Parlato – AI Podcast Generator

No. Parlato is free and open-source. You only pay your TTS provider (OpenAI and/or ElevenLabs) for the API usage you trigger. See OpenAI pricing and ElevenLabs pricing for current rates.

The title badge is off by default. Enable it under Parlato → Player → Title badge. Once on, a small microphone icon appears next to the title of any post that has generated audio, in post listings (home, archives, categories). It is intentionally hidden on the single post's own page, where the audio player is already shown.

As many as you like — Parlato imposes no generation limit of its own. Both formats — read-aloud TTS and Narrator — are free. You only pay your own provider (OpenAI or ElevenLabs) for the API usage, subject to their quotas, rate limits and billing.

For OpenAI, sign in at platform.openai.com and click Create new secret key; make sure billing is enabled. For ElevenLabs, create a key at elevenlabs.io with Text to Speech and Voices (Read) permissions; leave unrelated scopes disabled.

Yes. Define them in your wp-config.php: define( 'PARLATO_OPENAI_API_KEY', 'sk-...' ); define( 'PARLATO_ELEVENLABS_API_KEY', '...' ); The matching settings field shows as locked when a constant is detected.

For read-aloud TTS, Parlato sends as much post text as the selected provider's API accepts per request — about 4,000 characters with OpenAI, and 10,000 or more with ElevenLabs depending on the model. Only posts exceeding that technical limit are truncated at the nearest sentence boundary, with a short note appended. For the AI Narrator podcast, up to the first ~1,500 words of the post are sent to the AI to write the narration script (developers can change this budget via the parlato_narrator_input_words filter).

In your WordPress Media Library. Each audio file is a standard attachment linked to the post. You can manage, delete, or download them like any other media file.

Yes. Regenerating removes the previous MP3 from the Media Library and generates a new one.

Hover over the post in the Posts list and click Remove audio. This deletes both the MP3 attachment and the player.

Yes. Posts are enabled by default; you can enable pages and any public custom post type with the Post types setting on the Parlato → Player tab. Audio generation and the automatic player then work on every enabled post type.

Your post text is sent to your chosen TTS provider (OpenAI or ElevenLabs) to generate audio, and — for the Narrator podcast — to OpenAI to generate the script, together with your API key. Data is sent only when you explicitly trigger generation. Parlato itself does not collect or store personal data; you should disclose the use of these services in your site's privacy policy. The settings page includes a disclosure notice. See the "External Services" section below for the full list of services and their privacy policies.