Voice id: a handle that outlives one call
A voice id is a name for a voice that survives the request it was used on. Five entries publish one. Because an identifier cannot drift, a production that records it gets a repeatable voice without storing any audio. As of 2026-09-12.
| Model | What the id refers to | What is not published about it |
|---|---|---|
| D-ID | A voice from one of five outside providers | Whether it survives an upstream reorganisation |
| Hedra | A voice drawn from the voices endpoint | Whether the catalogue is versioned |
| HeyGen | An enrolled clone | Whether a clone can be revised without a new id |
| PixVerse | A built-in voice, or one from your sample | Whether re-pointing it changes the voice |
| Runway | A voice created asynchronously, with a preview | Whether the same description recreates it |
Inclusion rule. Entries whose documentation refers to a voice by an identifier passed on a request. A reference clip supplied per call is not an identifier and does not earn a row. Order. Alphabetical by model name.
1Why an identifier beats a recording for continuity
A clip supplied on every call has to be the same file every time, and nothing checks that it is. An identifier is a string: pass the same one and the same voice arrives, so the continuity problem becomes a spreadsheet problem rather than a listening problem.
The catch is that nothing in a returned file records which id was used. Passing the wrong one produces a valid call and a different person, so a shot list remains the authoritative record of a cast whichever mechanism a platform offers.
2Nobody publishes a lifetime for one
Across all five entries, no document says whether an id survives a catalogue change, a plan change or a model version. That is the single most useful sentence none of them has written, because a series is a long time to depend on an unpromised string.
The defensive habit is to treat every id as immutable. Never re-point one at a new sample; create another. That keeps a production's own record honest even where the platform makes no commitment.
3An id is a voice object, not a character
Where the identifier belongs to a voice, the pairing between a person in the story and that voice lives in a production's records. Where a vendor binds the voice to a character object instead, there is nothing to pass and nothing to pass wrongly.
The first is more flexible and more clerical: a voice can be reused across series, shared deliberately, or retired without touching the character. Somebody has to keep the list either way.
4Sources read for this entry
This page defines the term and logs what each vendor documents about it, each figure read on 2026-09-12. Related: Voice cloning, Text to speech.