ElevenLabs vs Amazon Polly pricing
Both are in text-to-speech apis. ElevenLabs is billed per character (credits); Amazon Polly is billed per 1m characters. Numbers below are copied from each vendor's pricing page.
ElevenLabsFree tier or trial
- Free tier
- 10k credits/mo (~10 min audio)
- Billed
- Per character (credits)
- Best for
- Ultra-realistic AI voices for apps & agents
- Verified
- Jun 27, 2026
Amazon PollyFree tier or trial
- Free tier
- 5M chars/mo, 12 months (Neural 1M)
- Billed
- Per 1M characters
- Best for
- TTS embedded in the AWS stack
- Verified
- Jun 27, 2026
ElevenLabs plans
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 10,000 credits/month; attribution required; non-commercial. |
| Starter | $5/mo | 30,000 credits/month; commercial license; instant voice cloning. |
| Creator | $22/mo | 100,000 credits/month (~$11 first month promo); professional voice cloning, higher-quality audio. |
| Pro | $99/mo | 500,000 credits/month; 192 kbps audio, usage-based API access. |
| Scale | $330/mo | 2,000,000 credits/month; multiple seats for teams. |
| Business | $1,320/mo | 11,000,000 credits/month; low-latency, higher concurrency for production. |
- Credit model charges per generation attempt, regenerations, tests, and failed runs all consume credits
- Frequent user complaints about surprise overage charges and fast credit burn
- Pricing transparency is a recurring pain point (Trustpilot ~3.2/5 driven largely by billing)
Source: https://elevenlabs.io/pricing
Amazon Polly plans
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Standard voices | $4.00 / 1M characters | Concatenative TTS engine; free tier 5M characters/month. |
| Neural voices (NTTS) | $16.00 / 1M characters | Higher-quality neural engine with Newscaster style; free tier 1M chars/month for first 12 months. |
| Generative voices | $30.00 / 1M characters | Most human-like conversational engine; free tier 100K chars/month for first 12 months. |
| Long-Form voices | $100.00 / 1M characters | Optimized for long content like articles/training; free tier 500K chars/month for first 12 months. |
- Premium engines are expensive (Long-Form $100/M, Generative $30/M), making costs unpredictable at scale