ElevenLabs pricing looks simple on the surface, seven tiers from free to $990 a month, and gets confusing the moment you try to work out what a month actually buys. That's because every plan bills from one pool of credits, and a credit buys very different amounts of speech, transcription, and dubbing.
We use ElevenLabs at our agency, mostly for Scribe transcription and the odd voiceover, and we're affiliates. This post is the plain version of the ElevenLabs pricing page, checked on September 10, 2026. Prices move, so the live page wins if anything here has drifted. For how the product holds up in real work, read our ElevenLabs review.
Every ElevenLabs Plan at a Glance
| Plan | Monthly | Annual, per month | Credits a month | Commercial license | What sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | n/a | 10,000 | No | 2 custom voices, 3 Studio projects, attribution required |
| Starter | $6 | $5 | 30,000 | Yes | Instant Voice Cloning, 3 custom voices, Dubbing Studio |
| Creator | $22 | $18.33 | 121,000 | Yes | Professional Voice Cloning, 192 kbps audio, first month $11 |
| Pro | $99 | $82.50 | 600,000 | Yes | 44.1kHz PCM output through the API |
| Scale | $299 | $249.17 | 1,800,000 | Yes | 3 seats, 3 Professional clones, team collaboration |
| Business | $990 | $825 | 6,000,000 | Yes | 10 seats, 10 Professional clones, low-latency TTS from 5c a minute |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Yes | SSO, DPA and SLAs, HIPAA BAAs, higher concurrency |
Two things jump out. The commercial license starts at $6, not at the free tier, which is where most people get ElevenLabs wrong. And the price steps are steep. Creator to Pro is a 4.5x jump for 5x the credits. Pro to Scale is 3x the price for 3x the credits plus seats. Nobody should be on Scale for the credits alone. You go there for the seats.
What a Credit Buys
A credit is one unit from a monthly pool that every product shares. The rates below are the ones we've verified across our ElevenLabs posts and they held on September 10, 2026.
| Job | Credit cost | Free (10,000) | Creator (121,000) | Pro (600,000) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text to speech | About 1 credit per character | About 10,000 characters, roughly 1,600 words | About 121,000 characters, roughly 20,000 words | About 600,000 characters, roughly 100,000 words |
| Scribe transcription | 330 credits per minute | About 30 minutes | About 6 hours | About 30 hours |
| Dubbing | 2,000 to 10,000 credits per minute | 1 to 5 minutes | 12 to 60 minutes | 60 to 300 minutes |
The word counts assume about six characters per word including spaces, which is close for English narration. Twenty thousand words a month on Creator is a lot of ad reads. Six hours of transcription is a month of client calls for a one-person shop. Dubbing is the product that drains a plan fastest, and if it's your main job, Pro is the floor.
One pool, no walls. A heavy transcription week quietly shrinks what's left for voiceover. Check the usage meter in the dashboard before you queue anything big, especially a dub.
Monthly vs Annual Billing
Annual billing charges you for 10 months and gives you 12, which is the same roughly 17% discount on every paid tier. Creator goes from $264 a year on monthly billing to $183.30 on annual. Pro goes from $1,188 to $990. Business goes from $11,880 to $9,900.
Our rule is simple. Run a month on monthly billing first. Creator's first month is $11 as of the pricing page, which makes that test cheap. If you're still using it at the end of the month, switch to annual. If you're not sure you'll be on the same tier in six months, which is common for agencies whose client mix changes, stay monthly and eat the 17%.
ElevenLabs API Pricing
The API doesn't use credits at all. The API pricing page bills in US dollars per unit, and as of September 10, 2026 the headline rates are these.
- Multilingual v2 text to speech. $0.10 per 1,000 characters.
- Flash text to speech. $0.05 per 1,000 characters, the faster and cheaper model for real-time use.
- Scribe v2 speech to text. $0.22 per hour of audio, billed per minute.
- Scribe v2 Realtime. $0.39 per hour.
Put next to the subscription plans, the API is the cheaper way to transcribe at volume. Six hours of Scribe on Creator costs you the whole $22 plan. Six hours through the API at $0.22 an hour is $1.32. The subscription earns its price on the things the API doesn't give you, the Studio editor, the voice library, Professional clones, and the commercial license wrapper for generated content. If all you want is transcripts in a pipeline, the API wins on cost every time.
Which Plan to Pick
- Free. A trial. Run 30 minutes of your own audio through Scribe, generate a script in a library voice, and decide. Don't publish anything from it commercially. Our ElevenLabs free plan breakdown covers the limits.
- Starter, $6. The cheapest commercial license. Right for a few ad reads a month and an occasional transcript.
- Creator, $22. The plan for most marketers. Your own Professional Voice Clone, 121,000 credits, 192 kbps output. The Creator plan post has the full fine print.
- Pro, $99. Only when you regularly run out of Creator's credits or you need 44.1kHz PCM output through the API.
- Scale and Business are seat plans. Pay for them when a second or a fifth person needs a login, not for the credits.
- Enterprise is for the compliance list. HIPAA BAAs, SSO, and a DPA. If your legal team is asking for those, you're already there.
Verdict
Creator at $22 a month is the right plan for most people reading this. It's the first tier with a Professional clone, and 121,000 credits cover a working month for a solo operator.
Use the API for transcription at volume. $0.22 an hour beats every subscription tier by a wide margin.
Treat the free plan as a trial. No commercial license, attribution required, 10,000 credits. Test on it, then pay before anything ships.