ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs is an AI audio platform for speech synthesis, voice cloning, transcription, music, sound effects, dubbing and conversational agents. Built for creators, brands and developers, it covers 70+ languages through a web studio and documented APIs.
What is ElevenLabs?
ElevenLabs is an AI research and product company founded in 2022, which entered the market with a human-like speech synthesis model and has since extended well beyond voice. Its stated vision is to make communication and creation with technology seamless, and it builds its own foundational models rather than reselling someone else's.
The product is organized into three platforms. ElevenCreative covers voice, music, image, video and dubbing for content production. ElevenAgents builds omnichannel voice and chat agents with analytics, simulation testing, guardrails and workflows. ElevenAPI exposes the same infrastructure to developers.
The model roadmap is dense: Eleven Multilingual v2 (August 2023), Turbo v2 (November 2023), Flash v2.5 (December 2024), Scribe (February 2025), Eleven v3 (June 2025), Eleven Music (August 2025), Scribe v2 Realtime (November 2025), Scribe v2 (January 2026), Expressive Mode for Agents (February 2026), then Music v2 and Dubbing v2 (May 2026). Flash v2.5 is quoted at roughly 75 ms of model inference time, with claimed end-to-end latency under 500 ms, the number that makes real-time agents viable.
Coverage is broad but stated inconsistently across the site: 70+ languages on the creative platform, 32+ on the TTS models, 29 for Multilingual v2. The voice library is described as 5,000+, 10,000+ or over 11,000 voices depending on the page. Eleven v3 accepts inline audio tags such as [whispers], [laughs], [excited] and [sighs]. Output formats include MP3, WAV/PCM and mu-law for telephony, at 44.1 kHz and 128 or 192 kbps.
Everything draws on one shared credit pool: 1 credit per character for text to speech, 330 credits per minute for transcription, 900 for music, 200 per sound effect, 1,000 per minute for the voice changer and 2,000 to 10,000 per minute for dubbing.
Scale claims include 10,000+ businesses, 7.5M+ creators and enterprises, 100,000+ developers and more than a billion people reached through ElevenAPI. Public references span Twilio, Disney, Cisco, Epic Games, NVIDIA, Revolut, Meta, Deutsche Telekom, Salesforce, Duolingo and the Ukrainian government. An Impact program grants free licenses for accessibility needs and for health, education and culture nonprofits, with an announced in-kind donation of USD 1 billion.
What it does
- Generate lifelike speech from text in 70+ languages
- Clone a voice instantly or professionally, or design one from a written prompt
- Transcribe audio with Scribe v2, with speaker diarization and character-level timestamps
- Compose music and sound effects from a plain description
- Dub video with Dubbing v2, carrying over the original speaker's emotion
- Deploy omnichannel voice and chat agents across phone, chat, email and WhatsApp
- Call all of it through the API with the Python and TypeScript SDKs
When to use ElevenLabs / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if ElevenLabs is the right fit.
When to use ElevenLabs
- Content creators producing podcasts, audiobooks, voice-overs and audio advertising
- Customer support teams deploying omnichannel voice and chat agents across telephony, chat, email and WhatsApp
- Developers integrating real-time text-to-speech and speech-to-text through the API and the official Python, TypeScript, Flutter, Swift and Kotlin SDKs
- Localization teams dubbing and subtitling video across 70+ languages
- Regulated organizations that need SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA eligibility and US, EU or India data residency
When not to use ElevenLabs
- Anyone under 18: section 4(a) of the terms of use and section 11 of the privacy policy set a minimum age of 18
- Healthcare teams handling protected health information without a signed HIPAA BAA, which section 4(h) of the terms explicitly prohibits
- Users located in countries under US embargo, named in section 15 of the terms: Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria and the annexed regions of Ukraine
- Creators expecting commercial rights on the free plan, since the commercial license only starts with the Starter tier at USD 6 per month
- Organizations that require Zero Retention Mode, which is reserved for enterprise customers and unavailable on self-serve plans
How to use ElevenLabs
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account on the sign-up page, or sign in if you already have one
- Start on the free plan, which gives 10,000 credits per month plus access to the premade voices and the API
- Explore the web interface: Studio for projects, the voice library, Voice Design, Dubbing Studio and Productions
- Pick or build a voice, by browsing the library, cloning your own, or describing the voice you want in a prompt
- Generate a first output, whether speech, transcription, music, sound effect or dub, and export it in MP3, WAV/PCM or mu-law
- For the developer path, generate an API key in the account settings, scope it to a workspace and pass it in the xi-api-key header
- Install an official SDK: Python or JavaScript/TypeScript, plus Flutter, Swift and Kotlin for the Agents platform
