A 4 October re-read of ElevenLabs’ pricing page still shows v4 and v4 Turbo at 72 percent off, and the cut still ends on 12 October. Indie voice features priced on that rate have a week to cap retries and republish allowances.
ElevenLabs’ v4 API rates were rechecked on 4 October 2026 and still expire on 12 October, taking character prices from $0.022 and $0.011 back to $0.08 and $0.04. Founders who set included minutes during the launch window should rebuild the invoice at list price, cap regenerations, and change the pricing page before the 13th.
On 4 October 2026, a public re-read of ElevenLabs’ pricing page confirmed what many indie voice products have been billing against: the Eleven v4 API discount is still live, and it still ends on 12 October. v4 is listed at $0.022 per 1,000 characters until that date, against a standing rate of $0.08. v4 Turbo is $0.011, against $0.04. That is a 72 percent cut, not a permanent list price. From 13 October the same characters cost nearly four times as much.
A solo SaaS that shipped a voiceover button in the last two weeks may have set included minutes and overage on the promotional rate. The invoice after 12 October will not use that rate. Seven days is enough to reprice. Figures below are from ElevenLabs’ pricing page, rechecked on 4 October 2026, plus arithmetic a founder can redo in a spreadsheet.
Three offers sit next to each other, and only one is the API cliff. A million characters of v4 costs $22 now and $80 after. A million characters of v4 Turbo costs $11 now and $40 after. At about 900 characters of script per minute, roughly 54,000 characters an hour, that is about $1.19 an hour for v4 today and about $4.32 after, and about $0.59 an hour for Turbo today and about $2.16 after. ElevenLabs bills characters, not minutes. Denser scripts cost more than this sketch.
A separate credits offer on Creator plans and above runs to the same date and does not apply to API usage. The banner says 3x credits on Creator+ until 12 October. Further down, the wording is 2x credits for two weeks, web and mobile apps only. Those lines do not match. Act on the narrower one: the bonus is an app credit, not an extra API discount. If your product calls the API, the credits offer does not save you.
A third offer is a first-month plan discount. Starter is shown at $1 for the first month, against a recurring $6, stated until 18 October. Creator’s first month is shown at $11 against $22. Instant voice cloning starts at Starter. Professional voice cloning starts at Creator. Neither plan price hits a usage-based voice feature. If logs do not split model ids eleven_v4 and eleven_v4_turbo, you cannot price the cliff.
These are invented products with real rates. A meeting-notes app at $19 a month includes one 40-minute spoken summary. On v4 Turbo at the promo rate, that is about $0.39 of speech cost. After 12 October it is about $1.44. Margins survive one generation. They do not survive five regenerations after the user edits the notes: about $1.95 becomes about $7.20, on a $19 plan, before summary tokens and payment fees.
A podcast clipper at $29 a month dubs two hours of short clips into a second language. Promo Turbo is about $1.18. List Turbo is about $4.32. Promo v4 is about $2.38 now and about $8.64 after. English plus Spanish roughly doubles that, before retries. A support voice agent at $49 a month budgets three hours of spoken replies. Promo Turbo is about $1.77. List Turbo is about $6.48. That still fits if replies are short and the fallback is text. It does not fit if a failed tool call is spoken back as an error.
Export API usage for the seven days ending 4 October, or whatever window your provider gives you. Group by model id, not by feature name. One voice button often calls Turbo for the live agent and v4 for the downloadable file. Turbo moves from $11 to $40 per million characters. v4 moves from $22 to $80. Write three numbers per model: characters generated, characters billed after failed calls you still paid for, and characters the user actually kept. The third is what the pricing page should describe. The first is what the vendor invoices.
Multiply billed characters by $0.08 for v4 and $0.04 for Turbo. Do not multiply the promo invoice by four and stop. Put the list-price number next to last month’s revenue for the plans that include voice. If list-price speech cost is more than 20 percent of the plan price for a median active account, the allowance is the bug. If it only crosses 20 percent for the top 5 percent of accounts, a cap or an overage is enough.
The 4 October page read is explicit enough to act on. The bonus credits line says web and mobile apps only. A product that generates audio server-side is on the API rate. Budgeting “we have 3x credits until the 12th, so launch week is free” is how a weekend prototype becomes a surprise invoice. If you are still prototyping inside the app, the Starter first-month price of $1 runs to 18 October. That is not a production cost.
Most of the blow-up is not the first successful file. It is the second, third, and fifth. Put a hard server-side cap on previews per asset: two or three, not unlimited. Charge the fourth as an overage, or make it a paid add-on. Show remaining previews on the button, not in a help doc. Cap script length too. A 40-minute summary that could have been 8 minutes costs four times more after 12 October. Trim the script in your own app before you send characters out.
v4 is the expressive model. Turbo is the conversational one, with ElevenLabs quoting roughly 100 to 150 milliseconds to first speech on its own measurements. A support reply and a trailer voiceover should not share a model id. Default new jobs to Turbo unless the user picked narration quality. Store that choice on the asset so a retry does not silently upgrade. If a job does not need a cloned voice, price a second provider into the router for low-stakes reads.
Write the allowance in minutes and in characters. “40 minutes of spoken summary” is what a buyer understands. “36,000 characters of billed speech, including retries” is what you can afford. Publish both. If the plan already has customers, date the change: included voice minutes move to the list-price allowance on 13 October, with overage at a stated rate per extra minute. Send three lines: what is included, what happens on the fourth preview, and the date.
13 October is the API rate. 18 October is the printed end of the Starter first-month discount. A founder who signed up on the $1 Starter plan to test cloning, then pointed production traffic at the API, has two clocks. Only one moves the unit cost of a customer’s audio. Set a reminder for the morning of 12 October to confirm the rate flipped. Verify against the pricing page rather than against this article.
Do not pre-generate audio you do not have consent to store, just to use the discount. The launch post says ten seconds is now enough for an instant clone. ElevenLabs’ own cloning documentation, as of the 4 October check, still asked for at least a minute. Do not advertise the promotional rate on your own pricing page. Quote your price. A $19 plan with one short Turbo summary is still a $19 plan. Unlimited regenerations of a cloned voice are not.
Does the 72 percent discount apply to every plan? It applies to the API character rates for v4 and v4 Turbo through 12 October 2026, as shown on the pricing page rechecked on 4 October. Subscription prices are separate. The extra credits offer is described as web and mobile apps only, Creator and above.
Should Turbo be the default? For short summaries and conversational replies, yes, if quality holds on your own samples. It is half the character price of v4 both now and after the reset. Narration can stay on v4 with a tighter preview cap.
What if usage is still on older Eleven models? v3 and v3 Conversational were not part of this cut. On the same 4 October read they sat at $0.08 and $0.04 per 1,000 characters, the numbers v4 and Turbo return to. Switching during the window saves money only until the 12th.
Raise prices, or cut included minutes? Cut regenerations, script length, and silent upgrades from Turbo to v4 first. Raise the plan only if the median account is still underwater at list price after those caps.
Where do these rates come from? ElevenLabs’ pricing page, including the “v4 72% off until Oct 12” line and the $0.022 / $0.08 and $0.011 / $0.04 pairs, re-read on 4 October 2026. Per-hour figures assume about 900 characters per minute.
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Written by
Kirtesh Admute
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Kirtesh Admute is the founder of IndieFounder, a platform for founders, builders, and people curious about technology. He writes about AI, startups, software, product building, and the lessons that come from building in public.
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