The best free AI Arabic text to speech depends first on which Arabic you need. For Modern Standard Arabic narration, ElevenLabs' free plan is the easiest place to judge a voice on your own script: 10,000 credits a month, Arabic on the language list of both Eleven v3 and Multilingual v2, but no commercial licence. For Egyptian Arabic specifically, two hosted services name it outright: the Gemini API lists "Egyptian Arabic" for its text-to-speech models, free of charge on the free tier, and Microsoft Azure has two ar-EG voices, Salma and Shakir, with 0.5 million free neural characters a month. And one detail the lists we read skip: every diacritic (tashkeel) is a character of its own, and every one of these services meters by the character.
Disclosure: 8frame is our product. It is not a free text-to-speech tool, and we say below where the free tools are the better answer.
TL;DR
| Tool | What's free | Egyptian Arabic? | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | 10,000 credits a month | Not listed as a separate language | No commercial licence on Free |
| Gemini API TTS | Free of charge on the free tier (Flash and Flash-Lite TTS) | Yes, "Egyptian Arabic" is listed | Free-tier content is used to improve Google's products; developer setup |
| Microsoft Azure | 0.5M neural characters a month (F0) | Yes, ar-EG Salma and Shakir | Azure account and setup |
| Google Cloud TTS | 4M characters a month (Standard, WaveNet), 1M (Chirp 3 HD) | One code, ar-XA, 38 voices | Billing must be enabled |
| Amazon Polly | 5M Standard characters a month; 1M Neural for 12 months | No; Zeina (Arabic) and Gulf voices Hala and Zayd | Few voices |
| Open Egyptian models | MIT or Apache 2.0 weights | Yes, built for it | You run them yourself |
| 8frame | Generation is paid | Uses ElevenLabs' languages | 13 credits per started 1,000 characters, from $19/month |
All third-party facts from the vendors' own pages, checked 2026-11-02.
How we picked
The results for "free Arabic text to speech" are mostly vendor landing pages, each claiming realistic voices and free use, plus software directories that rank by reviews. Few say which dialect a voice speaks, and fewer give a dated free allowance. So we took the services that publish their voice lists and free tiers, read those pages, and added two things a creator in Cairo or Alexandria needs to know: who actually offers Egyptian Arabic, and how diacritics change the bill.
The tashkeel catch
Arabic script writes most short vowels as optional marks above or below the letters: fatha, damma, kasra, sukun, shadda, tanwin. To a computer each mark is a separate character.
So "مرحبا" is 5 characters and the fully vowelled "مَرْحَبًا" is 9. The phrase "مرحبا بكم في قناتنا" ("welcome to our channel") is 19 characters without diacritics and 31 with full tashkeel, about 63% more for the same words.
What that means in practice:
- Add diacritics only where they change the reading. A word that is ambiguous without them, a name, a borrowed word. Fully vowelling a whole script uses your allowance faster.
- Estimate from the script you will paste. Count characters on the final text, after you decide where diacritics go.
- Google counts characters, not bytes. Its pricing page says that where a character takes more than one byte, "you are only charged for one character, not multiple bytes."
- On 8frame the count is the length of your text as typed, diacritics included, billed per started 1,000 characters.
The picks
ElevenLabs: start here to judge the voice
ElevenLabs' free plan gives 10,000 credits a month. Its model docs list Arabic among the 70+ languages of Eleven v3 (5,000 characters per request) and among the 29 of Multilingual v2 (10,000 characters per request). Neither list names Egyptian Arabic as a separate language, so listen for dialect on your own script. The commercial licence and Instant Voice Cloning start on the Starter plan, which ElevenLabs' FAQ prices at $6 a month (the plan card showed a first-month discount when we checked).
Gemini API text-to-speech: the one that lists Egyptian Arabic
The Gemini API's speech generation docs list three Arabic entries for the Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite TTS models: "Standard Arabic (Arab script)", "Standard Arabic (Latn script)" and "Egyptian Arabic". There are 30 prebuilt voices and up to 2 speakers in one request, which fits a two-host explainer or a short dialogue. On the pricing page, the Flash TTS models are "Free of charge" for input and output on the free tier.
The catch is in the same table: under "Used to improve our products", the free tier says "Yes" and the paid tier "No". Keep a client's unreleased script off the free tier.
Microsoft Azure AI Speech: named voices per country
Azure's language list has 16 Arabic locales, each with one female and one male neural voice: Egypt (ar-EG: Salma, Shakir), Saudi Arabia (Zariyah, Hamed), the UAE (Fatima, Hamdan), Morocco (Mouna, Jamal) and twelve more. The free F0 tier includes "0.5 million characters free per month" of neural text to speech. It is a developer service, so expect to work in the Azure portal or through code.
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech: volume
Google lists Arabic under one code, ar-XA, with 38 voices: 4 Standard, 4 WaveNet and 30 Chirp 3 HD. Its pricing page lists 0 to 4 million free characters a month for Standard and WaveNet and 0 to 1 million for Chirp 3 HD, then $4 per million for Standard and WaveNet and $30 per million for Chirp 3 HD. "You must enable billing to use Text-to-Speech." No country-specific Arabic voice is listed, so it suits Modern Standard Arabic work.
Amazon Polly: a big Standard allowance, few voices
Polly's free tier includes 5 million Standard characters a month, and 1 million Neural characters a month for the first 12 months. Its voice table lists Zeina (Arabic, Standard) and two Gulf Arabic (ar-AE) neural voices, Hala and Zayd, both marked bilingual. No Egyptian voice.
