Price checked Oct 10, 2026
Review · AI Speech & Transcription
ElevenLabs Review (2026)
ElevenLabs review: AI voices, voice cloning, dubbing, music and sound effects, all paid from one shared pool of credits.
- Free plan: 10k credits/mo
- From: $6/mo · $5 yearly
- Creator: 121k credits/mo
- Best for: voiceovers and audiobooks
No affiliate links on this page. We have no affiliate arrangement with ElevenLabs. Every link to ElevenLabs goes to its official site, and we earn nothing from it.
Summary
Quick verdict: the voice specialist with a cheap $6 entry and generous rollover, but every feature drinks from the same credit pool, and dubbing drains it fast.
- ElevenLabs is best known for text-to-speech. The same account also does speech-to-text, voice cloning, a voice changer, sound effects, music and dubbing.
- Creator plans (the “ElevenCreative” tab): Free $0, Starter $6, Creator $22, Pro $99 a month. Business tiers: Scale $299, Business $990, Enterprise custom.
- Yearly billing is “two months free”: Starter works out to $5 a month, Creator $18.33, Pro $82.50.
- Each plan gives a monthly credit pool: 10,000 on Free, 30,000 on Starter, 121,000 on Creator, 600,000 on Pro.
- In the editor, roughly 1 credit = 1 character of text for the standard multilingual model. The compare table translates that to about 10, 30, 121 and 600 minutes of speech a month.
- Honesty note: pricing-page review. No affiliate link here: ElevenLabs’ affiliate program is free to join, but we have not joined it.
Watch: ElevenLabs in 60 seconds
Made by SaaS Finder Hub from ElevenLabs’s public screenshots. Voiceover is AI-generated.
Pricing
Source: elevenlabs.io/pricing (ElevenCreative tab), fetched October 9, 2026 at 7:41 AM ET (Monthly billing) and 7:49 AM ET (Yearly billing). FAQ answers read the same morning. Re-checked on the same page on October 10, 2026 (8:22 and 8:28 PM ET, Monthly and Yearly billing) in a full browser: no price changes. Prices in USD and exclude taxes.
| What you get | Free | Starter | Creator | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay monthly | $0 | $6 | $22 | $99 |
| Billed yearly, per month | $0 | $5 | $18.33 | $82.50 |
| Credits a month | 10,000 | 30,000 | 121,000 | 600,000 |
| Text-to-speech, approx. | ~10 min | ~30 min | ~121 min | ~600 min |
| Extra minute, approx. (as listed) | ~$0.36 | ~$0.20 | ~$0.18 | ~$0.17 |
| Commercial license | Not listed | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Voice cloning | — | Instant | Instant + Professional (1) | Instant + Professional (1) |
| Custom voice slots | 3 | 10 | 30 | 160 |
On a phone, swipe the table sideways to see every plan.
Price snapshot: Price at the time of writing this review (October 10, 2026): $6 a month for Starter, or $5 a month billed yearly. If you’re reading this at a later date, the price may have changed.
- Intro offers (updated October 24, 2026): Starter’s “$1 first month” deal is back, labelled “Until Nov 1” on elevenlabs.io/pricing: $1 for the first month (83% off), then $6 a month. (Its first run ended October 18.) Once per account. This is the price on October 24, 2026; it may have changed by the time you read this. Creator showed “$11 first month, 50% off” (then $22), with no end date. After the first month the normal prices above apply.
- Promotion banner: “3x credits included on Creator+ until October 12” for the new Eleven v4 model, and up to 2× monthly TTS credits used on v4 not counted for two weeks.
- Rollover: unused credits roll over for up to two months (at most 3× your monthly quota) while you keep a paid plan. Free has no rollover.
- If you downgrade or cancel, unused paid credits expire at the end of the cycle and the account drops to Free.
- Business tiers: Scale $299 (1.8M credits, 3 seats), Business $990 (6M credits, 10 seats, low-latency TTS “as low as 5c/minute”).
