ElevenLabs API pricing: USD, not credits, and Sume's wallet

ElevenLabs API usage is billed in US dollars, not credits. Its API pricing page says so directly and lists Text to Speech at $0.08 per 1,000 characters for multilingual models or $0.04 for Flash/Turbo. Sume works the same way at the account level: the balance is in USD, and TTS 1.0 is $0.0475 per 1,000 characters.

What does ElevenLabs say about API billing?

The page states: "API usage is billed in US dollars, not credits." That separates the API from the credit-based subscription plans on the main pricing page. Other lines I read there, 2026-10-01: Speech to Text $0.22 per hour (Scribe) or $0.39 per hour (Scribe realtime), Eleven Music $0.15 per minute, Sound Effects $0.12 per minute, and prices exclude taxes.

How does Sume's USD balance work?

The usage docs say "Balance is USD-denominated", with compatibility fields that can expose rounded cent values as credits. GET /v1/balance returns the balance, and GET /v1/usage returns a ledger. Entries can include reservations, captures, refunds, top-ups and grants. A reserved row is an estimate made before provider execution; a captured row is the billable usage after success.

What does TTS cost on Sume per request?

TTS 1.0 is billed at $0.0475 per 1,000 characters, and spaces and punctuation count toward the characters. A request tops out at 20,000 characters. For a 2,000-character script the cost is two units of the per-1,000 rate, which you can check in the usage ledger after the job.

What should I check when comparing the two?

Compare the same unit: per-character to per-character, and match what is billed (characters sent, spaces included). Check taxes, since ElevenLabs says its prices exclude them. For the subscription side of ElevenLabs, see extra-minute pricing by plan.