ElevenLabs Pricing 2026: Plans, Credits, and Is It Worth It?
Last updated: October 2026
This post contains affiliate links, and we may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no cost to you. ElevenLabs is one of them. See our Affiliate Disclosure. Pricing as of October 2026.
ElevenLabs costs $6 a month for Starter, the cheapest plan with a commercial license and instant voice cloning, and $22 for Creator, which adds professional cloning and about 121 minutes of speech a month. Buy Starter for intros and ad reads. Creator is where narrated episodes begin. Free is a test drive, and nothing made on it can go into a monetized show. The catch is the meter: ElevenLabs charges for every generation, so retakes spend credits.
This guide is built from ElevenLabs’ own pricing page, documentation, help center, and terms, read on October 12, 2026, not from a listening test. It covers prices and rules. It says nothing about how the voices sound.
Key takeaways
- ElevenLabs Starter costs $6 a month, or $60 a year, and includes 30,000 credits (about 30 minutes of speech), a commercial license, and Instant Voice Cloning.
- ElevenLabs Creator costs $22 a month, or $220 a year, includes 121,000 credits (about 121 minutes), and is the cheapest plan with Professional Voice Cloning.
- The ElevenLabs free plan gives 10,000 credits a month with no commercial license, and anything published from it needs “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title.
- A 60-minute narration is about 60,000 characters, which costs 60,000 ElevenLabs credits in the web app, or about half of a Creator month.
- ElevenLabs bills its API separately in dollars, at $0.08 per 1,000 characters on v4, v3, and v2 Multilingual and $0.04 on Flash and Turbo.
- ElevenLabs’ help center offers a refund only within 14 days of payment and only if no credits were used, while its terms of service say all sales are final.
How much does ElevenLabs cost in 2026?
ElevenLabs sells six self-serve plans, Free, Starter, Creator, Pro, Scale, and Business, plus a custom Enterprise tier. Yearly billing charges ten months for twelve. The figures below come from ElevenLabs’ pricing page, on its ElevenCreative tab, which prices the web apps, checked with both billing toggles on October 12, 2026, and again on October 19, 2026. On October 19 the Creator card also showed a first-month discount: $22 struck through and $11 for the first month. On October 26 that offer was still up, and the Starter card showed one too: $6 struck through, $1 for the first month, and a badge saying it runs until November 1. Check whether the $1 Starter month is still on. ElevenLabs prints only the per-month rate on yearly billing, so the yearly totals and per-minute figures are our math.
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Yearly total | Credits a month | Minutes ElevenLabs lists | Per minute, monthly / yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | $0 | 10,000 | About 10 | Not applicable |
| Starter | $6 | $5 a month | $60 | 30,000 | About 30 | $0.20 / $0.17 |
| Creator | $22 | $18.33 a month | $220 | 121,000 | About 121 | $0.18 / $0.15 |
| Pro | $99 | $82.50 a month | $990 | 600,000 | About 600 | $0.17 / $0.14 |
| Scale | $299 | $249.17 a month | $2,990 | 1,800,000 | About 1,800 | $0.17 / $0.14 |
| Business | $990 | $825 a month | $9,900 | 6,000,000 | About 6,000 | $0.17 / $0.14 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Not published |
What each plan adds, from the page’s own comparison tables:
| Plan | Commercial license | Voice cloning | WAV or PCM at 44.1 kHz | Seats | Extra minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | No | None | No | 1 | About $0.36 |
| Starter | Yes | Instant | No | 1 | About $0.20 |
| Creator | Yes | Instant and 1 professional | No | 1 | About $0.18 |
| Pro | Yes | Instant and 1 professional | Yes | 1 | About $0.17 |
| Scale | Yes | Instant and 3 professional | Yes | 3 | About $0.17 |
| Business | Yes | Instant and 10 professional | Yes | 10 | About $0.17 |
Prices exclude taxes, and ElevenLabs accepts credit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. The page has two other tabs: ElevenAgents, for conversational voice agents, which this guide skips, and ElevenAPI, covered below.
