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ElevenLabs API Pricing Explained (2026): Text to Speech per Character, Scribe and Realtime Costs

The ElevenLabs API is the pay-per-use side of ElevenLabs: its text to speech voices, Scribe speech to text, the speech-to-speech Realtime API and the Speech Engine pipeline, used from your own code. It's billed in US dollars rather than the credits its web app uses: $0.04 per 1,000 characters on Flash / Turbo, v4 Turbo and v3 Conversational, $0.08 on v4, v3 and v2 Multilingual, $0.22 an hour for Scribe v2 and $0.39 an hour for Scribe v2 Realtime. Plans from Free to $990 a month don't change those rates; the fee comes back as included usage. Every figure below is from elevenlabs.io/pricing/api and elevenlabs.io/pricing, read October 22, 2026. If you want ElevenLabs to run the whole phone agent instead, see the ElevenLabs Agents pricing guide.

ElevenLabs bills its API in dollars per character, and its own tables count about 1,000 characters as a minute of speech. So Flash and v4 Turbo come to roughly 4¢ a minute, v4 to about 8¢, and the rate is the same on every plan.

The ElevenLabs API charges $0.04 per 1,000 characters on Flash and v4 Turbo and $0.08 on v4, v3 and Multilingual, about 4¢ or 8¢ a minute of speech, on every plan. Here's every ElevenLabs API price line (text to speech, Scribe speech to text, the Realtime API and Speech Engine), what 500 to 50,000 minutes of speech cost, and what each plan really includes.

What an ElevenLabs API minute costs inside your own voice agent

  • Agent's voice (text to speech)

    $0.04–$0.08 per 1K chars

    $0.04 per 1,000 characters on Flash / Turbo (~75 ms, 32 languages), v4 Turbo (~100 ms, 90+ languages, which ElevenLabs calls its best model for real-time and agents) and v3 Conversational (~280 ms). $0.08 on v4, v3 and v2 Multilingual. ElevenLabs' own tables count 1,000 characters as about a minute of audio, and you only pay for what the agent says, not for the caller's turns.

  • Caller's audio (speech to text)

    $0.39–$0.47/hr

    Scribe v2 Realtime is $0.39 an hour (about 0.65¢ a minute), billed per audio minute. Keyterm prompting, for names and product words the model should catch, adds $0.08 an hour. Batch Scribe v2 is $0.22 an hour if you transcribe recordings after the call.

  • LLM and phone line

    Not included

    The ElevenLabs API prices don't include a language model or telephony. Add your LLM's token prices and a carrier such as Twilio, Telnyx or Plivo (their pricing guides are linked below).

  • Total per minute

    about 4.7¢ to 8.8¢

    Before the LLM and carrier, if the agent spoke for the whole minute. Real calls cost less on the voice line, because it only runs while the agent talks. ElevenLabs' Speech Engine ($0.08 a minute) and its Agents platform ($0.08 a minute plus the LLM) are the packaged alternatives.

What a month of ElevenLabs text to speech costs

  • 500 min of speech a month

    Flash / v4 Turbo
    $20
    v4 / v3
    $40

  • 1,000 min of speech a month

    Flash / v4 Turbo
    $40
    v4 / v3
    $80

  • 2,500 min of speech a month

    Flash / v4 Turbo
    $100
    v4 / v3
    $200

  • 5,000 min of speech a month

    Flash / v4 Turbo
    $200
    v4 / v3
    $400

  • 10,000 min of speech a month

    Flash / v4 Turbo
    $400
    v4 / v3
    $800

  • 25,000 min of speech a month

    Flash / v4 Turbo
    $1,000
    v4 / v3
    $2,000

  • 50,000 min of speech a month

    Flash / v4 Turbo
    $2,000
    v4 / v3
    $4,000

Minutes of generated speech, not call minutes, at ElevenLabs' own figure of about 1,000 characters a minute, billed at the listed rate (pay as you go). The Flash / v4 Turbo column ($0.04 per 1K characters) also covers v3 Conversational; the v4 / v3 column ($0.08) also covers v2 Multilingual. On a subscription the plan fee is the floor and comes back as included usage at the same rate: Starter ($6) covers about 150 minutes on Flash or v4 Turbo, Creator ($22) about 550, Pro ($99) about 2,475, Scale ($299) about 7,475 and Business ($990) about 24,750 (half that on v4). Speech to text, LLM and phone line aren't counted. Want your own volume and carrier? Try the cost calculator.

Packages and add-ons

  • Free / Pay as you go

    $0

    No commitment. Access to every ElevenLabs product and model, paying only for what you use. The free tier includes 20,000 characters of Flash / v4 Turbo speech (about 20 minutes), 4 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 and 2 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 Realtime a month. ElevenLabs' main pricing page lists the commercial license from Starter up.

