AI audiobook cost calculator
Amazon's own pricing example puts Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at about 600,000 characters and 13 hours 50 minutes of speech. Narrating a book that long with AI costs nothing inside Google Cloud's free monthly allowance, and from $2.40 on Amazon Polly Standard among paid options. ElevenLabs costs $23.60 to $47.20 through its API (Flash / Turbo or v2 Multilingual) or $99 for a month of its Pro app plan.
Price your book
600,000 characters is about 11 hours 7 minutes of speech at 900 characters a minute. Cheapest: Google Cloud Standard voices at $0.
| Option | The book | How you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Standard voices | $0 | Pay as you go |
| Google Cloud WaveNet voices | $0 | Pay as you go |
| Google Cloud Neural2 voices | $0 | Pay as you go |
| Google Cloud Chirp 3: HD voices | $0 | Pay as you go |
| Google Cloud Studio voices | $0 | Pay as you go |
| Amazon Polly Standard | $2.40 | Pay as you go |
| Murf API, Falcon | $6 | Pay as you go |
| OpenAI tts-1 | $9 | Pay as you go |
| Azure AI Speech Neural | $9 | Pay as you go |
| Deepgram Aura-1 | $9 | Pay as you go |
| Amazon Polly Neural | $9.60 | Pay as you go |
| Azure AI Speech Neural HD | $13.20 | Pay as you go |
| Murf API, Gen2 | $18 | Pay as you go |
| OpenAI tts-1-hd | $18 | Pay as you go |
| Amazon Polly Generative | $18 | Pay as you go |
| Deepgram Aura-2 | $18 | Pay as you go |
| ElevenLabs API, Flash / Turbo | $23.60 | Pay as you go |
| Resemble AI Flex pay-as-you-go | $26.80 | Pay as you go |
| Cartesia Pro | $37.50 | 1 month |
| ElevenLabs API, v2 Multilingual | $47.20 | Pay as you go |
| Cartesia Startup | $49 | 1 month |
| Amazon Polly Long-Form | $60 | Pay as you go |
| ElevenLabs Pro (app) | $99 | 1 month |
| Speechify Studio Starter | $100 | 1 year, billed yearly |
| Murf Creator (Studio) | $228 | 1 year, billed yearly |
| ElevenLabs Scale (app) | $299 | 1 month |
| Cartesia Scale | $299 | 1 month |
| Speechify Studio Creator | $300 | 1 year, billed yearly |
| WellSaid Pro | $396 | 1 year, billed yearly |
| Murf Business (Studio) | $792 | 1 year, billed yearly |
| ElevenLabs Business (app) | $990 | 1 month |
| WellSaid Business (per user) | $1,920 | 1 year, billed yearly |
| ElevenLabs Starter (app) | Doesn't cover it | |
| ElevenLabs Creator (app) | Doesn't cover it | |
| WellSaid Starter | Doesn't cover it |
- Free monthly allowances count, on the assumption the book is all you make that month. Amazon Polly's free tier lasts only a new account's first 12 months and isn't counted.
- Plans count as one month at the monthly price, or as a year bought at once where the vendor states a yearly allowance (Murf, Speechify Studio and WellSaid). "Doesn't cover it" means the plan's allowance is too small and no price for extra use is published.
- Murf's app plans, Speechify Studio, WellSaid and Resemble AI bill by minutes of audio, so their cost follows the pace you set; the rest bill characters of text.
- Price only: voices, languages and licences differ. Check that a plan allows commercial use before you sell the audiobook.
How long is a book in characters and hours?
Amazon's pricing page gives two whole books as examples:
| Book | Characters | Speech |
|---|---|---|
| A Christmas Carol | 165,000 | 3 h 50 min |
| Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | 600,000 | 13 h 50 min |
Amazon's figures work out at 717 and 723 characters a minute; the vendors' general figures run from 720 to 1,000, so a 600,000-character book could run anywhere from 10 hours to 13 hours 53 minutes. To count your own book, use your word processor's character count with spaces, or enter the word count above.
Quick answers
How much does it cost to make an audiobook with AI?
For a 600,000-character book, Amazon's figure for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: nothing within Google Cloud's free monthly characters, $2.40 on Amazon Polly Standard, and $37.50 or less on 14 of the 27 paid options that cover it. Enter your own book above.
How much does an ElevenLabs audiobook cost?
For a 600,000-character book, $23.60 to $47.20 through its API (Flash / Turbo or v2 Multilingual) or $99 for a month of its Pro app plan. Pro, with 600,000 characters a month, is the smallest ElevenLabs app plan that covers it.
How many hours of audio is a book?
Amazon puts A Christmas Carol (about 165,000 characters) at 3 hours 50 minutes and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (about 600,000 characters) at 13 hours 50 minutes. For your own book, divide its characters by 720 to 1,000, the vendors' own range of characters a minute, for the minutes.
Can you make an AI audiobook for free?
Within limits. These characters are free every month: Google Cloud, 4 million on Standard voices and WaveNet voices and 1 million on Neural2 voices, Chirp 3: HD voices and Studio voices; ElevenLabs, 10,000 on v2 Multilingual and Flash / Turbo. A book under that size costs nothing there if nothing else uses the allowance that month.
Making voiceovers every month rather than one book? Use the text-to-speech cost calculator, or compare every text-to-speech API and ElevenLabs' plans.
Prices from each vendor's pricing page, read on 5 October 2026; Amazon's book examples read on 7 October 2026. Sources and quotes are on each vendor's page here and on characters per minute of speech.
Prices on this page were checked against the official pricing pages on .