The ElevenLabs free plan does exactly one job well. It lets you find out, on your own script and your own recordings, whether the output is good enough to pay for. Try to run real work on it and you hit three walls in the first week. The credits run out, you can't publish without a credit line, and you can't sell anything it made.
We use ElevenLabs at our agency and we're affiliates. Every number here comes from the ElevenLabs pricing page and help center, checked on September 10, 2026. For the whole ladder from free to Enterprise, read our ElevenLabs pricing post.
What the Free Plan Includes
| Item | Free plan |
|---|---|
| Price | $0 |
| Credits | 10,000 a month, shared across every product |
| Custom voices | 2 |
| Studio projects | 3 |
| Voice cloning | None listed on the pricing page |
| Commercial license | Not included |
| Attribution | Required. elevenlabs.io or 11.ai in the title of anything published |
| Seats | 1 |
What you do get is the full model lineup. The same text to speech models, the same Scribe transcription engine, and the same Voice Library the paid tiers use. The free plan isn't a worse product, it's a small, non-commercial slice of the same one. That's what makes it a fair trial.
What 10,000 Credits Buy
| Job | Credit cost | What 10,000 covers |
|---|---|---|
| Text to speech | About 1 credit per character | About 10,000 characters, roughly 1,600 words |
| Scribe transcription | 330 credits per minute | About 30 minutes of audio |
| Dubbing | 2,000 to 10,000 credits per minute | 1 to 5 minutes |
Thirty minutes of Scribe is the most useful thing on that list. Upload one real client call, check the speaker labels and the names it gets wrong, and you know whether it beats whatever you're using now. We did exactly that before paying, and Scribe is the part of ElevenLabs we still use most. The YouTube transcription guide shows the same test on public audio.
Sixteen hundred words of speech is one long ad read or two short ones. Enough to hear a voice on your copy. Not enough to produce a week of content.
Spend the trial on purpose. Ten thousand credits is one experiment, not ten. Pick the job you'd actually pay for, run your own material through it, and don't touch the rest of the platform until you've decided.
The Catch, No Commercial License
The ElevenLabs help center is blunt about it. The free plan "cannot be used for any commercial purpose." That covers client work, ads, monetized YouTube, paid courses, and sponsored podcasts. It also covers the quiet cases, like a voiceover on your own company's landing page. That's commercial.
- Attribution is mandatory. Anything you publish from the free plan needs "elevenlabs.io" or "11.ai" in the title. Not the description, the title.
- The license follows the file, not the account. A voiceover generated on Free stays non-commercial even after you upgrade. If you plan to sell it, regenerate it on the paid plan.
- The cancel trap runs both ways. Generate on Creator, cancel, fix a typo on Free, and the second file has no license. Keep the paid plan running through the last revision.
The Creator plan post walks through the full commercial use rules, including the beta-feature exclusion that applies on paid plans too.
Voice Cloning on the Free Plan
The pricing page lists no voice cloning on Free as of September 10, 2026. Instant Voice Cloning, the 1 to 2 minute version, starts at Starter for $6. Professional Voice Cloning, the 30 minutes and up version that sounds like you, starts at Creator for $22. If your reason for trying ElevenLabs is to hear your own voice read your own copy, the free plan won't answer that question. Our voice cloning guide covers what each type needs and which plan to be on.
Free vs Starter, the $6 Question
| Item | Free | Starter |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $6 a month, $5 on annual |
| Credits | 10,000 | 30,000 |
| Commercial license | No | Yes |
| Attribution required | Yes | No |
| Voice cloning | None listed | Instant Voice Cloning |
| Custom voices | 2 | 3 |
| Dubbing Studio | Not listed | Yes |
Six dollars buys three times the credits, the commercial license, the end of the attribution rule, and Instant cloning. If you've finished the trial and you're going to publish anything at all, Starter is the floor. The only reason to stay on Free is that you're still deciding.
Who the Free Plan Is For
- Anyone evaluating Scribe against Otter, Fireflies, or a wearable. Thirty minutes is enough to compare.
- Marketers who want to hear a library voice on their own copy before committing.
- Students and hobby projects that will never be published or sold.
- Agencies. Nothing from Free can go into client work.
- Creators who monetize. YouTube ad revenue counts as commercial.
- Anyone who wants their own cloned voice. That starts at Starter for Instant and Creator for Professional.
Verdict
The free plan is a good trial and a bad workspace. Spend the 10,000 credits on your own audio and your own script, then decide.
Never publish free-plan output for money. No license, attribution required, and the restriction stays on the file after you upgrade.
Starter at $6 fixes all of it. If you're going to publish anything, that's the floor. Creator at $22 if you want your own voice.