How many minutes of audio do ElevenLabs credits buy?
About one minute for every 1,000 credits. In the web app, ElevenLabs charges 1 credit per text character, and its pricing table pairs 121,000 credits with about 121 minutes. Spaces, punctuation, and audio tags all count as characters. The pricing FAQ lists cheaper rates of 0.5 to 1 credit per character for Flash, Turbo, and V2.5 models, but only for API use, and the page prints no separate web rate for the newer v4 model. The pricing page’s comparison table does list Eleven v4 on every plan, Free included. The math below uses 1 credit per character.
ElevenLabs’ model documentation gives the same ratio from the other side: a 10,000-character request on v4 is about 10 minutes of audio. Here is a worked example using only those published numbers. It assumes 1,000 characters a minute and a single generation of every line.
| Job | Characters and credits | Share of a Creator month | On Creator, monthly / yearly | On Starter, monthly / yearly | API at list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-minute intro and ad read | 10,000 | 8% | $1.82 / $1.52 | $2.00 / $1.67 | $0.80 |
| 60-minute narrated episode | 60,000 | 50% | $10.91 / $9.09 | $12.00 / $10.00 (two months of credits) | $4.80 |
The math: 10,000 credits divided by Creator’s 121,000, times $22, is $1.82. On yearly billing the same share of $18.33 is $1.52. The 60-minute episode is 60,000 divided by 121,000 times $22, or $10.91, and $9.09 yearly. Starter’s 30,000 credits cover the intro three times over, so one pass costs a third of $6. The API column is characters divided by 1,000, times $0.08.
These are best-case numbers. ElevenLabs charges per generation, not per download, and its help center says there is no way to preview a line without spending credits. The web app allows two free regenerations when the text, voice, and model stay the same, the first take is under two hours old, and the page has not been refreshed. After that, every retake costs full price. Generate each line three times and the 10-minute job costs 30,000 credits, all of a Starter month. The three-takes figure is our assumption, not an ElevenLabs number.
Long scripts also need splitting. The model documentation lists a 10,000-character limit per request on v4 and 5,000 on v3, so a 60-minute narration is at least six v4 requests, and ElevenLabs advises splitting longer text.
What does the ElevenLabs free plan leave out?
Commercial rights, instant cloning, and most of the minutes. Free gives 10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes of speech, with no rollover, 3 custom voice slots that work only for Voice Design, 2 concurrent requests, and 3 Studio projects. Dubs made on Free are watermarked, per ElevenLabs’ help center. The pricing table lists an extra minute at about $0.36 on Free against about $0.20 on Starter.
The rule that matters to a podcaster is that Free is non-commercial. ElevenLabs’ terms say a free user may use the services only for non-commercial purposes. If you publish audio made on Free, or made while signed out, the help center requires “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title. Use Free to hear the voices and test one script. Do not build the show on it.
Can you use ElevenLabs audio in a monetized podcast?
Yes, on any paid plan, starting with Starter at $6 a month. ElevenLabs’ help center says every paid plan includes a commercial license, provided you are not using a Beta service, you hold the necessary rights to the generated content, and it complies with the law and ElevenLabs’ terms. Its terms of service split users into free users, who may use the services only for non-commercial purposes, and paid users, who may use them commercially.
The license follows the subscription, not the account. Audio generated during a paid subscription stays commercially usable after you cancel. Audio generated outside a paid subscription, before or after, does not become commercial later. ElevenLabs does not say on the pages we read whether pay-as-you-go top-ups on a Free account count as a paid plan, so get support’s answer in writing before relying on top-ups alone.
Two more checks. Some products carry Service-Specific Terms, which the help center tells you to read before commercial use. And a sponsor’s contract may call for a human host read, a question the ElevenLabs license does not settle.
Which ElevenLabs plan do you need for voice cloning?
Starter for an instant clone, Creator for a professional one. The pricing page’s Voices table shows Instant Voice Cloning from Starter, Professional Voice Cloning from Creator, and professional-clone slots of 1 on Creator and Pro, 3 on Scale, and 10 on Business. Free has neither. Custom voice slots, which hold every voice you clone or design, run 10 on Starter, 30 on Creator, and 160 on Pro.
