ElevenLabs vs OpenAI TTS
Default scenario: At 10M characters / month, estimated bills are $1,800/yr for OpenAI TTS and $9,590/yr for ElevenLabs. That’s a $7,790 difference before accounting for different features or operating costs.
The services may differ in features, performance, support and the work you need to do yourself. Read the notes and test what matters to your setup.
Your selected usage
10M characters / month
- ElevenLabs: $9,590/yr estimated
- OpenAI TTS: $1,800/yr estimated
Estimated costs at different usage levels
| Usage | ElevenLabs | OpenAI TTS |
|---|---|---|
| Default scenario10M characters / month | $9,590/yrFree / Pay as you go · $80 per M chars | $1,800/yr$15 per M chars |
| App voice prompts1M characters / month | $950/yrFree / Pay as you go · $80 per M chars | $180/yr$15 per M chars |
| Audiobooks / video50M characters / month | $47,990/yrFree / Pay as you go · $80 per M chars | $9,000/yr$15 per M chars |
| Voice agent at scale300M characters / month | $287,990/yrFree / Pay as you go · $80 per M chars | $54,000/yr$15 per M chars |
Standard voices and quality vary a lot. Listen before you switch. Voice cloning and commercial-use rights differ by plan. Try your own numbers against all text-to-speech providers.
Side by side
| ElevenLabs | OpenAI TTS | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Premium voice platform with expressive multilingual models, voice cloning and a large voice library; API billed per character in USD. | OpenAI speech API with the steerable gpt-4o-mini-tts model plus legacy tts-1 and tts-1-hd; pay-as-you-go, no EU region on self-serve. |
| Headquarters | 🇺🇸 United States | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Parent jurisdiction | 🇺🇸 United States | 🇺🇸 United States |
| EU self-serve plan | No / not documented | No / not documented |
| GDPR DPA | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | subscription | payg |
| Free tier | Free / pay-as-you-go: 10,000 characters/month of v4/v3/v2 Multilingual (20,000 Flash/Turbo), then usage-billed. | — |
| Open source | No | No |
| Source last checked | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-06 |
| Pricing evidence | Published rates | Modeled rates |
Which should you choose?
OpenAI TTS has the lower estimated bill at every usage level we tested, from 1M characters / month to 1B characters / month.
Choose ElevenLabs if…
- you want to start free (Free / pay-as-you-go: 10,000 characters/month of v4/v3/v2 Multilingual (20,000 Flash/Turbo), then usage-billed)
Choose OpenAI TTS if…
- it has the lower estimated bill at App voice prompts, Audiobooks / video and Voice agent at scale usage
Based on estimated list-price bills and the facts above. Features, performance and support aren’t scored.
ElevenLabs pricing
Calculated from the listed vendor rates; exclusions still apply.
| Plan | Base fee / month | 1M additional characters |
|---|---|---|
| Free / Pay as you go | $0 | $80 |
| Starter | $6 | $80 |
| Creator | $22 | $80 |
| Pro | $99 | $80 |
| Scale | $299 | $80 |
| Business | $990 | $80 |
Priced from the ElevenAPI page (elevenlabs.io/pricing/api), which bills API usage in USD per character rather than in the credits of the creator plans at elevenlabs.io/pricing. The standard high-quality models (Eleven v4, v3, v2 Multilingual) list at $0.08 per 1k characters ($80/M); Flash/Turbo, v3 Conversational and v4 Turbo list at $0.04 per 1k ($40/M). A launch promotion cuts v4 to $0.022 and v4 Turbo to $0.011 per 1k until 12 October 2026, with plan allowances raised accordingly (e.g. Business 45M v4 characters); list prices are used here. Included characters at list rate: Free 10k, Starter $6 75k, Creator $22 (first month $11) 275k, Pro $99 1.238M, Scale $299 3.738M, Business $990 12.375M; usage above the allowance is billed at the same per-character rate, so every plan works out to ~$80/M and subscriptions mainly buy concurrency, seats and features (commercial licence, voice cloning). Yearly billing costs 10 months' price. On the creator-side credit plans, v2/v3 Multilingual cost 1 credit/character and Flash/Turbo 0.5-1. Enterprise adds custom pricing, SLAs and EU/India data residency (isolated environments, enterprise-only). Eleven Labs Inc. is incorporated in the US with large operations in London and Warsaw; public DPA at elevenlabs.io/dpa covers self-serve customers.
ElevenLabs plan limits, full rates and cheaper alternatives · official pricing page
OpenAI TTS pricing
Published rates converted using workload assumptions. Read the notes. Converts estimated audio-minute costs to characters at 1,000 English characters per minute. Speed and language change the bill.
| 1M additional characters |
|---|
| $15 |
Standard model is gpt-4o-mini-tts (default snapshot gpt-4o-mini-tts-2025-12-15), billed per token: $0.60 per 1M text input tokens and $12 per 1M audio output tokens. Converted at OpenAI's commonly cited estimate of about $0.015 per minute of audio and roughly 1,000 characters of English per minute, giving ~$15 per 1M characters (text input adds only ~$0.15/M at ~4 characters per token); real cost varies with voice speed, language and instructions. Legacy per-character models: tts-1 $15/M characters, tts-1-hd $30/M. No free tier or monthly allowance. European data residency exists for API projects but is sales-gated for eligible customers, not self-serve. DPA available.
OpenAI TTS plan limits, full rates and cheaper alternatives · official pricing page
Frequently asked questions
Is ElevenLabs cheaper than OpenAI TTS?
OpenAI TTS has the lower estimated bill at every usage level we tested, from 1M characters / month to 1B characters / month. At 10M characters / month, the estimates are $9,590/yr for ElevenLabs and $1,800/yr for OpenAI TTS. Estimates use list prices and leave out features, support and operating costs.
Do ElevenLabs and OpenAI TTS offer EU data residency?
Neither documents EU data residency on a self-serve plan.
Do ElevenLabs and OpenAI TTS have a free tier or trial?
ElevenLabs: Free / pay-as-you-go: 10,000 characters/month of v4/v3/v2 Multilingual (20,000 Flash/Turbo), then usage-billed. OpenAI TTS has no free tier or trial in our data.
Where are ElevenLabs and OpenAI TTS based?
ElevenLabs is headquartered in the United States. OpenAI TTS is headquartered in the United States.