Burst pricing

Overview

Burst pricing allows your conversational AI agents to temporarily exceed your workspace’s subscription concurrency limit during high-demand periods. When enabled, your agents can handle up to 3 times your normal concurrency limit, with excess calls charged at double the standard rate.

This feature helps prevent missed calls during traffic spikes while maintaining cost predictability for your regular usage patterns.

How burst pricing works

When burst pricing is enabled for an agent:

1. Normal capacity: Calls within your subscription limit are charged at standard rates
2. Burst capacity: Additional calls (up to 3x your limit or 300 concurrent calls, whichever is lower) are accepted but charged at 2x the normal rate
3. Over-capacity rejection: Calls exceeding the burst limit are rejected with an error

Capacity calculations

Cost implications

Burst pricing follows a tiered charging model:

• Within subscription limit: Standard per-minute rates apply
• Burst calls: Charged at 2x the standard rate
• Deprioritized processing: Burst calls receive lower priority for speech-to-text and text-to-speech processing

Example pricing scenario

For a workspace with a 20-call subscription limit:

• Calls 1-20: Standard rate (e.g., $0.08/minute)
• Calls 21-60: Double rate (e.g., $0.16/minute)
• Calls 61+: Rejected

Configuration

Burst pricing is configured per agent in the call limits settings.

Dashboard configuration

1. Navigate to your agent settings
2. Go to the Call Limits section
3. Enable the Burst pricing toggle
4. Save your agent configuration

API configuration

Burst pricing can be configured via the API, as shown in the examples below

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from dotenv import load_dotenv
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from elevenlabs.client import ElevenLabs
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import os
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load_dotenv()
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elevenlabs = ElevenLabs(
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    api_key=os.getenv("ELEVENLABS_API_KEY"),
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)
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# Update agent with burst pricing enabled
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response = elevenlabs.conversational_ai.agents.update(
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    agent_id="your-agent-id",
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    agent_config={
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        "platform_settings": {
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            "call_limits": {
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                "agent_concurrency_limit": -1,  # Use workspace limit
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                "daily_limit": 1000,
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                "bursting_enabled": True
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            }
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        }
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    }
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)