OpenAI tts-1 vs tts-1-hd vs ElevenLabs: cost for 10,000 characters
OpenAI lists tts-1 at $15 per 1M characters and tts-1-hd at $30; ElevenLabs Flash is $0.04 per 1K. For 10,000 characters: $0.15, $0.30 and $0.40.
Ten thousand characters of speech cost $0.15 on OpenAI tts-1, $0.30 on tts-1-hd and $0.40 on ElevenLabs Flash or Turbo, from the vendors' current pages. ElevenLabs' newer Eleven v4 is $0.22 for the same text until October 12 and $0.80 afterwards.
OpenAI's pricing page lists tts-1 at $15.00 per 1M characters and tts-1-hd at $30.00 per 1M, with no per-minute rate. ElevenLabs' API pricing gives per 1K character rates. Sume does not publish a speech rate in its docs, so no Sume price is stated here.
Per 1K and per volume
Cost = characters / 1,000 x rate per 1K. OpenAI's $15.00 per 1M is $0.015 per 1K.
| Model | Per 1K chars | 10,000 chars | 1,000,000 chars |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI tts-1 | $0.015 | $0.15 | $15.00 |
| OpenAI tts-1-hd | $0.030 | $0.30 | $30.00 |
| ElevenLabs Flash / Turbo | $0.04 | $0.40 | $40.00 |
| ElevenLabs v4 (promo to Oct 12) | $0.022 | $0.22 | $22.00 |
| ElevenLabs v4 (regular) | $0.08 | $0.80 | $80.00 |
Characters per ad
A 30 second voiceover is a few hundred characters, so the per-ad speech cost is a fraction of a cent in every row: at 500 characters, $0.0075 on tts-1 and $0.02 on ElevenLabs Flash. Characters per second varies by language and pace, so measure your own scripts.
At that scale the choice should rest on voice quality and licensing, not on a price gap of a cent per hundred ads.
Sources
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