Eleven v4 from $6 a month vs Sume's $0.0475 per 1,000 characters
ElevenLabs' v4 page lists a free tier of 10,000 credits and paid plans from $6 a month; Sume bills TTS per character. Which shape fits an occasional voiceover.
ElevenLabs' Eleven v4 page, read on 2026-10-03, lists a free tier of 10,000 credits a month ("roughly 10 minutes of audio") and paid plans starting at $6 a month with 30,000 or more monthly credits. Sume's text to speech has no plan: the catalog lists sume/tts-1.0 at $0.0475 per 1,000 characters, charged per request, with a $0.01 minimum. A subscription suits steady daily use; a per-character rate suits voiceovers that arrive in bursts.
The two are not directly convertible. ElevenLabs counts credits and says roughly ten minutes for 10,000 of them; Sume counts characters, including spaces and punctuation. Compare on the minutes of audio you actually produce in a month.
What each page states
The ElevenLabs page does not say how credits map to characters for v4, so do not assume one credit equals one character. Sume's rate comes from its public catalog entry for sume/tts-1.0; confirm it live with GET /v1/catalog as the Models overview recommends.
| Item | ElevenLabs (Eleven v4 page) | Sume (sume/tts-1.0) |
|---|---|---|
| Free allowance | 10,000 credits a month, about 10 minutes | None stated; pay per request |
| Paid entry | $6 a month, 30,000+ credits | $0.0475 per 1,000 characters |
| Minimum charge | Not stated | $0.01 per request |
| Largest single request | 10,000 characters | 20,000 characters, at most $0.95 |
How to decide
Write down how many voiceover minutes you make in a typical month and in your busiest. If both are small and close together, a plan with a free tier may cost nothing. If one month is ten times another, a per-character rate removes the plan you would otherwise size for the peak.
Whichever you choose, price the whole job. A Short also needs captions, at $0.20 per caption job for videos up to 60 seconds per Sume's video captions guide, and music at a fixed $0.125 per generation per the Music Router guide.
Sources
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