Text-to-Speech API · decision tool

What ElevenLabs really costs at your usage

ElevenLabs priced at YOUR usage from verified pricing pages — 10K credits/month (≈10K characters); NO commercial license. See the free-tier ceiling, the per-unit overage, and exactly when it starts costing real money.

Prices verified 2026-07-17 against official pricing pages · fit weights are our estimates (see methodology) · share the URL to share your configuration

As of Jul 2026, with 30,000 characters of speech/month, a $50 budget for this slot, ElevenLabs ranks first for these inputs at 91% fit and a StackSays-estimated $6.00/month. Fit weights are our estimates; prices trace to official pages. Change any input below and the verdict recomputes.

Your situation

The verdict updates as you move these.

Characters synthesized / month (thousands)200 = 200,000 characters ≈ 3.7 hours of speech at ~150 wpm (our estimate)Budget for this slot ($/mo)what you'd accept paying for the TTS API layerTeam size1 = solo; bundled platforms save glue time for small teams

Clear pick for your inputs

ElevenLabsfit 91% · est $6.00/mo

The premium voice brand, sold as monthly credit subscriptions — you pay ~7-9x commodity rates for voice quality and cloning

ElevenLabsfit 91%

$6.00/mo

Comparing 1 tools head-to-head. Open the full field (4 options) →

The decision, in plain words

For a solo builder at 30,000 characters of speech/month and a $50.00/mo budget for the TTS API slot, ElevenLabs leads at 91% fit and $6.00/mo. The two rules doing the work: budget fit (~$6/mo is 12% of your $50/mo budget); batteries included (Bundles voice cloning, streaming synthesis, STT from the same vendor — fewer services to glue at team size 1).

Honest weak spot of the pick: proprietary voices — switching vendors changes how your product sounds.

Generated from the calculation above — every number traces to the sourced data; nothing here is written by an AI making things up.

Why ElevenLabs scores 91%

Budget fit (weight 30, our estimate) — ~$6/mo is 12% of your $50/mo budget+30

Batteries included (weight 12, our estimate) — Bundles voice cloning, streaming synthesis, STT from the same vendor — fewer services to glue at team size 1+12

Exit cost (weight 4, our estimate) — Proprietary voices — switching vendors changes how your product sounds-1.6

Ecosystem maturity (weight 8, our estimate) — established — our estimate from ecosystem age, docs and hiring pool+8

Free-tier runway (weight 10, our estimate) — Free tier exists (10K credits/month (≈10K characters); NO commercial license) — a cheap staging/dev lane even after you outgrow it+4

Total (lines sum exactly)52.4

Possible range −64…+64 (sum of active rule weights) · fit % = (total + max) / (2 × max)(52.4 + 64) / 128 = 91%

How the $6.00/mo estimate is calculated

Starter base$6.00

Note — 30K credits ≈ 30K characters (V2 models bill ~1 credit/char); commercial license + instant voice cloning$0

Monthly total (lines sum exactly)$6.00

What could change this verdict

No single input change within the tested range changes the winner.

Cost risk

Estimated now (StackSays estimate, not your final bill)$6.00/mo · Starter

Free-tier statusFree tier exceeded (characters synthesized 30K > 10K cap)

Official prices verified 2026-07-17; calculation is deterministic code over those prices.

At a glance

Tool	Free tier	Paid entry	Verified
ElevenLabs	10K credits/month (≈10K characters); NO commercial license	Starter $6/mo	2026-07-17

Where did you land?anonymous, one click

Data sources

Tool	Source	Verified
ElevenLabs	ElevenLabs pricing	2026-07-17

A monitor re-checks these pages for changes; when a vendor moves a price, the date updates and every verdict recomputes.

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