ElevenLabs Pricing: Plans, Credits, and Which One to Choose

The short version

ElevenLabs has a free plan and six paid tiers, priced by monthly credit allowance rather than a flat rate. The plan that actually matters for most YouTube creators is Starter, at $6/month — it’s the cheapest tier that includes a commercial license. Below that, here’s how to figure out which tier fits your actual usage rather than guessing.

See ElevenLabs Plans

All plans at a glance

Plan	Price	Monthly credits	Commercial license
Free	$0	10,000	No
Starter	$6/mo	30,000	Yes
Creator	$22/mo	121,000	Yes
Pro	$99/mo	600,000	Yes
Scale	$299/mo	1,800,000	Yes
Business	$990/mo	6,000,000	Yes
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Yes

Annual billing works out to two months free (you pay for 10 months) across paid tiers, per ElevenLabs’ pricing page.

How credits actually get spent

This is the part that determines whether a plan is really enough for you, and it’s easy to skip past:

• Text-to-speech: 1 credit per character (V2 Multilingual models), per ElevenLabs’ pricing page.
• Speech-to-text: 330 credits per minute of audio transcribed.
• Dubbing: credit cost is separate and scales with minutes dubbed — ElevenLabs states the Free plan includes roughly 0.4 minutes of Dubbing v2 per month, Creator includes about 9 minutes, and Pro about 44 minutes. See our ElevenLabs dubbing guide for more on this feature specifically.

A rough way to estimate: a 10-minute narrated video script is typically somewhere in the range of 1,000-1,500 words, which is roughly 6,000-9,000 characters — meaning a single 10-minute video could use a meaningful share of the Starter plan’s 30,000 monthly credits on its own. If you’re publishing multiple long videos a month, run this kind of estimate against your own scripts before committing to a tier.

Unused credits and cancellation

Per ElevenLabs’ pricing page, unused credits roll over for up to two months (capped at 2× your monthly quota), but downgrading or cancelling forfeits whatever’s unused at the end of the cycle. If you’re unsure about committing, see our ElevenLabs cancellation and refunds guide before subscribing.

Which plan should you choose?

• Occasional, non-commercial use (testing, personal projects you won’t publish/monetize) — Free is genuinely usable, but confirm that fits your case; see Is ElevenLabs Free? Free Plan Limits Explained.
• A monetized YouTube channel, moderate upload schedule — Starter ($6/mo, 30,000 credits) is the realistic minimum; check our ElevenLabs commercial use guide to confirm this covers your situation.
• A channel that needs a cloned, consistent voice — Creator ($22/mo) or above, since Professional Voice Cloning requires Creator tier per ElevenLabs’ plan comparison. See ElevenLabs Voice Cloning for the difference between cloning tiers.
• High-volume or faceless-channel publishing — Pro or Scale, based on your actual monthly credit usage once you have a few published videos to measure against.

Full context on whether ElevenLabs is the right tool at all: ElevenLabs Review.

FAQ

How are ElevenLabs credits calculated? Per ElevenLabs’ pricing page, text-to-speech costs 1 credit per character on the V2 Multilingual models, and speech-to-text costs 330 credits per minute. Other features like dubbing consume credits differently — check the current pricing page for feature-specific rates.

Do unused ElevenLabs credits roll over? Yes — per ElevenLabs’ pricing page, unused credits roll over for up to two months, capped at 2× your monthly quota. Downgrading or cancelling forfeits any unused credits at the end of the billing cycle.