ElevenLabs Costs 65x More Per Character
ElevenLabs charges $0.18/1K characters on the Creator plan — that is ~$165 per 1M. SpeakEasy charges $2.50/1M. Same OpenAI SDK you already know. Natural voices, 9 languages, no bespoke integration.
Feature-by-feature comparison
ElevenLabs is optimized for the most expensive per-character pricing in the industry. SpeakEasy is not.
| Feature | SpeakEasy | ElevenLabs |
|---|---|---|
| TTS Price per 1M chars | $2.50 | ~$165 (Creator plan) |
| STT Price per Hour | $0.20 | N/A (TTS only) |
| Monthly Plan | $10/mo (covers ~3.3M chars) | $22/mo (100K chars) / $99/mo (500K chars) |
| Free Tier | $1 first month | 10K chars/month |
| Languages | 9 (35+ voices) | 29+ |
| Voice Cloning | No | Yes (Creator+) |
| Streaming | Yes | Yes |
| Word-level Timestamps | Yes | Yes |
| OpenAI SDK Compatible | Yes | No (custom SDK) |
| Commercial Use | Included | Creator+ only |
| Combined STT+TTS | Yes | No |
| Pricing Model | Flat per character | Tiered quota-based |
Pricing breakdown
ElevenLabs pricing scales punitively. SpeakEasy stays flat.
SpeakEasy
- ✓~3.3M characters included ($10 plan)
- ✓$2.50 per additional 1M characters
- ✓35+ natural voices in 9 languages
- ✓Same $10 plan includes 50 hrs of STT
- ✓OpenAI SDK — swap in one line
ElevenLabs
- ✕Only 100K characters (Creator plan)
- ✕Pro plan $99/mo for 500K characters
- ✕No STT — voice agents need a second vendor
- ✕Proprietary SDK required
- ✓Voice cloning (niche but useful)
~98% savings for a use case that actually ships
1M characters on ElevenLabs Pro costs ~$198 effective. Same traffic on SpeakEasy: $2.50. You need voice cloning to justify the ElevenLabs bill.
Swap one line of code
ElevenLabs ships a custom SDK with custom types. SpeakEasy uses the OpenAI SDK — no rewrites required.
# ElevenLabs — custom SDK, expensive per character
from elevenlabs import ElevenLabs
client = ElevenLabs(api_key="YOUR_ELEVENLABS_KEY")
audio = client.text_to_speech.convert(
voice_id="21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM",
text="Hello, welcome to SpeakEasy!",
model_id="eleven_multilingual_v2",
)
# write audio bytes to file yourself
with open("speech.mp3", "wb") as f:
for chunk in audio:
f.write(chunk)# SpeakEasy — standard OpenAI SDK, $2.50/1M chars
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
api_key="YOUR_SPEAKEASY_KEY",
base_url="https://www.tryspeakeasy.io/api/v1"
)
response = client.audio.speech.create(
model="tts-1",
voice="alloy",
input="Hello, welcome to SpeakEasy!"
)
response.stream_to_file("speech.mp3")The verdict
ElevenLabs is a voice-cloning company that also sells TTS. That framing matters — their pricing assumes a user whose core need is custom-cloned voices for narration, audiobooks, or character work. If that is you, ElevenLabs is genuinely the best product on the market.
But most TTS workloads are not voice cloning. They are ship-a-voice-agent, read-this-article-aloud, confirm-the-order-at-checkout. For every one of those, you are paying 65x what you should for cloning you will never use.
SpeakEasy runs 35+ natural voices across 9 languages, streams in real time, and speaks the OpenAI SDK. Build your voice agent on $10/month. Keep $99/month for something else.
$1 for your first month. Full 50 hours included.
Also compare SpeakEasy with:
$1. 50 hours. Both STT and TTS.
Your current speech API provider is charging you too much. Switch in one line of code.