ElevenLabs makes the best AI voices on the market. That is not controversial -- listen to any side-by-side comparison and ElevenLabs wins on naturalness every time. But their pricing is confusing because they measure in "characters" instead of minutes, and the per-character cost varies wildly by plan. Let me translate it all into real money.
ElevenLabs Plans (February 2026)
Free: $0/month
- 10,000 characters per month (~10 minutes of audio)
- Access to pre-made voices only
- Standard quality (not the highest tier)
- Speech-to-speech available
- No voice cloning
- No commercial license
- Attribution required
Honest take: The free plan is genuinely useful for testing. 10 minutes is enough to generate a few sample clips and evaluate whether ElevenLabs quality meets your needs. But you cannot use the output commercially, so this is evaluation only.
Starter: $5/month
- 30,000 characters per month (~30 minutes of audio)
- 3 custom voice clones
- Commercial license included
- API access
- Highest quality voices
Honest take: $5/month for commercial-grade AI voice is remarkable. The catch is 30 minutes goes fast. A single podcast episode is 30-60 minutes. A set of IVR prompts for a phone system is 10-20 minutes. Starter works if you are generating a handful of voice clips per month. Not for ongoing content production.
Creator: $22/month
- 100,000 characters per month (~100 minutes of audio)
- 10 custom voice clones
- Professional Voice Cloning (higher quality cloning)
- API access with higher rate limits
- Usage analytics
Honest take: Creator is the first plan that makes sense for regular business use. 100 minutes per month covers 3-4 podcast episodes, a month of social media video narration, or a complete set of IVR prompts plus training materials. The Professional Voice Cloning is a significant upgrade over Starter -- it captures voice nuances much better.
Pro: $99/month (or $792/year)
- 500,000 characters per month (~500 minutes / 8+ hours of audio)
- 30 custom voice clones
- Highest API rate limits
- Priority queue (faster generation)
- 48kHz audio output (studio quality)
- Projects feature for long-form content
Honest take: Pro is the sweet spot for businesses doing serious voice work. At $0.20/minute, it is 60% cheaper per minute than Creator. Eight hours of audio per month covers most use cases: weekly podcast episodes, daily social media clips, customer-facing IVR systems, and e-learning content. This is the plan most of our clients end up on.
Scale: $330/month (or $2,640/year)
- 2,000,000 characters per month (~2,000 minutes / 33+ hours of audio)
- 100+ custom voice clones
- Highest priority processing
- Volume pricing on overages
- Dedicated support
Honest take: Scale is for production studios, large e-learning platforms, and companies generating voice content at industrial volumes. At $0.165/minute, it is the best per-minute rate. But 33 hours of audio per month is a LOT. You need to be running a genuine content factory to justify this.
Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Custom character limits
- SLA guarantees
- Dedicated infrastructure
- Custom voice model training
- On-premise deployment options
- Compliance and security features
Cost Per Minute (The Number That Actually Matters)
ElevenLabs prices in characters, but you think in minutes. Here is the translation (assuming ~1,000 characters per minute of speech at normal pace):
- Free: $0/minute (but only 10 min/month, no commercial use)
- Starter: ~$0.17/minute ($5 ÷ 30 min)
- Creator: ~$0.22/minute ($22 ÷ 100 min)
- Pro: ~$0.20/minute ($99 ÷ 500 min)
- Scale: ~$0.165/minute ($330 ÷ 2,000 min)
Compare this to human voiceover artists: $100-500 per finished hour on platforms like Voices.com. ElevenLabs Pro at $0.20/minute = $12/hour. That is 8-40x cheaper than human voiceover. And you get instant turnaround instead of 2-5 business days.
ElevenLabs for Voice Agents (The Hidden Use Case)
Most pricing articles focus on text-to-speech for content. But ElevenLabs also powers real-time voice agents -- AI phone systems that sound human. This uses different pricing:
- Voice agent minutes are billed per-second of conversation
- Typical cost: $0.08-0.15/minute depending on the model
- This is separate from your character quota
- Requires API integration (not available through the web UI)
For voice agent pricing comparisons, see our ElevenLabs vs Synthflow comparison.
What We Spend on ElevenLabs
Our agency ElevenLabs bill for January 2026:
- Pro plan: $99/month
- Overage characters (~200K extra): $24
- Voice agent API usage (3 client deployments): $180
- Total: $303/month
This powers voice content for 6 clients, IVR systems for 2, and real-time voice agents for 3. If we hired voiceover talent for the same volume, we would be spending $3,000-5,000/month.
We implement ElevenLabs for IVR systems, voice agents, content narration, and more. See our voice AI services or browse our ElevenLabs implementation page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ElevenLabs free?
Yes, there is a free plan with 10,000 characters (~10 minutes) per month. But it does not include commercial usage rights, so you cannot use the generated audio in business content, ads, or products.
What does "characters" mean in ElevenLabs pricing?
Characters are the text input you send to generate speech. One character = one letter, space, or punctuation mark. A typical English sentence is about 80-100 characters. Roughly 1,000 characters = 1 minute of speech at normal speaking pace.
Can I use ElevenLabs to clone someone's voice?
Yes, on Creator and above. You need to upload audio of the voice and verify you have permission. ElevenLabs requires consent for voice cloning. Cloning a voice without permission violates their terms and potentially laws in many jurisdictions.
Is ElevenLabs worth it compared to Amazon Polly or Google TTS?
ElevenLabs sounds dramatically more natural. Amazon Polly costs $4/million characters (~$0.004/minute), which is 50x cheaper. But it sounds robotic in comparison. If voice quality matters (customer-facing content, brand voice), ElevenLabs is worth the premium. For internal notifications or accessibility TTS, Polly is fine.