay. Listen for pacing, pauses and emphasis, not just voice quality.
One more check matters before you spend anything. Search results still show PlayHT pricing pages and reviews as if the product were live. Most of those pages were written before the shutdown. A few are lookalike sites using the old name. The live evidence points the other way. The domain stopped resolving, the API went dark in July 2025, and migration guides from Cartesia, Inworld and Murf all give 31 December 2025 as the closing date. Treat any 2026 PlayHT sign-up page as untrusted until it proves otherwise.
Bottom line
PlayHT vs Udio is not a buying decision in 2026. PlayHT shut down on 31 December 2025 and cannot be bought at any price. Udio is live, but it makes songs, not spoken audio, and it disabled downloads on every plan after its Universal Music Group deal. If you need voice, buy ElevenLabs, Murf or Cartesia. If you need songs to experiment with inside Udio, Standard at $10 a month is the entry point. Do not pay for a dead product, and do not expect to take Udio songs elsewhere until downloads return.