Eleven v4 free plan 10,000 credits vs Sume TTS at $0.0475 per 1,000

ElevenLabs lists a free plan with 10,000 credits each month and no credit card. Sume TTS has no free tier in this comparison; it is pay as you go at $0.0475 per 1,000 characters. If you only narrate a little, the free plan is the cheaper start. If you narrate steadily, the useful question is what a credit is worth, which ElevenLabs' page does not translate into characters on its own.

So this post does the part that can be checked: what Sume charges for 10,000 characters, and what to look for on the other side.

What does each side publish?

On the Eleven v4 page, read 2026-10-04, the free plan includes 10,000 credits each month with no credit card required, and a single generation supports up to 10,000 characters. The page does not state a credits-to-characters ratio, so we do not convert. Sume's price comes from the OpenAPI spec and the public price book.

What do 10,000 characters cost on Sume?

Ten times $0.0475 is $0.475. Because the cap is 20,000 characters per request, 10,000 characters fits in one job. A month of ten such scripts is $4.75. That is simple multiplication on the list price, not a measured bill.

• Characters come from the transcript you send, so trim stage directions first.
• Failed jobs are worth checking against your usage summary.

How do you estimate a month?

Count characters in your scripts, then multiply. This works for any script folder:

import pathlib, os

folder = pathlib.Path(os.environ.get("SCRIPT_DIR", "scripts"))
chars = sum(len(p.read_text(encoding="utf-8")) for p in folder.glob("*.txt"))
print(chars, "characters")
print(round(chars / 1000 * 0.0475, 4), "USD at the TTS 1.0 list price")

Which one should you start with?

Start free where a free tier exists and your volume is tiny. Move to a metered API when you need job ids, webhooks and 20,000 character requests. For the limits side see Eleven v4's 10,000 characters vs Sume's 20,000.