Voice, image and video
Text to speech cost calculator
Monthly cost of text to speech by characters: per-character APIs side by side with the ElevenLabs plan that covers the volume.
Prices read from the vendor pages on 2026-10-20. Arithmetic on list prices, not advice or a quote.
Saving and exports need Norwell Tools Pro, $9 a month. See what is in it. Everything above is free.
How it works
APIs bill per character; ElevenLabs sells monthly plans in credits where text to speech costs one credit a character. Below the Starter plan's volume an API is cheaper; at scale the comparison depends on voice quality you need, which no price table captures.
The formula
api = characters / 1000 * per_1k; plan = smallest ElevenLabs plan whose included characters cover the volume (1 credit per character)Worked example
With the inputs the page opens on:
- characters per month: 500000 characters
- api: openai-tts-1
gives
- api monthly cost: $7.5
- elevenlabs plan: Pro
- elevenlabs monthly: $99
- cheapest api: OpenAI tts-1
- cheapest api monthly: $7.5
- minutes of audio: 500 minutes
Sources
- https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing (read 2026-10-20)
- https://deepgram.com/pricing (read 2026-10-20)
- https://elevenlabs.io/pricing (read 2026-10-20)
Prices read from each vendor's own pricing page on 2026-10-20; the page may have changed since. This is arithmetic on published list prices, not advice or a quote. Check the vendor's page before committing a budget.
Questions
What if my volume is above the largest plan?
Related tools
Monthly transcription cost by audio minutes, with every listed API priced for comparison.
Monthly cost of generated images by model and output size.
Monthly cost of generated video by minutes: per-second video APIs against the Synthesia plan that covers the minutes.