Cost effective voice-generation solutions?

[MSM_Alice]

Hello!

I am curious about what are cost effective (ideally locally hosted) solution for generating natural sounding voices for one's mods? 
I am not opposed to paying something for the whole software (not per word or per line though).

Ideal: ones that could be made to sound be fairly similar to the in-game player character, and
Must: that they don't refuse to cooperate or cancel your account if one approaches... spicier topics. (probably need run locally/offline) 

Elevenlabs is great but pricey for volume
Could voice changing apps with AI capabilities like VoiceMod be worthwhile? (allows for some actual acting)?

So far I think using Windows Narrator, specifically some of the natural sounding voices, could be a solution though it requires some manual labor.
Obviously they can' t be made so sound like the in-game characters.

Edited March 13, 2025 by MSM_Alice
typos

[jfraser]

there are plenty of decent voice actors who work for free just for the fun of it. 

[slimbones]

I have alot of fun messing with Zonos, F5 tts and xtts.
You can find all of them on https://pinokio.computer/  verified community scripts. 
Its pretty easy to install 

[x38253]

Microsoft Clipchamp has a great  Ai text to speech feature. It sucks as a video editor but the text to speech is amazing. Lots of voices, different accents and languages plus it's free.