What Eleven v4 costs per hour of audio before the Oct 12 promo ends
At $0.022 per 1K characters, an hour of narration is about $1 on Eleven v4 during the promo. Sonic via Sume is about $2.14 to $2.28 for the same text.
An hour of narration is roughly 45,000 to 48,000 characters, so Eleven v4 at the listed $0.022 per 1K characters costs about $0.99 to $1.06, and v4 Turbo at $0.011 about $0.50 to $0.53. Both prices are labelled 72% off until Oct 12 on the ElevenLabs pricing page. The pricing page text does not state what v4 costs after the promo, so budget a re-check on Oct 13 instead of assuming the number holds.
The characters-per-hour figure is an assumption: Cartesia states that one minute of audio needs 750-800 credits at one credit per character, and the same rate is applied to every vendor here. ElevenLabs publishes no equivalent on the pages read.
Cost of one hour of narration
Arithmetic: 60 min x 750 = 45,000 characters and 60 x 800 = 48,000. At $0.022 per 1K: 45 x 0.022 = $0.99 and 48 x 0.022 = $1.056.
| Model | Per 1K characters | Per hour of audio |
|---|---|---|
| Eleven v4 Turbo (promo through Oct 12) | $0.011 | $0.495 to $0.528 |
| Eleven v4 (promo through Oct 12) | $0.022 | $0.99 to $1.056 |
| Eleven Flash/Turbo | $0.04 | $1.80 to $1.92 |
| Eleven v3 | $0.08 | $3.60 to $3.84 |
| Sonic at Cartesia list | $0.038 | $1.71 to $1.824 |
| Sonic-3.6 via Sume (list x1.25), before platform fee | $0.0475 | $2.14 to $2.28 with per-job cent rounding |
How the Sume line is built
Cartesia list is $38 per 1M credits, which is $0.038 per 1K characters. Sume bills provider list x1.25, so $0.038 x 1.25 = $0.0475 per 1K, then rounds each job up to the cent, and adds a 5.5% platform fee on customer spend (policy live since 2026-09-22; the fee is not in the table).
A job takes 1 to 20,000 characters, so an hour of 45,000 characters is three jobs: 20,000 + 20,000 + 5,000. The first two cost $0.95 each (20 x 0.0475), the third 5 x 0.0475 = $0.2375, rounded to $0.24, for $2.14 in total. For 48,000 characters the third job is 8 x 0.0475 = $0.38 and the total is $2.28.
Other promo details on the pages
- Creator+ subscribers get 3x credits until Oct 12 (Eleven v4 announcement).
- The Eleven free plan is 10,000 credits a month, and Premium is listed at $6 a month for 30,000+ credits (Eleven v4 page).
- Sume does not ship Eleven v4. The Sume line above is Sonic only, so the comparison is price, not like-for-like voice quality.
What to do before Oct 12
If a v4 project is queued, batch it before the promo ends and keep the rendered files. A re-render after Oct 12 may cost more, and the pages read give no post-promo v4 figure.
Sources
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