Updated Nov 10, 2026 (America/New_York) · Google autocomplete: “cartesia vs elevenlabs” / “cartesia vs elevenlabs pricing”

Cartesia vs ElevenLabs

Both sell developer TTS. Cartesia bills in credits, at 1 credit per character for Sonic, bundled into monthly plans. ElevenLabs sells monthly credit plans and a dollar-per-character API. Official figures below were read on Nov 10, 2026.

Official plan prices

• Cartesia (cartesia.ai/pricing): Free $0 with 20K credits / month; Pro $5 with 100K credits; Startup $49 with 1.25M credits; Scale $299 with 8M credits. Overages, if enabled: Pro $65 per 1M credits, Startup $45, Scale $38. The FAQ says Sonic TTS is 1 credit per character, and “about 750 to 800 credits per minute of audio.” Professional Voice Clone training is free; speech from a clone is 1 credit per character. PVC slots: none on Free and Pro, 2 on Startup, 4 on Scale.
• ElevenLabs Creative plans (elevenlabs.io/pricing): Free $0 (10k credits); Starter $6 / mo after $1 first month (30k, commercial license, instant voice cloning); Creator $22 / mo after $11 first month (121k, professional voice cloning); Pro $99 (600k); Scale $299 (1.8M credits, 3 PVC slots); Business $990 (6M credits, 10 PVC slots).
• ElevenLabs API (API pricing): $0.04 or $0.08 per 1,000 characters by model.

Worked-out unit rates (labeled as such)

• Cartesia Scale included credits: $299 ÷ 8,000,000 × 1,000 = $0.037375 per 1,000 characters, or about $0.0374 per minute at a 1,000-character assumption. Official Scale overage is $0.038 per 1,000 characters.
• Cartesia Startup included: $49 ÷ 1,250,000 × 1,000 = $0.0392 per 1,000 characters.
• If you instead use Cartesia’s own 750–800 credits-per-minute range, a Scale included rate of $299 / 8,000,000 is about $0.0280–$0.0299 per minute (750 or 800 × $299 / 8,000,000).
• ElevenLabs API remains $0.04 or $0.08 per 1,000 characters, which is $0.04 or $0.08 per minute at 1,000 characters, or $0.032–$0.064 at 800 characters.

We did not invent latency or quality scores. If you need those, test both APIs. Related: ElevenLabs cost per minute.