  • Starter

    $6/mo

    Includes about 75K characters on v4 (150K on Flash / v4 Turbo), 27 hours of Scribe v2 or 15 hours of Scribe v2 Realtime. Adds the commercial license and instant voice cloning.

  • Creator

    $22/mo

    $11 for the first month. Includes 275K characters on v4 (550K on Flash / v4 Turbo), 100 hours of Scribe v2 or 56 hours of Scribe v2 Realtime. Adds professional voice cloning.

  • Pro

    $99/mo

    Includes about 1.24M characters on v4 (2.48M on Flash / v4 Turbo), 450 hours of Scribe v2 or 254 hours of Scribe v2 Realtime. Adds 44.1 kHz PCM audio output through the API.

  • Scale and Business

    $299 / $990 a month

    Scale includes about 3.74M characters on v4 (7.48M on Flash / v4 Turbo) and 3 workspace seats; Business about 12.4M on v4 (24.75M on Flash / v4 Turbo) and 10 seats. Scribe v2 covers 1,359 and 4,500 hours. The per-character rate is the same as on every other plan.

  • Enterprise

    Custom

    Custom terms and assurance around DPAs and SLAs, custom SSO, priority support, elevated concurrency limits, significant discounts at scale and BAAs for HIPAA customers.

  • Scribe speech to text

    $0.22–$0.39/hr

    Scribe v2 (batch) $0.22 an hour, with keyterm prompting $0.05 and transcript editing $0.07 an hour. Scribe v2 Realtime (~150 ms) $0.39 an hour, keyterm prompting $0.08 and editing $0.12 an hour. Scribe v2 Medical is $0.22 an hour and HIPAA-eligible, with BAAs and Zero Retention Mode.

  • Realtime API and Speech Engine

    $0.08/min

    Eleven Realtime v1 Mini and v1 Max (speech to speech, OpenAI Realtime-compatible) are $0.08 per minute of connected audio plus tokens: Mini $0.20 in and $6.00 out per 1M, Max $1.80 and $9.00. Speech Engine, which adds ElevenLabs' speech models to your own chat agent, is $0.08 a minute. Both allow 4, 6, 10, 20, 30 and 40 concurrent calls from Free to Business; above that, burst pricing is $0.16 a minute.

  • Startup Grants

    12 months free

    ElevenLabs' Startup Grants Program offers 33M characters, valid for 12 months, with high concurrency limits and improved support, for startups building conversational agents. You apply; it isn't automatic.

  • Billing rules

    Monthly or yearly

    API usage is billed in US dollars, not credits. Text to speech is metered per character and speech to text per audio minute. Yearly billing is 10 months' price for 12 (for example Pro works out to $82.50 a month). Upgrading rolls unused credits into the next cycle; downgrading or cancelling keeps the plan until the cycle ends, then unused paid credits expire. Prices exclude taxes.

How it compares on published pricing

  • ElevenLabs Agents logoElevenLabs Agents
    Starting price
    Agents: $0.08 per minute
    Best for
    Builders who want ElevenLabs' voices and speech models in one agent pipeline
  • Cartesia logoCartesia
    Starting price
    Free; paid from $5/mo
    Best for
    Text-to-speech from a vendor focused on low latency (its own figures)
  • Rime logoRime
    Starting price
    From $0.03/min TTS (Mist v3); STT free until Nov 19, then $0.002/min
    Best for
    Low-latency TTS for phone agents, now with speech-to-text from the same vendor
  • Deepgram logoDeepgram
    Starting price
    Nova-3 streaming $0.0048/min ($0.29/hr); $200 free credit
    Best for
    Streaming speech-to-text for voice agents
  • Speechmatics logoSpeechmatics
    Starting price
    From $0.24/hr pay as you go (as low as ~$0.12/hr with discounts)
    Best for
    Multilingual transcription with language switching

Pricing explained, line by line:ElevenLabs Agents pricing →Cartesia pricing →Deepgram pricing →

TTS models compared

See all voice models · Latency and prices as each vendor publishes them.