An instant clone is the quick one, and Eleven v4 made it quicker. ElevenLabs’ v4 launch post says an instant clone can now capture a voice from just 10 seconds of audio, and the instant cloning docs set the same floor: each uploaded file at least 5 seconds long, 10 seconds in total. That is the minimum, not the target. The same docs still recommend 1 to 2 minutes of clean audio and warn that more than 2 to 3 minutes adds little and can make the clone less stable. You confirm that you have the right and consent to clone the voice.
A professional clone is the trained one. ElevenLabs’ documentation sets a bare minimum of 30 minutes of clean audio and recommends 2 to 3 hours for the best result, and training takes roughly 3 to 6 hours. It works only on your own voice and requires a verification step. A co-host cannot be cloned on your account, even with permission, but the help center says they can verify their own clone and share it with you by private link.
Two catches. A clone of an English voice asked to speak Spanish will likely carry an English accent, per the same documentation, though ElevenLabs’ v4 launch post says a voice now adopts a native speaker’s accent in other languages. Test one short line in the target language before you trust either page. And ElevenLabs’ terms of service (the non-EEA version, updated October 9, 2026) give it a perpetual, irrevocable license to use what you upload, your voice included, to run and improve its services and develop new ones. It promises not to commercialize your voice on a standalone basis without permission. Clone only if you are comfortable with that.
Is the ElevenLabs API priced separately?
Yes. The ElevenAPI tab prices usage in US dollars instead of credits: text to speech lists $0.08 per 1,000 characters on v4, v3, and v2 Multilingual, and $0.04 on the Flash, Turbo, and conversational variants. ElevenLabs converts the higher rate to about $0.08 a minute, against about $0.18 a minute for Creator credits in the web app. Its pay-as-you-go documentation says API usage has lower rates than web app usage.
Pay as you go needs no subscription. The tab lists it as no commitment, and the docs set a $5 minimum top-up in Developer settings. It works on every self-serve plan, Free included, and it is spent after a plan’s included credits run out. Top-up credits expire 12 months after purchase, the terms say prepaid credits are non-refundable, and generation pauses if the balance hits $0 with Auto Top Up off.
The same tab shows what each subscription includes at API rates: 75,000 characters on Starter and 275,000 on Creator for v3 and v2 Multilingual, which the page labels about 75 and 275 minutes. That beats the 30 and 121 minutes in the web app because the two are metered at different rates. Free regenerations exist only in the web app. Most podcasters can skip the API. It matters if you generate audio by script or through an automation tool that asks for an API key.
What does it cost to dub an episode?
A Creator month covers about 40 minutes of watermark-free automatic dubbing, and extra minutes run about $0.55. Starter is the wrong plan for it. Dubbing draws from the same credit pool, and the pricing page’s dubbing tables list watermark-free automatic dubbing (v1) only from Creator, with 200 minutes on Pro and extra minutes at $0.50 on Pro and above. Starter shows an X for watermark-free dubbing and lists only watermarked minutes, 15 automatic and 6 in Dubbing Studio.
The newer Dubbing v2 gets far fewer minutes: 9 on Creator, with extra minutes at $2.45. Dubbing Studio without a watermark gets 12 on Creator. The pricing page now settles the watermark question for v2. Dubbing v2 costs 13,500 credits a minute on paid plans, and only dubs made on Free carry a watermark, so a Starter dub on v2 comes out clean. Starter’s 30,000 credits buy only about 2 minutes of v2 dubbing, though. Dubbing Studio, the v1 editor, is in maintenance mode with critical bug fixes only, per ElevenLabs’ dubbing docs. A 40-minute episode dubbed once with v1 fits inside a Creator month. A 60-minute episode runs 20 minutes over, about $11 on top of the plan.
