ElevenLabs Pricing 2026: Plans, Credits, and the Real Cost per Minute

Quick answer: ElevenLabs has a free plan and paid plans at $6, $22, $99, $299, and $990 per month, plus custom Enterprise pricing. Each plan includes a monthly pool of credits. On standard text-to-speech models, one character costs one credit, and ElevenLabs estimates roughly 1,000 credits per minute of audio. The popular Creator plan is $22 a month for about 121 minutes.

Disclosure: we make Murmur, a $49 one-time Mac app that generates speech locally. Every ElevenLabs figure below comes from its pricing page, checked on October 7, 2026. Plans change, so confirm before you subscribe.

ElevenLabs plans and prices

The Free plan has no commercial license and no voice cloning. Starter adds a commercial license and Instant Voice Cloning. Creator and above include Professional Voice Cloning. ElevenLabs sometimes discounts the first month of a plan.

How ElevenLabs credits work

• On standard models, 1 text character = 1 credit. Spaces and punctuation count as characters.
• ElevenLabs' own minute estimates imply about 1,000 credits per minute of speech, which matches roughly 150 words per minute.
• Some faster API models are discounted to between 0.5 and 1 credit per character.
• Every regeneration spends credits again. If a line needs three takes, it costs three times the credits.

That last point is what makes real-world bills higher than the plan table suggests. A finished 10-minute voiceover rarely takes exactly 10 minutes of generation. Retakes for a mispronounced name, a different emphasis, or a script change all draw from the same pool. Use the speech time calculator to convert your script into minutes before you choose a plan.

What ElevenLabs costs for real workflows

These examples assume about 1,000 credits per minute and include retakes, because that is how production actually works. Your numbers will differ, but the shape holds.

For comparison, Murmur costs $49 once. It has no credits, so a retake costs nothing but a few seconds of your Mac's time.

When ElevenLabs is worth paying for

• You need a hosted API to generate speech from a server or app.
• Your team works on Windows, Linux, or in the browser and needs shared seats.
• You rely on features such as dubbing, many languages from one voice, or a specific ElevenLabs voice.
• You generate small amounts of audio and the Starter plan covers it.

When a local app is cheaper

If you work on an Apple Silicon Mac and produce voiceovers, narration, or audiobook drafts, a local app removes the meter entirely. Murmur generates speech on your Mac after setup, includes 860+ community voices, clones a voice from a short sample, supports Voice Design, and exports WAV or M4A. It pays for itself in about two months compared with the Creator plan, and your scripts stay on your machine. Compare the two directly in Murmur vs ElevenLabs, or model your own bill with the ElevenLabs cost calculator.