The best AI podcast generators in 2026
- Written by
- Artin Bogdanov, Founder & CEO
- Published
- Reading time
- 6 min
To learn a subject by listening, use SUN: give it one sentence and it researches, writes and voices a podcast or a course at the length you set. To make a podcast from your own documents, NotebookLM, now called Gemini Notebook, is free and the best at it. ElevenLabs is the pick for voice work, Wondercraft for producing a show with music and sound, and Jellypod for publishing one to Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
I run SUN, so weigh the first pick with that in mind. The other five each do a job SUN is not built for, and do it well.
The six at a glance
| Best for | You start with | Free | Paid from | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUN | Learning a subject by listening | One sentence, or your files | Your first hour of generation | $15 a month |
| NotebookLM | A podcast from your own documents | Sources in a notebook | Yes, with standard limits | Google AI Plus, for higher limits |
| ElevenLabs | Voice work, producing audio yourself | A script, a file or a URL | 10,000 credits a month | $6 a month |
| Wondercraft | A produced show with music and sound | A prompt, a document or a script | 150 credits | $21 a month, billed yearly |
| Jellypod | Publishing a show | A topic, a PDF, a deck or a script | 500 credits, no publishing | $25 a month, billed yearly |
| Speechify | Listening to what you read | A document or a page | Text to speech only | $29 a month |
1. SUN, for learning a subject by listening
SUN starts from a question. Type "a 20-minute podcast on how the Federal Reserve sets interest rates, two hosts" and it researches the subject, writes the episode and voices it with Genesis, our own long-form audio model. You choose the minutes, one host or two, and the narrator. Choose Audio Course and the subject arrives as lessons that adapt to what you already know: AI audio course generator. Attach a PDF, slides, a photo or your notes and the episode is built on them: PDF to podcast. The same composer makes audiobooks, fiction stories, micro-dramas, music and meditations.
Three things make it a learning tool rather than a production tool. You can ask it questions while you listen. The Scheduler sends a fresh episode every morning or every Monday without a prompt, and the iOS and Android apps keep your place on every device. Record a minute of audio and you can hear any episode in your own voice.
What it costs: your first hour of generation is free. SUN Pro is $15 a month or $99 a year, or you buy credits, $15 for 5,000, and they never expire. Plans and pricing
The one thing to know: it speaks 12 languages, American and British English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Hindi. If you need another, NotebookLM has more than 80.
When our team ran a blind test of scripts on 100 topics, three AI judges preferred SUN's course scripts to NotebookLM's 57 to 43, a margin too small to call a win, and to Spotify's Save-to-Spotify pipeline 66 to 34. The method and every number are in our listenability benchmark.
2. NotebookLM, for a podcast from your own documents
If the episode should come from material you already have, a stack of papers, a reading pack, your lecture notes, NotebookLM is the best tool for it, and it costs nothing. Google renamed it Gemini Notebook in July 2026; it is the same product.
You add sources to a notebook, up to 50 on the free plan, or let its Deep Research find them. The Audio Overview turns them into a conversation: Deep Dive by default, or the Brief, one speaker in under two minutes, the Critique and the Debate. Length is Shorter, Default or Longer, a choice that works in English only. It generates in more than 80 languages, and in English you can join the conversation by voice and ask the hosts a question.
What it costs: free, with standard limits. A Google AI Plus subscription doubles them.
The one thing to know: the episode follows the notebook. You choose a format and a rough length, not the minutes, the voices or the course it becomes. NotebookLM alternative
3. ElevenLabs, for voice work
ElevenLabs makes some of the most natural AI voices there are, and its Studio is where you produce audio yourself. Upload a PDF, an EPUB or a text file, or start from a URL, give each speaker or passage its own voice, and edit until it sounds right. Studio works in 32 languages.
What it costs: the free plan gives 10,000 credits a month, without a commercial license. Starter is $6 a month, with instant voice cloning and the license. Creator, $22 a month, adds professional voice cloning.
The one thing to know: it is a studio. You direct and you edit, which is what a narrator or a producer wants and more work than you need if you only want to listen. ElevenLabs alternative
4. Wondercraft, for a show you produce
Wondercraft plans, records and edits episodes with music and chapters, and its Convo Mode makes the two-host conversation NotebookLM made popular, but editable. You can start from a prompt, a document or an existing script. It now calls itself an AI video studio, so audio is half of what it does.
What it costs: the free plan has 150 credits and exports up to 720p. Creator is $25 a month, or $21 a month paid yearly, and removes the watermark and opens the library of music, sound effects and voices. Pro, $42 a month paid yearly, is for teams of up to three.
The one thing to know: it is built for a show with your name on it, sound design included, more than for a subject you want to understand by Friday.
5. Jellypod, for publishing a show
Jellypod is the one built around publishing. Every podcast gets a website and an RSS feed for Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and automations can publish episodes on a schedule. It casts up to four hosts from more than 3,300 voices in 121 languages, starting from a topic, a PDF, a slide deck or a script.
What it costs: the free plan's 500 credits let you create and preview, but not render, publish or download. Starter is $25 a month billed yearly, $300, with episodes up to 60 minutes.
The one thing to know: audio uses 30 credits a minute, so Starter's 5,000 credits a month come to about two and three quarter hours of finished audio.
6. Speechify, if you already listen to your reading
Speechify is a reader first: it reads documents and web pages aloud, in more than 1,000 voices and more than 60 languages, on iOS, Android, Chrome and Safari. AI Podcasts come with Premium.
What it costs: the free plan reads at up to 1.5x speed with 10 basic voices and makes no podcasts. Premium is $29 a month, less if paid yearly.
The one thing to know: worth it if you already pay for it to read to you. For podcasts alone, $29 a month buys less than the tools above.
How to choose in twenty minutes
Ask two of these for the same 20 minutes on a subject you know well, and listen to both on a walk. Within five minutes you will hear which one repeats itself, which one gets a fact wrong and which voices you stop noticing, and no feature table tells you that.
Start from a topic with SUN's AI podcast generator. Already have the text? AI audiobook generator.