- Payment: credit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
See ElevenLabs’s official pricing
Plain link to elevenlabs.io. Not an affiliate link.
What the credits buy (from the official FAQ)
| Feature | Credit cost | On Creator’s 121,000 credits (our math) |
|---|---|---|
| Text to speech | ~1 per character | ~121 minutes of speech |
| Speech to text | 330 per minute | ~366 minutes |
| Music | 900 per minute | ~134 minutes |
| Voice changer / isolator | 1,000 per minute | ~121 minutes |
| Dubbing, automatic, no watermark | 3,000 per minute | ~40 minutes |
| Dubbing Studio, no watermark | 10,000 per minute | ~12 minutes |
Price history
| Checked | Starter | Creator | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| $6 · $5 yearly | $22 · $18.33 yearly | $99 · $82.50 yearly | |
| $6 · $5 yearly | $22 · $18.33 yearly | $99 · $82.50 yearly |
We re-check this page every month and add a row.
Features
From the plan cards, compare table and FAQ, October 9, 2026.
- Text to speech: 74 languages listed in the compare table, the new Eleven v4 model (launched September 28, 2026) and Eleven v3.
- Voice cloning: instant cloning from Starter; professional cloning from Creator.
- Studio: long-form projects like audiobooks and podcasts (3 projects on Free, 20 on Starter).
- Dubbing Studio, image and video, music commercial use: from Starter.
- Pro adds: 192 kbps audio and 44.1 kHz PCM output via the API.
- Also in the account: speech-to-text, sound effects, voice design, voice isolator and voice agents (ElevenAgents, priced on a separate tab).
Who it’s for
- A creator who needs voiceovers for YouTube, ads or courses: Starter’s 30 minutes a month for $6 is a cheap start, with a commercial license.
- Audiobook and long-form narrators: Creator’s ~2 hours a month and professional voice cloning.
- Developers building voice into an app: Pro for the higher audio quality via API, or the separate API and Agents pricing.
- Not for you if you mainly need dubbing on a small budget. At 3,000–10,000 credits a minute, dubbing eats a plan quickly.
Related & alternatives
-
Our post
MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming
Microsoft’s real-time speech-to-text model and what it costs per audio hour.
-
Our review
Fliki review
If you want the voice inside a finished video, Fliki builds both.
-
Our roundup
AI tool launches this week
Eleven v4 and other launches from the past two weeks.
The catch
One shared credit pool, and non-voice features drain it fast.
- Text to speech costs about 1 credit per character. Dubbing Studio without a watermark costs 10,000 credits per minute.
- On Creator’s 121,000 credits, that is about 121 minutes of narration, or about 12 minutes of studio dubbing. Not both.
- Plan your month around the most expensive feature you need, not the headline minutes of speech.
Verdict
- Free: about 10 minutes of speech a month to test voices. No commercial license is listed on Free.
- Starter ($6/month or $5 billed yearly): the best deal here for small voiceover jobs with a commercial license.
- Creator ($22/month or $18.33 billed yearly): right for regular narration and a professional voice clone.
- Pro ($99/month or $82.50 billed yearly): only for heavy narration or API work needing top audio quality.
Worth it if: your main job is narration or voiceover, and you want top voices with credits that roll over.
Skip it if: your main job is dubbing long videos on a small budget.
Not tested hands-on. Voice cloning should only be done with the speaker’s permission.
ElevenLabs FAQ
How much does ElevenLabs cost?
Free with 10,000 credits a month, then Starter $6, Creator $22 and Pro $99 a month ($5, $18.33 and $82.50 billed yearly). Prices as of October 10, 2026.
What is the main downside of ElevenLabs?
Every feature shares one credit pool. Studio dubbing costs 10,000 credits a minute, so Creator’s 121,000 credits buy about 12 minutes of dubbing or about 121 minutes of narration, not both.
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