ElevenLabs pricing (2026): what the credits really cost

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ElevenLabs costs $0 to $990 a month, depending on how much audio you make.

The free plan gives you 10,000 credits a month, enough for about 10 minutes of text to speech. But if you use ElevenLabs for a business video, you’ll need a paid plan: the commercial licence starts on Starter, at $6 a month.

The verdict: the plans aren’t expensive, the credits are the real price tag. If you dub instead of voicing a script, you’ll burn through them three to ten times faster.

Below, we work out three B2B situations: demos in two languages, dubbing a webinar and a weekly LinkedIn video.

How we checked: every price and credit rule comes from the ElevenLabs pricing page and help centre (checked October 2026), in dollars and excluding VAT. We didn’t test with our own account.

What do the ElevenLabs plans cost?

Six plans have a fixed price, and Enterprise is quote-based.

Here’s what the pricing page showed on 21 October 2026, on monthly billing:

Prices exclude VAT and other levies, as the page itself states.

On the pricing page, look at the credits row for each plan: you’ll see minutes and credits rise in step.

The ElevenLabs pricing page on monthly billing, checked 21 October 2026.

That’s the first thing you notice: every paid plan costs about the same per minute.

How much do you save on an annual plan?

Two months.

ElevenLabs calls annual billing “two months free”: you pay 10 times the monthly price.

• Starter: $5 a month, $60 a year
• Creator: $18.33 a month, $220 a year
• Pro: $82.50 a month, $990 a year

Rule of thumb: only go annual once you’ve used up your credits three months in a row.

What does a minute of audio cost on each plan?

Between $0.17 and $0.20 a minute, based on the included credits.

Starter gives you 30 minutes for $6, so $0.20 a minute. Creator drops to $0.18, Pro to about $0.17.

The pricing page lists the same amounts as the price per extra minute of text to speech. For the free plan, it shows $0.36.

Is ElevenLabs free?

Yes, for testing and personal use.

Not for your business.

The free plan gives you 10,000 credits a month. That’s about 10 minutes of audio, with text to speech, speech to text, sound effects and 3 projects in Studio.

But the ElevenLabs help centre is clear about two limits:

• No commercial licence: you can’t use free audio commercially
• Attribution required: if you publish free audio, put “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title

A product demo, a video ad or a video on your company page is commercial use.

So for B2B, the free plan is a sandbox, not a production tool.

Two more things are missing on Free: Instant Voice Cloning and Dubbing Studio only start on Starter. And unused credits don’t roll over to next month on the free plan.

Rule of thumb: test for free with your own script, make the real video on Starter.

How do ElevenLabs credits work?

Every product draws credits from the same pot. How many depends on what you make.

That’s true of any generative AI tool: you pay per output, not per user.

In text to speech with the Multilingual v2 and v3 models, 1 character is 1 credit. So a 900-character script costs 900 credits.

These are the credit rules the pricing page lists:

Read the table top to bottom: the closer you get to a full translation, the more each minute costs.

The credit rules on the ElevenLabs pricing page, checked 21 October 2026.

The free plan counts 10,000 credits as about 10 minutes. So ElevenLabs itself works on roughly 1,000 characters per minute of speech.

Do unused credits roll over?

On paid plans, yes, for up to two months. You can bank at most twice your monthly quota.

On the free plan, they expire. Every single month.

What happens when you run out of credits?

On new subscriptions, you buy Pay As You Go credits. According to the help centre, they kick in once your monthly quota runs out, and they’re valid for 12 months.

The old system, usage based billing, only survives on Enterprise and legacy Creator, Pro, Scale and Business subscriptions.

There, you pay per 1,000 extra credits, with a cap you set yourself.

Rule of thumb: set a cap for your first month, so you see what you really use.

How many credits do you need for B2B video?

It comes down to two choices: how many languages, and whether you voice a script or dub an existing video.

Which videos to make first? Our guide to B2B video marketing covers that.

Here are three examples. We worked them out with the credit rules on the pricing page: 1 credit per character and about 1,000 credits per minute of audio. They’re examples, not measurements.

The dotted lines show the monthly quota for Starter and Creator. Anything past a line doesn’t fit that plan.

Example 1: ten product demos in Dutch and French

Say a software company makes 10 demos of 60 seconds each month, in two languages.

• 10 demos x 1 minute x 2 languages = 20 minutes
• 20 minutes x 1,000 credits = 20,000 credits
• With a 50% margin for retakes (for example, one sentence again or a different voice): 30,000 credits

That’s exactly Starter’s quota.

One extra retake and you’re over.

So pick Creator ($22, first month $11), or keep Starter and top up with Pay As You Go credits.