On the API, dubbing v1 without a watermark lists $0.50 a minute and v2 lists $2.20, so 60 minutes is $30 or $132. The API FAQ says dubbing is billed per source audio minute and does not say how extra target languages are counted.
What are the catches in ElevenLabs pricing?
Credits expire. Monthly credits reset each billing cycle, and unused ones roll over for up to two months while you stay on the same plan, so a balance tops out at three times the monthly quota. That is 90,000 on Starter. Cancel or downgrade and unused credits vanish at the end of the cycle. Free has no rollover at all.
A yearly plan is a 12-month commitment with one early exit. ElevenLabs says downgrading or canceling a yearly plan takes effect only at the end of the annual cycle, and unused credits are lost then. It does not allow pausing a paid plan. The way out is the 14-day refund window below. Start monthly, then move to yearly once you know your usage, since ElevenLabs carries unused credits into the first yearly month.
Seats are tight. Free through Pro include 1 seat, Scale 3, and Business 10. The help center says admins on Pro, Scale, and Business can buy more full seats up to 11, and it prints no price for them. Every self-serve plan also includes 20 Basic Seats, built mainly for agent and API work, and a Basic Seat user can spend at most 50,000 credits per billing cycle in the web apps, drawn from the shared pool. Concurrent requests run from 2 on Free to 25 on Business, which a solo show rarely hits.
Lossless output costs more. The pricing page marks WAV and PCM at 44.1 kHz from Pro, at $99 a month, and lists 128 or 192 kbps audio on the cheaper plans. The help center’s format article does not match the table in every detail, so confirm the output you need before settling on a cheaper plan. Our guide to podcast file formats and bitrate explains when it matters.
Last, top-up credits are stored as dollars and converted at your plan’s rate, so downgrading shrinks your credit count even though you spent nothing. The terms let ElevenLabs change prices by posting new ones, and a plan renews at the price then in force. To object, cancel at least 7 days before the change takes effect.
How does ElevenLabs compare with Murf and Descript on price?
On the same basis, ElevenLabs Creator costs less per minute than Murf Creator, and Descript does not publish a per-minute figure for AI speech. Murf and Descript prices come from Murf’s pricing page (Studio tab) and Descript’s pricing page, both checked October 12, 2026. “Per minute” is a plan’s price divided by the minutes it includes, used in full.
| ElevenLabs Creator | Murf Creator | Descript Hobbyist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billed monthly | $22 | $29 | $24 |
| Billed yearly | $18.33 a month ($220) | $19 a month ($228) | $16 a month |
| Voice included | 121,000 credits, about 121 minutes a month | 2 hours a month on monthly billing, 24 hours a year on yearly billing | 400 AI credits a month, minutes of speech not published |
| Per minute, monthly / yearly | About $0.18 / $0.15 | About $0.24 / $0.16 | Not published |
| Cloning your own voice | Instant clone on Starter, professional clone on Creator | Custom voice clones listed as an Enterprise add-on | “AI Speech with custom voice clones” listed on the plan |
| Pay-as-you-go API, per 1,000 characters | $0.08, or $0.04 on Flash and Turbo | $0.03 (Gen2) or $0.01 (Falcon) | Not on the pricing page |
The units differ. ElevenLabs sells characters, Murf sells hours of generated speech, and Descript sells AI credits shared across every AI tool in its app. Descript’s help center says longer text-to-speech output and more advanced models cost more credits, and the pages we read give no credits-per-minute rate, so pricing a Descript voice job means generating a minute and checking the Usage tab. Our AI voice generator roundup covers which tool fits which podcast job, and our Descript pricing breakdown covers its tiers.
How do you cancel ElevenLabs, and can you get a refund?
Open the profile menu, choose Subscription, then Billing, then Modify Plan, then Cancel Plan, and confirm. Per ElevenLabs’ billing documentation, the cancellation takes effect at the end of the current cycle, the account then drops to Free, and unused credits are lost. Nothing is deleted unless you delete it, and Resume subscription undoes the cancellation until the cycle ends. Cancel before the renewal date. A cancellation made after a new cycle starts keeps the plan running through that cycle.