Open Egyptian models
Two open models on Hugging Face target Egyptian Arabic. NAMAA-Egyptian-TTS is MIT-licensed and built on the Chatterbox Multilingual architecture; its own card lists known limitations, including that the "ق" sound "may sometimes be missed" and that numbers "are sometimes not pronounced correctly". VoiceTut-TTS is listed under Apache 2.0. Both mean installing and running the model yourself, with no meter and no monthly cap.
Left off, and why
Web tools that promise "unlimited free Arabic voice" but publish no licence terms or dialect information. They can serve as a scratch track; for anything published, a voice you cannot license is a risk.
Arabic script tips for any tool
- Write numbers as words when the reading matters. One of the open Egyptian models flags numbers as a known weakness, and a year or a price is easy to misread in any language.
- Decide on dialect before you write. A script in Modern Standard Arabic read by an Egyptian voice, or Egyptian colloquial read by a standard voice, can sound off. Match the script to the voice.
- Keep English words in Latin script and test them. A brand name inside an Arabic sentence is worth one test generation before the full script.
- Mark pauses with punctuation. Commas and full stops are the simplest pacing control these tools give you.
- Test one paragraph before the whole script. On a metered plan, a rejected full-length take costs the same as a kept one.
When the voice is one layer of a video
A free tool gives you an audio file. When it narrates a video, each script change means regenerate, download, re-import and re-time.
On 8frame, the ElevenLabs node sits on the same canvas as the video it narrates. The price is 13 credits per started 1,000 characters, the same on Eleven v3 (the default) and Multilingual v2, with up to 5,000 characters per generation. A credit is about $0.01 at pack rate, so a 1,000-character Arabic script is 13 credits, about $0.13.
"Started" is the word to plan around:
| Script | How you generate it | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 characters | One generation | 13 |
| 1,001 characters | One generation | 26 |
| 1,500 characters | One generation | 26 |
| 1,500 characters | Ten lines of 150, one generation each | 130 |
| 5,000 characters | One generation | 65 |
Generate the narration in as few pieces as possible, and watch scripts that sit just over a 1,000-character mark (full tashkeel is the usual way to cross one). 8frame has no voice cloning: the node reads your text in a voice you pick from its list, so try two or three voices on the same paragraph and listen for dialect. Output carries no watermark on any plan, and commercial use is cleared on paid plans. Every audio price is in AI music and voice price by model, and the script side is in how to write a voiceover script.
AI voices on YouTube
YouTube's disclosure rule turns on realism. Its help page requires disclosure when content "seems realistic", such as making a real person appear to say something they did not, and lists cloning your own voice for voiceovers or dubs as a change that does not need disclosure. Its monetisation policy excludes "AI-generated content made with generic or unoriginal templates giving the impression of mass production", while allowing AI tools when the video still shows your creative input.
FAQ
What is the best free Arabic text to speech? To judge a voice on your script, ElevenLabs' free plan (10,000 credits a month, no commercial licence). For Egyptian Arabic, the Gemini API's Flash TTS models (free tier, Egyptian Arabic listed) or Azure's ar-EG voices Salma and Shakir (0.5 million free neural characters a month).
Is there free Egyptian Arabic text to speech? Yes: the Gemini API free tier lists Egyptian Arabic, Azure's free F0 tier covers its ar-EG voices, and two open models (NAMAA-Egyptian-TTS, VoiceTut-TTS) target it if you can run them yourself.
Do diacritics cost extra? On per-character meters they count as characters: our example phrase went from 19 characters to 31 with full tashkeel. Add them where they change the reading, not everywhere.
Can I use a free Arabic AI voice on a monetised YouTube channel? Check the licence first; ElevenLabs' free plan has no commercial licence. Then follow YouTube's rules on realistic synthetic content and mass-produced videos.
Can 8frame clone my voice for Arabic narration? No. 8frame has no voice cloning; the ElevenLabs node uses voices from its list.
Sources
- ElevenLabs free plan credits, Starter price and features: elevenlabs.io/pricing, checked 2026-11-02
- ElevenLabs languages and per-request limits: ElevenLabs models docs, checked 2026-11-02
- Gemini API TTS languages (including "Egyptian Arabic"), 30 voices, 2 speakers: Gemini API speech generation docs, checked 2026-11-02
- Gemini API TTS free tier and "Used to improve our products": ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing, checked 2026-11-02
- Azure Arabic locales and voices: Azure Speech language support, checked 2026-11-02
- Azure F0 free neural characters: Azure AI Speech pricing, checked 2026-11-02
- Google Cloud ar-XA voices: Google Cloud supported voices and languages, checked 2026-11-02
- Google Cloud free usage, prices, billing and character counting: cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing, checked 2026-11-02
- Amazon Polly free tier: aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing, checked 2026-11-02
- Amazon Polly Arabic voices: Amazon Polly available voices, checked 2026-11-02
- NAMAA-Egyptian-TTS licence, base and limitations: huggingface.co/NAMAA-Space/NAMAA-Egyptian-TTS, checked 2026-11-02
- VoiceTut-TTS licence: huggingface.co/oaattia/VoiceTut-TTS, checked 2026-11-02
- YouTube disclosure of altered or synthetic content: YouTube Help 14328491, checked 2026-11-02
- YouTube monetisation policy, inauthentic content: YouTube Help 1311392, checked 2026-11-02
- 8frame prices, defaults and limits (ElevenLabs TTS price per started 1,000 characters, 5,000 characters per generation, Eleven v3 default, no voice cloning): the 8frame app, checked 2026-11-02
Pick the dialect, place the diacritics, test one paragraph.
Try it without signing up: the 8frame canvas opens on a real board. The canvas is free and unlimited; generation is paid from $19/month.