Pay As You Go

Overview

Pay As You Go (PAYG) allows you to prepay for usage without committing to a monthly subscription. It’s designed for developers and builders who want to start using ElevenLabs APIs quickly, scale up on their own terms, and only pay for what they use.

PAYG is a feature available on self-serve subscription plans, including free. Enterprise contracts remain on overage-based billing and are not affected by this change.

How it works

When you activate PAYG, you add a payment method and add funds to your account balance. That balance is drawn down as you use ElevenLabs APIs and products. If your balance runs low, you can top it up manually or enable Auto Top Up to recharge automatically.

This feature is labeled Top Up and can be found in your Developers settings.

Credit priority order

If you have both a subscription plan and a PAYG balance, your subscription plan’s included credits are consumed first. Once your subscription credits are exhausted, usage is then drawn from your PAYG balance. This means your PAYG balance effectively extends your plan beyond your monthly quota.

Eligibility and plan limits

PAYG Top Ups are available to all self-serve tiers, including free, Starter, Creator, Pro, Scale, and Business.

If you upgrade from a free subscription plan while holding a PAYG balance, your remaining balance carries over and will be used after your subscription credits are depleted.

Voice slot limits and other plan-level restrictions (e.g., custom voice limits, API access tiers) come from your subscription plan, not your PAYG balance. For example, a free plan user on PAYG is still limited to the free tier’s voice slots. Upgrading to a paid subscription is required to unlock higher limits.

Pricing

PAYG pricing varies depending on whether you’re generating content using the API or the UI. API usage has lower rates than UI usage.

For detailed pricing information, visit our pricing page.

Adding funds

Funds are added directly from your account in your local currency.

Key limits:

• Minimum Top Up: $5 USD / ₹500 INR
• Supported currencies: USD, INR

Your balance is displayed in USD or INR in Developer settings → Top Up, but is converted to credits and displayed as credits elsewhere in the platform.

To top up manually:

If you do not yet have a payment method on file, you will be prompted to add one before completing your first Top Up.

Auto Top Up

Auto Top Up automatically charges your saved payment method when your credit balance falls below a defined threshold, ensuring your usage is never interrupted unexpectedly.

Enabling Auto Top Up

With Auto Top Up on, a minimum balance of $5 USD / ₹500 INR is required to ensure service continues in the event of a payment failure. If an Auto Top Up attempt fails, your service will pause until you top up manually.

With Auto Top Up off, your balance can run down to $0. Once depleted, your usage will be paused until you manually top up.

Credit rollover

If you upgrade to a subscription plan, your remaining PAYG balance carries over and will be used after your subscription credits are depleted.

There is no monthly rollover cap on PAYG funds.

Concurrency and rate limits

For paid subscriptions, your subscription plan limits apply. For free plans with PAYG enabled, the following limits apply:

• Concurrency: Starter-tier level (3 concurrent requests)
• Priority: Starter-tier level (priority 4)

If you need higher concurrency, consider upgrading to a paid subscription plan.

Relationship to usage based billing

PAYG replaces the previous usage based billing (overage) model for new self-serve customers.

• Existing subscribers who already have usage based billing enabled are not affected. Switching to PAYG from an existing usage based billing subscription is not currently supported, but will be made possible in a future update.
• Enterprise contracts remain on the overage model and are not affected.
• Usage based billing will not be available for new self-serve customers. PAYG Top Ups are the replacement mechanism for extending beyond your included plan credits.

FAQ