GUIDE

A cheaper ElevenLabs API alternative for long and frequent speech

ElevenLabs makes some of the most expressive voices there are, and its API is billed per character: $0.08 per 1,000 characters on Multilingual v2 and v3 and $0.04 on Flash and Turbo, according to its API pricing page on 25 October 2026. For an app that talks all day that adds up fast.

The SuperClonica speech API is billed by time with a flat plan, from $5 a month. This guide compares the two honestly, shows how to switch a request over, and says when ElevenLabs remains the better choice.

Hear the catalog voices free Or run the engine yourself

The price of an hour

At 1,000 characters a minute, an hour of ElevenLabs speech costs about $4.80 on Multilingual and $2.40 on Flash at API list prices. The SuperClonica Starter plan, $5 a month, gives 3 minutes of audio every 10 minutes, up to 216 hours a month used without a break. The same 216 hours would cost about $1,037 on ElevenLabs Multilingual and about $518 on Flash.

  • Free: 1 minute of audio a day.
  • Starter, $5: up to 216 hours a month.
  • Author, $10: up to 576 hours.
  • Pro, $20: up to 1,800 hours.
  • Studio, $50: up to 5,760 hours.

What you get for it

The API voices text with the Supertonic 3 model in 31 languages. On a paid plan every voice in the SuperClonica catalog works without buying it, and so do voices you train from your own recording on the site.

  • Streaming: the first sound from 300 ms in our measurements, whatever the length of the text.
  • Up to 20,000 characters in one request, as ogg, mp3 or wav.
  • A failed text counts nothing; an Idempotency-Key makes a retried request safe.
  • GET /api/v1/voices lists the voices your key may use, GET /api/v1/usage what is left of your plan.

Switch a request over

Where your code posts text to ElevenLabs, post it to https://superclonica.com/api/v1/speech with the header Authorization: Bearer and your SuperClonica key, and the body {"text": "...", "voice": "F1", "language": "en"}. Add "format": "mp3" if your app expects mp3, or "stream": true to play the audio as it comes. The answer is the audio itself, as with ElevenLabs.

Voice settings such as stability or style have no equivalent: the voice itself carries the manner of speech, so pick one in the catalog that sounds the way you want.

When ElevenLabs is the better choice

ElevenLabs has more ready voices and controls for expressive delivery, voice cloning from a short sample right in the API, more languages including Chinese, WebSocket input streaming for voice agents and the reliability of a large company. If a few minutes a day is all you voice, its free and starter tiers may also cost less. Listen to both: put the same line into a SuperClonica catalog voice page and judge for yourself.