What to check before you choose

  • Pick the price tier, then the model. Flash / Turbo, v4 Turbo and v3 Conversational are $0.04 per 1,000 characters; v4, v3 and v2 Multilingual are $0.08. For a phone agent, v4 Turbo (~100 ms, 90+ languages) or Flash (~75 ms, 32 languages) keeps you on the cheaper tier with the lowest latency ElevenLabs lists.
  • A plan doesn't buy a lower rate. Every plan column on ElevenLabs' API page shows the same per-character price, and the fee comes back as included usage. Choose a plan for what it adds (commercial license from Starter, professional voice cloning from Creator, 44.1 kHz PCM through the API from Pro) and so the fee roughly matches what you'll use.
  • Count characters, not words. ElevenLabs' tables treat 1,000 characters as about a minute of audio, so a 3-minute call where the agent talks half the time is about 1,500 characters: roughly 6¢ on Flash or v4 Turbo and 12¢ on v4.
  • Compare per 1,000 characters. On their own pricing pages, Cartesia works out to about $0.050 on Pro, $0.039 on Startup and $0.037 on Scale, Deepgram Aura-2 is $0.030 ($0.027 on Growth), Rime Mist v3 is $0.03 (Coda v2 $0.05) and Speechmatics is $0.011 with the first 1M characters free. ElevenLabs' $0.04 tier sits in the middle; its $0.08 tier is the most expensive of these.
  • Budget speech to text separately. Scribe v2 Realtime is $0.39 an hour ($0.47 with keyterm prompting). Deepgram's Nova-3 streaming is $0.0048 a minute (about $0.29 an hour) at its current promotional rate, and AssemblyAI's streaming starts at $0.15 an hour.
  • Know the concurrency limits. The Realtime API and Speech Engine allow 4 concurrent calls on Free up to 40 on Business, and minutes above your limit are billed at the $0.16 burst rate, double the normal $0.08.
  • Building a whole phone agent? ElevenLabs Agents is $0.08 a minute plus the LLM and handles turn-taking for you; wiring the API into your own stack can cost less per minute, but you run the pipeline and add your own LLM and carrier.

Questions people ask

How much does the ElevenLabs API cost?

ElevenLabs API text to speech costs $0.04 per 1,000 characters on Flash / Turbo, v4 Turbo and v3 Conversational, and $0.08 on v4, v3 and v2 Multilingual. Speech to text is $0.22 an hour for Scribe v2 and $0.39 an hour for Scribe v2 Realtime. The Realtime API and Speech Engine are $0.08 a minute (Realtime adds token charges). The rates are the same on every plan, from pay as you go to Business at $990 a month; a plan's fee comes back as included usage.

How much does ElevenLabs text to speech cost per minute?

About 4¢ a minute on Flash / Turbo, v4 Turbo and v3 Conversational, and about 8¢ on v4, v3 and v2 Multilingual. ElevenLabs' own pricing tables count 1,000 characters as about a minute of audio, at $0.04 or $0.08 per 1,000 characters.

Is ElevenLabs Flash cheaper than v4?

Yes, half the price. Flash / Turbo and v4 Turbo are $0.04 per 1,000 characters, and v4 is $0.08. ElevenLabs lists Flash at about 75 ms latency in 32 languages and v4 Turbo at about 100 ms in 90+ languages; v4 is what ElevenLabs calls its most emotive model.

How much does ElevenLabs speech to text cost?

Scribe v2 costs $0.22 an hour of audio and Scribe v2 Realtime $0.39 an hour, billed per audio minute. Keyterm prompting adds $0.05 an hour (batch) or $0.08 (realtime), and transcript editing $0.07 or $0.12. Scribe v2 Medical is $0.22 an hour and HIPAA-eligible.

Do ElevenLabs plans lower the API price?

Not per character. ElevenLabs' API page lists the same rate on Free, Starter ($6), Creator ($22), Pro ($99), Scale ($299) and Business ($990). The fee comes back as included usage, for example about 550 minutes of Flash or v4 Turbo speech on Creator, and the plans add features such as the commercial license, voice cloning and higher-quality audio. Enterprise lists significant discounts at scale.

Does ElevenLabs have a free API tier?

Yes. The free tier includes about 20,000 characters of Flash / v4 Turbo speech (around 20 minutes), 4 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 and 2 hours 30 minutes of Scribe v2 Realtime a month, with pay as you go beyond that. ElevenLabs lists the commercial license from the $6 Starter plan up.

How much is the ElevenLabs Realtime API?

$0.08 per minute of connected audio plus tokens: Realtime v1 Mini is $0.20 per 1M input tokens and $6.00 per 1M output, and v1 Max $1.80 and $9.00. Concurrency runs from 4 calls on Free to 40 on Business, and minutes above the limit cost $0.16.

Does ElevenLabs sign a BAA?

ElevenLabs lists BAAs for HIPAA customers on its Enterprise plan, and Scribe v2 Medical is described as HIPAA-eligible, with BAAs and Zero Retention Mode.

Ready to look closer? See ElevenLabs Agents’ full listing and price history → Or weigh the options in ElevenLabs Alternatives for Voice Agent TTS Compared.

Not sure which fits? Answer a few quick questions in the finder →

ElevenLabs Agents vs Vapi →Deepgram vs AssemblyAI →Cartesia vs ElevenLabs →Deepgram vs Speechmatics →Rime vs Cartesia →Deepgram vs ElevenLabs →Retell AI vs ElevenLabs Agents →

Prices from vendors' official pricing pages, checked October 22, 2026. Not sponsored; order isn't a ranking.