A demo like that works best on the page where the buyer decides. See what video on a landing page does for conversion.

Example 2: dubbing a 20-minute webinar into French

Say you’ve got a 20-minute Dutch-language webinar and you want a French version.

• Automatic dubbing without watermark: 20 x 3,000 = 60,000 credits, fits in Creator
• Dubbing Studio without watermark: 20 x 10,000 = 200,000 credits, needs Pro (600,000)

There’s a cheaper route. Translate the transcript and have it read with text to speech: about 20,000 credits.

But you’ll lose your speaker’s voice.

For a webinar with a recognisable expert, that’s a real loss.

A webinar with a French version reaches Wallonia too. See how to set up a B2B webinar lead engine, and why translation vs localization isn’t the same thing.

Example 3: a short LinkedIn video every week

Say your marketing team posts a 45-second video every week, in Dutch and French.

• 4 videos x 0.75 minutes x 2 languages = 6 minutes
• 6 minutes x 1,000 credits = 6,000 credits
• With a 50% margin for retakes: 9,000 credits

That fits in the free plan’s credits. Subtitles and a transcript also help that video with video SEO.

But a video on your company page is commercial use, so you’ll need Starter: $6 a month.

Planning to run those videos as ads? Then you’ll often make variants. First check which LinkedIn ad formats fit your goal.

Which plan fits which situation?

Add up your situations. Demos plus the weekly video come to 39,000 credits: that’s Creator.

Rule of thumb: count minutes per month, multiply by the number of languages, add 50%.

What does the ElevenLabs API cost?

The API pricing page lists text to speech per 1,000 characters, in dollars.

• Multilingual v2 and v3: $0.08 per 1,000 characters
• Flash and Turbo: $0.04 per 1,000 characters

According to the same page, Multilingual v2 supports 29 languages and Flash and Turbo 32.

At about 1,000 characters a minute, that’s $0.08 a minute with Multilingual. So the API mostly makes sense when a developer generates hundreds of short audio clips automatically, for example for a knowledge base with audio.

For one marketer making a few explainer videos a month, a subscription is simpler.

What are the hidden costs?

The monthly price is rarely the problem. Three things do catch people out:

• Retakes: every new version of a sentence uses credits again
• Two languages: a Dutch and a French version double your usage
• Dubbing: a minute of dubbing costs 3 to 10 times a minute of text to speech

Licensing belongs here too. On paid plans you can use audio commercially, except what you make with beta services, according to the help centre.

One more thing for the Belgian market: our comparison of AI voiceover tools found Dutch and French at ElevenLabs, but no Flemish or Belgian French accent on the languages page.

So test your voice before you commit to an annual plan. If you’re cloning a real voice, read our guide to ethical AI content first.

Are there cheaper alternatives to ElevenLabs?

Yes, if you don’t need an expressive voice, such as for internal training, or if you’ve got a developer.

The other tools charge in a different way:

Current prices and voices for each tool are in our comparison of five AI voiceover tools.

Looking for AI tools beyond audio? See our list of the best AI tools for B2B.

Rule of thumb: pick ElevenLabs for the sound, Google or Azure for volume through an API.

Frequently asked questions

Is ElevenLabs free?

Yes, with 10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes of text to speech. The free plan has no commercial licence and requires “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title of anything you publish. For business video, you’ll need Starter at least.

How much does ElevenLabs cost per month?

Starter costs $6, Creator $22 (first month $11), Pro $99, Scale $299 and Business $990 a month, excluding VAT (checked October 2026). Annual billing costs 10 times the monthly price.

How many minutes of audio do you get per credit?

In text to speech with Multilingual v2 or v3, 1 character is 1 credit. ElevenLabs counts 10,000 credits as about 10 minutes, so roughly 1,000 credits per minute.

Can I use ElevenLabs for commercial videos?

Yes, on every paid plan from Starter up. You can’t use audio from the free plan commercially, not even after upgrading. According to the help centre, content from beta services also falls outside the commercial licence.

What does it cost to dub a video with ElevenLabs?

Automatic dubbing costs 2,000 credits per minute with a watermark and 3,000 without. Dubbing Studio costs up to 10,000 credits per minute without a watermark. So a 20-minute webinar costs 60,000 to 200,000 credits.

Can ElevenLabs speak Flemish?

Dutch is on the languages list, a Flemish accent isn’t. Test a few voices from the library with your own script. There’s more in our guide to AI voiceover for B2B video.

What’s your next step?

Work out next month: minutes, languages, a 50% margin. Then you’ll know which plan you need.

Want videos that bring in leads in both national languages? See how we approach content marketing, or first read how video prospecting works.

Book a call and within 24 hours you’ll get a proposal for your first three videos.