Refunds depend on which ElevenLabs page you read. The billing documentation says you are eligible if you ask within 14 days of payment and used no credits in that period. You email support from your account address and give a reason. The terms of service say all sales are final and refunds come at ElevenLabs’ sole discretion, and that prepaid credit purchases are non-refundable. Treat the 14-day, zero-credits rule as the best case.
So test on the Free plan first. Generating even one line on a paid cycle you later want refunded breaks the zero-credits condition.
Checked against ElevenLabs’ pricing page (ElevenCreative and ElevenAPI tabs, monthly and yearly billing), billing and pay-as-you-go documentation, help center, and terms of service, plus Murf’s and Descript’s pricing pages, October 12, 2026.
Is ElevenLabs worth it for a podcast?
For short produced segments, yes. A $6 Starter plan covers an instant clone of your own voice, a commercial license, and about 30 minutes of speech, which is more than a monthly intro, outro, and a few ad reads need unless you retake every line. At $60 a year it is the lowest-risk way to find out whether an AI voice fits your show.
For a fully narrated weekly show, it works, but budget for the meter. Four 60-minute episodes a month is about 240,000 credits. Creator covers 121,000, and the other 119 minutes at about $0.18 add roughly $21, so about $43 a month on monthly billing before any retakes. By those printed rates, Pro at $99 wins only above roughly 550 minutes a month. The API would price the same 240 minutes near $19, if you can use it and the license question is settled.
The downsides are the ones above: retakes cost full price, credits lapse when you cancel, yearly plans lock you in, and Free cannot carry a monetized show. If your show is two people talking, there is nothing here for you.
Which ElevenLabs plan should you buy?
Intros, outros, and ad reads in your own voice: Starter, $60 a year or $6 a month. It carries the commercial license and the instant clone. See ElevenLabs’ plans. The downside: 30,000 credits disappear fast if you retake lines, and there is no professional clone.
A narrated or solo scripted show: Creator, $220 a year or $22 a month. About 121 minutes covers two 60-minute episodes if each line is generated once, and extra minutes run about $0.18. Check Creator’s current price. The downside: scripts must be split into requests, and the retake meter can double your bill.
Dubbed episodes: Creator at minimum. Starter’s dubs on the newer Dubbing v2 carry no watermark, but its credits cover only about 2 minutes. Past 40 minutes a month, look at Pro or the API. The downside: that 40-minute figure is for the older v1 model, which ElevenLabs now calls legacy. On Dubbing v2, at 13,500 credits a minute, a Creator month covers only about 9 minutes.
Just testing: Free. Nothing from it can be used commercially, and published audio needs “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title.
FAQ
How much is ElevenLabs per month? Starter is $6 billed monthly or $5 a month billed yearly ($60). Creator is $22 or $18.33 ($220). Pro is $99 or $82.50 ($990). Scale is $299 or $249.17, and Business is $990 or $825. Free costs nothing, and Enterprise is custom. Prices exclude taxes.
How much does ElevenLabs cost per minute? In the web app, about 18 cents a minute on Creator and 20 cents on Starter with monthly billing, or about 15 and 17 cents with yearly billing, if you use every credit. ElevenLabs counts 1,000 credits as about a minute. Through the API, text to speech lists $0.08 per 1,000 characters, about 8 cents a minute, or $0.04 on Flash and Turbo.
Can I use ElevenLabs for free and monetize the audio? You can use it free, with 10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes. You cannot monetize that audio. Commercial use starts with a paid plan, and free-plan audio you publish needs “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title.
Do ElevenLabs credits roll over? On paid plans, yes, for up to two months while you stay on the same plan, with a balance cap of three times the monthly quota. Free does not roll over, and canceling or downgrading forfeits unused credits at the end of the cycle. Pay-as-you-go top-ups are separate and expire 12 months after purchase.
Does ElevenLabs offer a refund? Its help center says yes if you ask within 14 days of payment and used no credits in that period. Its terms of service say all sales are final and refunds are at its sole discretion, so ask early and generate nothing first.
