How ElevenLabs pricing works for creating AI audiobooks

According to Statista research, less than 5% of books are released as audiobooks. Traditional audiobook production can be slow, complex, and prohibitively expensive. These costs are especially difficult for independent authors and smaller publishers whose stories may never be heard in audiobook format.

It's why authors and publishers are increasingly turning to AI voice narration to produce audiobooks. ElevenLabs is the leading AI audio research and products company with several offerings for audiobook creators.

In this post, we'll detail how ElevenLabs and our ElevenReader app — our free mobile app for listening to audiobooks and distributing audio content globally — are priced to make audiobooks accessible for authors and publishers everywhere.

Understanding ElevenLabs pricing

First, it's important to note that ElevenLabs pricing is based on monthly credits, which allows you to generate audio using the number of characters in your text. You can easily find your character count, including spaces and punctuation, next to your word count in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, or to use a free character counter on the web.

ElevenReader Publishing program

• Free for authors, get started here
• No limit on character length, books must be at least 2,500 words and represent literary work
• Allows for on-demand narration in the app, but does not allow authors to generate, edit, or export their audio (requires a paid ElevenLabs plan below)
• More details on this program here

Creator

• $11 for first month, then $22 monthly
• Includes 100,000 characters (about 100 minutes of audio narration) per month
• Additional characters: $0.30 per 1,000 characters

Pro

• $99 monthly
• Includes 500,000 characters (about 500 minutes or 8 hours of audio narration) per month
• Additional characters: $0.24 per 1,000 characters

Scale

• $330 monthly
• Includes 2,000,000 characters (about 2,000 minutes or 33 hours of audio narration) per month
• Additional characters: $0.18 per 1,000 characters

Subject to change; all plans available at https://elevenlabs.io/pricing

Easily estimate your cost per audiobook

You can use our AI audiobook cost estimate calculator to find which ElevenLabs plan is right for your book.

This calculator shows estimates for using our monthly credit plans to produce audiobooks, as many authors may only need the ElevenLabs service for one month or a pre-set number of credits as opposed to ongoing use:

You can easily find your character count, including spaces and punctuation, next to your word count in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, or to use a free character counter on the web.

Hear from authors and get started today

“I was initially skeptical about AI audiobooks. After testing ElevenLabs’ quality, my doubts vanished. I have been exceptionally pleased with the result. If you're serious about audiobooks, do yourself a favor, take action now, and start with ElevenLabs.” - E.S. Martell, Award-Winning Science Fiction Author

We believe great stories deserve to be heard. Get started and create your first audiobook with ElevenReader Publishing or customize your audiobook with a free trial or paid plans on ElevenLabs.

We can't wait to see what audiobooks you'll create with ElevenLabs.