In This Guide:

What ElevenLabs AI Dubbing Actually Costs

Hidden Costs: Credits, Overages, and Per-Language Charges

ElevenLabs Plan Comparison for Video Dubbing

GeckoDub vs. ElevenLabs: A Simpler Alternative for AI Dubbing

How to Choose the Right AI Dubbing Tool for Your Budget

Introduction

You want to dub your videos into new languages using AI—but the moment you open ElevenLabs' pricing page, you're met with credits, model tiers, per-minute overages, and separate charges per output language. Figuring out what you'll actually pay is harder than it should be.

ElevenLabs builds excellent voice technology. But in 2026, their pricing structure has grown complex enough that creators and marketers routinely overshoot their budgets on dubbing projects. This guide breaks down exactly what ElevenLabs charges for AI dubbing, where the hidden costs live, and how alternatives like GeckoDub offer a more predictable path to multilingual video content.

What ElevenLabs AI Dubbing Actually Costs

ElevenLabs AI dubbing is billed per source audio minute, with costs varying based on your subscription tier and whether you use the standard automatic dubbing or the more advanced Dubbing Studio interface. The platform offers six paid plans ranging from $5/month to $1,320/month, plus a free tier and custom enterprise pricing.

Here's the plan structure as of early 2026:

• Free: $0/month — 10,000 credits (~10 minutes Multilingual TTS). No Dubbing Studio access.
• Starter: $5/month — 30,000 credits. Includes Dubbing Studio access but no overage option if you run out.
• Creator: $22/month (currently 50% off first month at $11) — 100,000 credits. Includes ~50 minutes of dubbing and $0.60/min overage rate.
• Pro: $99/month — 500,000 credits. Includes ~250 minutes of dubbing and $0.24/min overage rate.
• Scale: $330/month — 2 million credits. Includes ~1,000 minutes of dubbing.
• Business: $1,320/month — 11 million credits. Includes ~5,500 minutes of dubbing.

The critical detail most people miss: dubbing credits are tracked separately from TTS credits. Your 100,000 character credits on the Creator plan don't translate directly into dubbing minutes—dubbing has its own quota pool.

Hidden Costs: Credits, Overages, and Per-Language Charges

The real expense of ElevenLabs AI dubbing isn't the base subscription—it's the compounding cost structure that catches users off guard. Three factors drive up your actual spend.

You're Charged Per Output Language

Every language you dub into is billed separately. A 10-minute video dubbed into Spanish, French, and German counts as 30 minutes of dubbing usage, not 10. For creators targeting multiple markets simultaneously, this multiplier effect can burn through your monthly allocation in a single project.

Overage Rates Are Steep on Lower Plans

If you exceed your included dubbing minutes, ElevenLabs charges overages that range from $0.60/minute on the Creator plan down to $0.24/minute on Business. For perspective, a 20-minute video dubbed into three languages (60 minutes total) on the Creator plan would consume your entire 50-minute dubbing allocation and cost an additional $6 in overages—on top of the $22 monthly fee.

The Credit System Adds Confusion

ElevenLabs uses a unified credit system across all features—TTS, speech-to-text, voice cloning, dubbing, and sound effects. Heavy use of one feature can indirectly limit your capacity for another. According to CSA Research, 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language, which means most businesses need to localize into several languages at once. The per-language billing model makes this expensive fast.

ElevenLabs Plan Comparison for Video Dubbing

Choosing the right ElevenLabs plan for dubbing depends on your volume and how many languages you need. Here's how the plans stack up specifically for video dubbing use cases:

For occasional dubbing (1-2 videos/month, 1 language): The Starter plan at $5/month gives you Dubbing Studio access, but with no overage option, you'll hit a hard ceiling quickly. The Creator plan at $22/month is the realistic starting point with ~50 included dubbing minutes.

For regular content creators (5-10 videos/month, 2-3 languages): The Pro plan at $99/month with ~250 dubbing minutes handles moderate volume. But a creator producing eight 5-minute videos in three languages would need 120 minutes—leaving a thin margin for experimentation or retakes.

For agencies and high-volume teams: Scale ($330/month) and Business ($1,320/month) offer better per-minute economics but require significant upfront commitment. The Flexprice pricing analysis notes that ElevenLabs' overage costs follow a tiered structure where higher-plan users pay progressively less per unit of extra usage.

Key limitations across all plans:

• No lip-sync included in standard dubbing—audio replacement only
• Watermark removal requires a paid plan
• 29 supported languages (compared to 30+ on some competitors)
• Each additional language in Dubbing Studio incurs translation charges at standard TTS rates on top of the dubbing cost

GeckoDub vs. ElevenLabs: A Simpler Alternative for AI Dubbing

GeckoDub takes a fundamentally different approach to AI dubbing pricing—one designed specifically for video translation rather than adapted from a text-to-speech credit system.

Where ElevenLabs bundles dubbing into a broader audio platform with shared credits across features, GeckoDub focuses exclusively on video translation with clear, predictable pricing. The Creator Pro plan at €23/month (billed annually) includes 40 minutes of video translation with 15 minutes of lip-sync included—a feature ElevenLabs charges extra for or doesn't include in standard dubbing.

Direct comparison at the mid-tier level:

• ElevenLabs Creator ($22/month): ~50 dubbing minutes, no lip-sync, 29 languages, per-language charges for each output, shared credit pool
• GeckoDub Creator Pro (€23/month yearly): 40 minutes video translation, 15 minutes lip-sync included, 30+ languages, bulk upload, animated subtitles

For creators and marketers who need video-specific localization—not a full audio production suite—GeckoDub delivers more focused value. You get lip-sync technology, animated subtitles, and bulk upload capabilities without paying for TTS, voice cloning, or conversational AI features you may never use.

Try GeckoDub free and see how your videos sound in 30+ languages with lip-sync included.

How to Choose the Right AI Dubbing Tool for Your Budget

The best AI dubbing tool for your workflow depends on three factors: your monthly video volume, how many target languages you need, and whether you need lip-sync or audio-only dubbing.

Choose ElevenLabs if:

• You need a full audio production platform (TTS, cloning, dubbing, sound effects)
• You're primarily dubbing long-form audio content like podcasts or audiobooks
• You have a developer team that wants API-level control over the dubbing pipeline
• Your budget exceeds $99/month and you need 250+ minutes

Choose GeckoDub if:

• Your primary goal is translating video content for social media, ads, or e-commerce
• You want lip-sync included in your plan without add-on costs
• You need simple, predictable pricing without a credit system to decode
• You're a creator, marketer, or agency managing multilingual video campaigns on a budget

According to the ElevenLabs pricing page, dubbing is just one of many features sharing the same credit pool—which means your dubbing budget competes with every other audio task. For teams where video localization is the core use case, a purpose-built tool avoids that friction entirely.

Quick budget calculator: If you need to localize 5 short videos (3 minutes each) into 3 languages monthly, that's 45 minutes of dubbing. On ElevenLabs Creator ($22/month), you'd be close to your limit with no lip-sync. On GeckoDub's Creator Pro (€23/month yearly), you'd have the capacity plus lip-sync and animated subtitles included.

Upload your video today and have localized versions ready by tomorrow. Start your free trial to see how GeckoDub handles your content.