TTS cost per million characters: ElevenLabs v4 promo, MAI and Sume

Per million characters: ElevenLabs v4 is $22 on its promo until Oct 12 ($80 list), MAI-Voice-2.1 is a reported $22, and Sume TTS is $47.50.

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Per million characters: ElevenLabs v4 costs $22 during its promotion (72% off, until October 12) and $80 at list, MAI-Voice-2.1 is reported at $22 and its Flash model at $15, and Sume's TTS is $47.50 at $0.0475 per 1,000 characters.

Per 1M and per 100k characters

TTS list prices (read 2026-10-04)
ModelPer 1K charactersPer 100k charactersPer 1M characters
ElevenLabs v4 (promo to Oct 12)$0.022$2.20$22.00
ElevenLabs v4 (list)$0.08$8.00$80.00
ElevenLabs v4 Turbo (promo)$0.011$1.10$11.00
MAI-Voice-2.1 (reported)$0.022$2.20$22.00
MAI-Voice-2.1-Flash (reported)$0.015$1.50$15.00
Sume TTS$0.0475$4.75$47.50

Reading it

The MAI numbers come from Unite.ai's coverage and Microsoft's Azure pricing page was not read, so verify them before budgeting. The promotion ends October 12, so a long project should be priced at the list rate.

An audiobook of 500,000 characters is $11.00 at the ElevenLabs promo, $40.00 at list, and $23.75 on Sume.

Not in the price

  • Sume sends a plain transcript, no SSML; MAI uses SSML styles.
  • Sume's maximum is 20,000 characters per request, so split long scripts.
  • Voices, languages and licensing differ.

Splitting long text

Cut at paragraph breaks, keep each request under 20,000 characters and give each its own Idempotency-Key. Join the pieces with Timeline audio concat at $0.01 per job.

Sources

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