- To ship an agent, configure it, test it with simulated conversations, set guardrails, deploy it, then track the resolution metrics
- Move to Starter or above to unlock the commercial license and pay-as-you-go top-ups
- For teams, enable SSO with Okta, Azure Active Directory or Google Workspace, assign workspace roles through RBAC, and pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay, monthly or annually
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Recognized voice quality and expressiveness, on proprietary models trained in house
- Very low latency, with Flash v2.5 at roughly 75 ms of model inference, which is what makes real-time agents practical
- Broad language coverage, 70+ languages on the creative platform, and a single credit pool shared across every product
- A permanent free plan with 10,000 credits a month including API access, a paid entry point at just USD 6 a month with a commercial license, and unused credits rolling over for up to two months on an active paid subscription
- Documented compliance: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA eligibility, GDPR and Data Privacy Framework, with US, EU and India data residency and Zero Retention Mode
- A training opt-out you can trigger yourself, from the 'Data use' menu of your account
- A deep agent integration ecosystem, with 35 documented connectors across telephony, CRM, support and payments, plus official multi-language SDKs and public API documentation
Cons
- Credit pricing is hard to forecast: the same pool serves speech, music, dubbing and transcription at wildly different rates
- Unused credits are lost on downgrade or cancellation, and never roll over on the free plan
- No commercial license on the free plan
- The strongest compliance features, namely Zero Retention Mode, the HIPAA BAA, custom SSO and contractual SLAs, are Enterprise-only and quote-based
- All personal data is transferred to the United States for storage regardless of where the user is located
- Marketing figures contradict each other across pages: 5,000, 10,000 or 11,000+ voices, 70+ languages on the platform but 32+ on the TTS models
- No single pricing page, but three separate grids for Creative, Agents and API, no dedicated support email address beyond a help center form or team@elevenlabs.io, and no time-limited free trial, only the permanent free plan
Pricing & Plans
ElevenLabs operates on a freemium model. A permanent free plan is available at no cost and includes 10,000 credits per month along with API access. The lowest paid entry point is the Starter plan at USD 6.00 per month, which adds 30,000 credits and a commercial license. The Creative range then runs to USD 22 per month for Creator (USD 11 for the first month), USD 99 for Pro, USD 299 for Scale and USD 990 for Business, with Enterprise pricing available on quote. Annual billing is charged as ten months instead of twelve, bringing Starter down to an effective USD 5.00 per month. Separate price lists apply to ElevenAgents and ElevenAPI, pay-as-you-go top-ups are enabled from the Starter plan onward, and all prices exclude taxes, levies and duties.
- USD 0 per month
- 10
- 000 credits
- Text to Speech
- Speech to Text
- Sound Effects
- Voice Design
- Music
- USD 6 per month
- 30
- 000 credits
- commercial license
- instant voice cloning
- 20 Studio projects
- commercial music use
- Dubbing Studio
- USD 22 per month (USD 11 for the first month)
- 121
- 000 credits
- professional voice cloning and additional credits
- USD 99 per month
- 600
- 000 credits
- 44.1 kHz PCM output through the API and 192 kbps audio
- USD 299 per month
- 1.8M credits
- 3 workspace seats
- team collaboration and 3 professional voice clones
- USD 990 per month
- 6M credits
- 10 seats
- 10 professional voice clones and low-latency text to speech from 5 cents per minute
- on quote
- with custom DPA and SLA
- HIPAA BAA
- custom SSO
- extra seats and voices
- raised concurrency limits
- managed Productions
- scale discounts and priority support
- 12 months free and 33M characters for real-time conversational agents built into a new product or startup
- ten months paid instead of twelve
- giving effective monthly rates of USD 5 for Starter
- USD 18.33 for Creator
- USD 82.50 for Pro
- USD 249.17 for Scale and USD 825 for Business
- Separate price lists apply to ElevenAgents and ElevenAPI
- alongside the Creative plans above
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how ElevenLabs handles your data.
GDPR overview
The enterprise page states plainly that ElevenLabs is 'certified SOC2 and GDPR compliant'. The company is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the Swiss-US DPF and the UK extension, but the privacy policy warns that this certification applies only to the US entity and covers none of the other entities, subsidiaries or affiliates. EU standard contractual clauses are used for transfers, and a DPA is published publicly. A data protection officer is reachable at legal@elevenlabs.io, and a Brazilian DPO, Paulo Eduardo Lilia, is named. Eleven Labs sp. z o.o. in Warsaw acts as the DSA Article 13 representative; no GDPR Article 27 representative is designated, the company having establishments inside the EU through its Polish subsidiary. Data subject rights are exercised through the support form or the same legal address. Separate CCPA Notice at Collection and EU-US DPF Policy pages are published.
Who owns the data?
