ElevenLabs pricing

ElevenLabs pricing starts at $0 and paid plans start at $6 a month. What you’re really buying is credits, and for text to speech about 1,000 credits make one minute of speech. This page is part of my AI tool reviews, and I checked every number below on ElevenLabs’ own pricing page on 5 Nov 2026.

I pay for the Creator plan myself and use a clone of my own voice to narrate my social media and Buildme Instagram videos. That works out to roughly 40 to 60 minutes of speech a month. For how the voices and cloning actually performed, read my full ElevenLabs review.

ElevenLabs pricing at a glance

ElevenLabs has six self-serve plans plus Enterprise. All of them share one credit pool across text to speech, speech to text, sound effects, music, dubbing and voice changing.

• Free: $0, 10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes. No commercial license.
• Starter: $6 a month, $1 for the first month. 30,000 credits, about 30 minutes. Adds a commercial license and Instant Voice Cloning.
• Creator: $22 a month, $11 for the first month. 121,000 credits, about 121 minutes. Adds Professional Voice Cloning.
• Pro: $99 a month. 600,000 credits, about 600 minutes. Adds 44.1 kHz PCM output through the API and 192 kbps audio.
• Scale: $299 a month. 1.8M credits, about 1,800 minutes, 3 workspace seats and 3 Professional Voice Clones.
• Business: $990 a month. 6M credits, about 6,000 minutes, 10 seats, 10 Professional Voice Clones and low-latency text to speech from 5 cents a minute.
• Enterprise: custom pricing, with custom SSO, DPA and SLA terms and BAAs for HIPAA customers.

Yearly billing costs 10 months’ price, which is 2 months free. That makes Starter $5 a month, Creator $18.33, Pro $82.50, Scale $249.17 and Business $825. Prices exclude tax.

How do ElevenLabs credits work?

Credits used to be called “characters.” ElevenLabs’ billing docs say the name changed but the value didn’t. For text to speech on standard models, 1 character of text costs 1 credit. Flash and Turbo models used through the API cost 0.5 to 1 credit per character.

The plan table converts credits to minutes at about 1,000 credits per minute: 10,000 credits for about 10 minutes, 121,000 for about 121 minutes. I use the same rate in the calculator below.

Other products use the same pool, and some are expensive. Per the pricing page FAQ:

Product	Credits used
Text to speech	1 per character
Speech to text	330 per minute
Music	900 per minute
Sound effects	200 per generation
Voice changer or voice isolator	1,000 per minute
Dubbing	2,000 to 10,000 per minute

Dubbing is the one to watch. Automatic dubbing without a watermark costs 3,000 credits a minute, and Dubbing Studio without a watermark costs 10,000. At that rate, Creator’s 121,000 credits cover about 12 minutes of dubbed video for the whole month.

What the credits look like in real work

Here’s how I’d translate each plan, using ElevenLabs’ rate of about 1,000 credits a minute. These are my own calculations, not ElevenLabs figures.

• Starter, 30,000 credits: about thirty 1-minute Reels or ads a month.
• Creator, 121,000 credits: about two hours, enough for a weekly 10 to 15 minute YouTube video plus short clips.
• Pro, 600,000 credits: about 10 hours, the first plan that fits a short audiobook in a month.

In my own use, regenerations added roughly a quarter on top of the finished minutes, so I’d budget about 1,250 credits per finished minute, not 1,000. If you’re not sure how long your script runs, my Speech time calculator turns words into minutes.

Is ElevenLabs free?

Yes. The free plan gives you 10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes of speech, with no card needed. You get text to speech, speech to text, sound effects, music and 3 custom voice slots for Voice Design.

What’s missing: voice cloning (Starter and up, per the billing docs), a commercial license, and credit rollover. Free plan audio is 128 kbps.

Can you use the free plan commercially?

No. ElevenLabs’ help article Can I publish the content I generate on the platform? says the free plan “does not include a commercial license and cannot be used for any commercial purpose.” If you share free plan audio, you must credit ElevenLabs with “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title.

Every paid plan includes a commercial license. Audio you make while subscribed can be used commercially indefinitely, even after you cancel. But audio made before you subscribed, or after you cancel, stays non-commercial. Content made with Beta Services can’t be used commercially either. Full terms are in the ElevenLabs Terms of Service.

Tip: Subscribe first, then generate. Upgrading later doesn’t turn free plan audio into commercial audio.

What happens when you run out of credits?

You have two options. You can upgrade, and unused credits move to the new plan. Or you can buy Pay As You Go credits, which the Pay As You Go docs say are used only after your plan credits are gone. The billing docs say these top-up credits last 12 months.

The pricing table lists the cost of an extra minute at about $0.36 on Free, $0.20 on Starter, $0.18 on Creator and $0.17 on Pro, Scale and Business.

Two rules catch people out:

1. Rollover is capped. Unused paid credits roll over for up to two months, so your balance tops out at 3 times your monthly quota.
2. Downgrades forfeit credits. If you downgrade or cancel, unused paid credits expire at the end of the cycle. A recent 1 star Trustpilot review is about exactly this.

What’s the cheapest way to use ElevenLabs?

It depends on whether you need a commercial license.

1. Non-commercial only: stay on Free. 10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes, with attribution.
2. Commercial, under 30 minutes a month: Starter at $1 for the first month, then $6, or $5 a month billed yearly. This is the cheapest commercial license ElevenLabs sells.
3. Your own cloned voice at studio quality: Creator at $11 for the first month, then $22, or $18.33 billed yearly. It’s the cheapest plan with Professional Voice Cloning.
4. Developers: use Flash or Turbo models through the API, at 0.5 to 1 credit per character instead of 1.

Ways to stretch any plan:

• Test a short paragraph before you generate a full script. You’re charged per generation, not per download.
• Use your credits before you downgrade or cancel.
• Pay yearly once you know the plan fits. You save 2 months.

I’m on Creator because it’s the cheapest plan with Professional Voice Cloning, and I still use it for my own narration. I started on the $11 first month.

Is ElevenLabs worth the price?

For most creators and small businesses, yes. At about $0.17 to $0.20 per extra minute, a short voiceover costs less than a coffee, and the voices are among the most natural you can buy. The plan to avoid overbuying is Pro: unless you make long-form audio or need the API’s PCM output, Creator covers a lot.

Divide each plan’s monthly price by its included minutes and the per-minute cost falls as you move up, but only by a few cents: $6 / 30 = $0.20 on Starter, $22 / 121 = about $0.18 on Creator, and about $0.165 on Pro, Scale and Business ($99 / 600, $299 / 1,800, $990 / 6,000).

ElevenLabs cost per included minute of speech, billed monthly

1. Starter$0.200
2. Creator$0.182
3. Pro$0.165
4. Scale$0.166
5. Business$0.165

So the bigger plans only save money if you use the minutes. Use half of Pro, 300 minutes, and you pay $0.33 a minute, far more than a full Creator plan.

Cheaper options exist for specific jobs. OpenAI’s API pricing page lists tts-1 at $15 per 1M characters, and WellSaid’s pricing starts at $19 a month for training narration. My ElevenLabs review compares them side by side. If you want a talking avatar to speak your audio, see my HeyGen review, and if you’re building app tools instead, my Base44 review.

Prices change. I’ll keep this page updated and show the check date at the top.