AssemblyAI vs ElevenLabs Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| AssemblyAI | ElevenLabs | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | Custom | $6/mo |
| Number of plans | 2 | 7 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | usage-based | flat-rate |
Pay as you go
- Universal-3.5 Pro ($0.21/hr)
- Universal-2 ($0.15/hr)
- Universal-3.5 Pro Realtime ($0.45/hr)
- Universal-Streaming ($0.15/hr)
- Universal-Streaming Multilingual ($0.15/hr)
- Sync API ($0.45/hr)
- Voice Agent API ($4.50/hr)
- Speaker Diarization ($0.02/hr pre-recorded, $0.12/hr realtime)
- Medical Mode ($0.15/hr)
- Keyterms Prompting
- Prompting ($0.05/hr)
- Speaker Identification ($0.02/hr)
- Translation ($0.06/hr)
- Custom Formatting ($0.03/hr)
- Entity Detection ($0.08/hr)
- Sentiment Analysis ($0.02/hr)
- Auto Chapters ($0.08/hr)
- Key Phrases ($0.01/hr)
- Topic Detection ($0.15/hr)
- Summarization ($0.03/hr)
- Profanity Filtering ($0.01/hr)
- PII Audio Redaction ($0.05/hr)
- PII Text Redaction ($0.08/hr)
- Content Moderation ($0.15/hr)
- LLM Gateway
- No minimum commitments
- No credit card required to start
Custom
- Custom rate limits
- Enhanced concurrency
- Enterprise-grade flexibility
- Volume-based pricing
- Custom starting concurrency limits
Free
- Text to Speech
- Speech to Text
- Sound Effects
- Voice Design
- Music
- Productions
- Image
- 3 Projects in Studio
Starter
- Commercial License
- Instant Voice Cloning
- 20 Projects in Studio
- Music commercial use
- Dubbing Studio
- Image & Video
Creator
Popular- Professional Voice Cloning
- Additional Credits
Pro
- 44.1kHz PCM audio output via API
- 192kbps quality audio
Scale
- 3 Workspace seats
- Team Collaboration
- 3 Professional Voice Clones
Business
- Low-latency TTS as low as 5c/minute
- 10 Professional Voice Clones
- 10 Workspace seats
Enterprise
- Custom terms & assurance around DPA/SLAs
- BAAs for HIPAA customers
- Custom SSO
- More seats and voices
- Elevated concurrency limits
- Fully managed dubbing with Productions
- Significant discounts at scale
- Priority support
AssemblyAI vs ElevenLabs FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. AssemblyAI uses usage-based pricing, while ElevenLabs goes with flat-rate. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. AssemblyAI: They're positioning as the developer-friendly, API-first alternative to Deepgram and Rev AI — competitive on price at scale but differentiated by the breadth of AI features (LLM Gateway, multichannel, etc.). The AWS Marketplace listing signals they're actively chasing enterprise procurement budgets. ElevenLabs: ElevenLabs sits in the premium tier of AI voice generation — they're not trying to be the cheap option, they're betting on quality and realism to justify the price delta over competitors like Play.ht or Murf. They're squarely targeting creators and developers who care about output quality enough to pay for it.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for AssemblyAI and ElevenLabs and let you know when something moves.