Section 5 of the terms of use is explicit: as between you and ElevenLabs, you retain all rights in and to your Input, and you likewise retain your rights in the Output you generate. The processing role then depends on who you are. Under section 1(b) of the privacy policy, ElevenLabs acts as data controller for individual users, and as a service provider or data processor for enterprise and business customers, governed by a DPA. For voice data belonging to EEA, UK and Swiss residents, the controller is the Polish subsidiary Eleven Labs Poland sp. z o.o., Lipska 27/22 Street, 03-908 Warsaw, Poland.
Reuse rights
Users keep the rights to what they generate, but commercial reuse of generated audio requires a paid plan: the commercial license begins at the Starter tier. On the vendor side, the privacy policy updated on May 20, 2026 states that data is collected to deliver the service, verify users and develop the models, with voice biometric data collected for verification purposes. Text input is not used to train the models without consent, and any user can opt out of training at any time through the 'Data use' menu in the 'Terms and Privacy' section of their ElevenLabs account. Section 2 of the policy also discloses that publicly available information is collected from third parties to train the models. Enterprise customers can enable Zero Retention Mode on eligible services, under which audio inputs and outputs are not kept after processing.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
ElevenLabs states that it maintains hosting and server locations in the United States, the Netherlands and Singapore, with Google Cloud cited as an example provider. Whatever the user's location, all personal data is ultimately transferred to the United States for storage, a point the privacy policy makes explicitly. For enterprise and regulatory needs, regional data residency options are offered across the United States, the European Union and India. Data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, and enterprise customers on eligible services can enable Zero Retention Mode, under which audio inputs and outputs are not kept after processing. On the jurisdictional side, the US entity is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, its Swiss counterpart and the UK extension, while EU standard contractual clauses cover transfers. For voice data belonging to EEA, UK and Swiss residents, the controller is the Polish subsidiary, Eleven Labs Poland sp. z o.o., in Warsaw.
Where ElevenLabs works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting ElevenLabs.
- Credits are shared across every product, so a monthly quota empties far faster than a per-character estimate suggests: a minute of music costs 900 credits and a minute of dubbing up to 10,000
- Credits are lost on downgrade or cancellation, and no rollover exists on the free plan
- There is no commercial license on the free plan, so anything published or monetized needs at least the Starter tier
- All personal data is transferred to the United States for storage regardless of your location, and Data Privacy Framework certification covers only the US entity, not its subsidiaries or affiliates
- Data generated about your voice is kept for up to three years after your last interaction, and biometric data until it is no longer needed or three years after the relationship ends, whichever comes first
- The terms include a mandatory arbitration clause with a class action waiver; opting out means sending a certified letter within 30 days
- No protected health information may be processed without a signed HIPAA BAA, use is prohibited from US-embargoed countries, and marketing figures vary from page to page, so verify voice and language counts against your own tests
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Getting started requires no technical setup: create an account and generate audio immediately on the free plan through the web interface. The developer path is standard, generating an API key in the account settings and passing it in the xi-api-key header, then using the official Python or JavaScript/TypeScript SDKs, or the native Flutter, Swift and Kotlin SDKs for the Agents platform. Agents demand more work: configuration, simulated conversation testing, guardrails and workflows before production. Telephony and CRM integrations are advertised as working out of the box with minimal setup. Enterprises get SSO, RBAC and dedicated engineering support.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind ElevenLabs
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free plan?
What is the cheapest paid plan?
How do the credits work?
Do unused credits roll over?
How many languages are supported?
Is there an API?
Is my data used to train the models?
Which certifications does ElevenLabs hold?
Where is the data hosted?
Can I cancel at any time?
Should you pick ElevenLabs?
ElevenLabs has become the reference point for AI audio. Founded in 2022, it has raised USD 781 million across five rounds and was valued at USD 11 billion in February 2026, with annual recurring revenue above USD 330 million at the close of 2025. Few rivals cover as much of the audio chain: speech synthesis, voice cloning, transcription, music, sound effects, dubbing and conversational agents all run on one platform and one credit pool.
The enterprise credentials are solid, with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1, HIPAA eligibility, GDPR and Data Privacy Framework certification for the US entity, plus regional data residency in the United States, the European Union and India. The entry point is just as welcoming: a permanent free plan with 10,000 credits a month including API access, then USD 6 a month for Starter, where the commercial license begins.
Two reservations deserve attention. First, the shared credit model makes real cost hard to project: a character of speech costs one credit, a minute of music 900, a minute of dubbing up to 10,000. Budgeting takes a realistic usage mix, not a headline price. Second, the strongest compliance controls, namely Zero Retention Mode, the HIPAA BAA, custom SSO and contractual SLAs, remain quote-based Enterprise features, so regulated buyers should price that tier rather than the public grid.
For creators, developers and support teams who want production-grade audio without training their own models, ElevenLabs is worth the detour. Start on the free plan, measure how fast credits burn on the workloads you actually run, and choose a tier only then.
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