ElevenLabs vs OpenAI pricing
Voice agents: ElevenLabs from $0.08 vs OpenAI from $0.05; STT: ElevenLabs from $0.0037 vs OpenAI from $0.003.
Last updated · prices checked daily
Voice agent platforms: ElevenLabs vs OpenAI
OpenAI has the lower listed Voice agents price: $0.05 per minute (gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech)) vs $0.08 for ElevenLabs (ElevenLabs Agents (Speech Engine)), about 38% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech) Bundled models Per-minute session price; backend model and tool usage are charged separately. | $0.05 |
| ElevenLabs Try ElevenLabs ↗ | ElevenLabs Agents (Speech Engine) Bundled models Speech models in one agent pipeline; LLM usage may be billed separately. | $0.08 |
"Try" links for ElevenLabs are affiliate links. Source links go to official pricing pages. Disclosure
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | ElevenLabs | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $80.00 | $50.00 |
| 10,000 min | $800.00 | $500.00 |
| 100,000 min | $8,000.00 | $5,000.00 |
Speech-to-text: ElevenLabs vs OpenAI
OpenAI has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated)) vs $0.0037 for ElevenLabs (Scribe v2 (batch)), about 18% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated) Token-billed; OpenAI's own per-minute estimate. | $0.003 |
| ElevenLabs Try ElevenLabs ↗ | Scribe v2 (batch) | $0.0037 |
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-transcribe (batch) | $0.0045 |
| ElevenLabs Try ElevenLabs ↗ | Scribe v2 Realtime | $0.0065 |
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-live-transcribe (streaming) | $0.017 |
"Try" links for ElevenLabs are affiliate links. Source links go to official pricing pages. Disclosure
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | ElevenLabs | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $3.67 | $3.00 |
| 10,000 min | $36.67 | $30.00 |
| 100,000 min | $366.70 | $300.00 |
Cost-per-call calculator
Estimate what one call really costs. Prices come from today's table; LLM and telephony presets are per-minute rates published by Retell and Vapi. Everything is editable.
Cartesia's pricing page puts one minute of speech at 750–800 characters; Rime says about 1,000. The talk share is your own guess at how much of each call the agent is speaking.
FAQ
Is ElevenLabs or OpenAI cheaper for voice agent platforms?
OpenAI has the lower listed Voice agents price: $0.05 per minute (gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech)) vs $0.08 for ElevenLabs (ElevenLabs Agents (Speech Engine)), about 38% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
Is ElevenLabs or OpenAI cheaper for speech-to-text?
OpenAI has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated)) vs $0.0037 for ElevenLabs (Scribe v2 (batch)), about 18% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
How often are these prices updated?
Every day. A script reads each vendor's public pricing page, extracts the listed rates and keeps a dated copy, so price changes show up in the history.