Build Your AI Podcast With n8n and ElevenLabs in 15 Minutes
What if your ideas could literally speak for themselves — without you ever touching a microphone? That is exactly what becomes possible when you combine n8n with elevenlabs. In less time than it takes to brew a pot of coffee, you can have a fully automated pipeline that transforms written content into a professional-sounding podcast episode.
This guide walks you through the complete setup — from triggering your workflow to publishing a polished audio file — using nothing but two powerful tools and a bit of creative automation thinking.
Why Automate a Podcast at All?
Podcasting is one of the most engaging content formats available today, but it is also one of the most time-consuming. Recording, editing, mixing, and publishing can eat up hours of your week. With n8n handling the workflow logic and elevenlabs generating hyper-realistic AI voices, you can compress that entire process into a single automated run.
- No recording equipment needed — ElevenLabs voices sound indistinguishable from real humans
- No editing software — the audio comes out clean every time
- Fully scalable — publish daily episodes without extra effort
- Consistent quality — same voice, same tone, every single episode
What You Will Need
- A free or paid account on n8n (cloud or self-hosted)
- An elevenlabs account with API access
- A content source — this could be an RSS feed, a Google Doc, a Notion page, or even a simple webhook
- A place to store the audio — Google Drive, S3, or any cloud storage
Step 1: Set Up Your n8n Workflow Trigger
Open n8n and create a new workflow. Choose your trigger based on how you want episodes to be generated:
- Schedule Trigger — runs automatically every day, week, or hour
- Webhook Trigger — fires when you submit a new article or form entry
- RSS Feed Trigger — monitors a blog or news source for new posts
For most users, the Schedule Trigger combined with an RSS node is the cleanest setup. The n8n workflow will check for new content, pull the text, and pass it downstream automatically.
Step 2: Extract and Clean the Text
Once n8n has fetched your content, you need to prepare it for the voice API. Add a Function node (or Code node) to:
- Strip HTML tags if the source is a webpage
- Trim the text to the desired episode length
- Add an intro line such as "Welcome to the AI Briefing. Today's topic is…"
This step is where your podcast gets its personality. Small tweaks to the script — a friendly opener, a consistent sign-off — turn a raw article into a real episode experience.
Step 3: Send Text to ElevenLabs
Now comes the magic. Add an HTTP Request node inside n8n and configure it to call the elevenlabs Text-to-Speech API:
- Endpoint:
https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/text-to-speech/{voice_id} - Method: POST
- Headers: Include your elevenlabs API key as
xi-api-key - Body: Pass your cleaned script as the
textfield, setmodel_idtoeleven_multilingual_v2
elevenlabs returns a binary audio file (MP3) in the response. The voice quality is remarkable — emotional range, natural pacing, and no robotic artifacts that plague older TTS systems.
Choosing the Right Voice
Inside your elevenlabs dashboard, browse the Voice Library. For a podcast, look for voices tagged as Conversational or Narrative. Clone your own voice for an even more personal touch — elevenlabs Professional Voice Cloning captures subtle nuances with as little as one minute of audio.
Step 4: Save the Audio File
Back in n8n, add a node to store the binary output from elevenlabs. Options include:
- Google Drive node — saves the MP3 to a specific folder automatically
- AWS S3 node — ideal if you are hosting your podcast via a CDN
- FTP node — for uploading directly to your podcast hosting server
Name the file dynamically using the episode date or title so your archive stays organised.
Step 5: Notify and Distribute
A podcast is only valuable if people hear it. Extend your n8n workflow with distribution steps:
- Send a Slack or email notification when a new episode is ready
- Post the episode link to Twitter/X, LinkedIn, or Telegram automatically
- Update a Podcast RSS feed XML file so listeners can subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify
With n8n's extensive node library, all of this happens in a single workflow without writing a single line of server code.
Real-World Use Cases
- Newsletter-to-podcast conversion — let subscribers listen instead of read
- Daily news briefing — pull from RSS, convert with elevenlabs, publish by 7am
- Internal company updates — turn weekly memos into audio summaries for remote teams
- Language learning content — use elevenlabs multilingual voices to produce episodes in multiple languages from a single script
Tips for Best Results
- Keep individual API calls under 2,500 characters for the best audio quality from elevenlabs — split longer articles into chunks inside n8n and concatenate the audio files afterwards
- Use the stability and similarity_boost parameters in the elevenlabs API to fine-tune voice naturalness
- Add a short intro music file using an FFmpeg command node in n8n for a truly professional finish
- Test your workflow with a manual trigger first before enabling the schedule
You Are 15 Minutes Away From Your First Episode
The combination of n8n and elevenlabs is genuinely one of the most powerful creative automation stacks available right now. Once your workflow is live, episodes generate themselves — freeing you to focus on ideas rather than production. Set it up once, and your AI podcast runs on autopilot indefinitely.
Ready to launch? Start building your workflow in n8n today and pick your voice in elevenlabs — your audience is waiting to hear from you.
This post was created with tools we use and recommend: n8n for workflow automation, Turbotic as an AI-native automation alternative, ElevenLabs for AI voiceover, Placid for visual content creation, and Hostinger for reliable VPS hosting. Some links are affiliate links.