SIMBA vs ElevenLabs Pricing: A Complete Comparison

If you are evaluating voice agent platforms in 2026, pricing is probably the thing that will make or break your decision. The technology has converged enough that most serious platforms can build a competent agent. What varies wildly is what you pay, what is included in that price, and what surprises show up on your invoice three months in.

This is a side-by-side comparison of SIMBA and ElevenLabs for conversational AI voice agents. We will cover list prices, what is bundled, what is not, and what real-world costs look like at different volumes. We work at SIMBA, so take our perspective into account, but we have tried to keep this factual and let the numbers do the talking.

TL;DR

• SIMBA's free tier includes 10,000 minutes per month. ElevenLabs' free tier provides roughly 15 minutes of agent conversation time.
• At the Pro tier ($99/mo on both platforms), SIMBA includes 50,000 minutes. ElevenLabs includes credits equivalent to roughly 500 minutes of TTS, with conversational AI billed separately at $0.10/min.
• SIMBA bundles TTS, STT, LLM, and orchestration into every plan with no passthrough fees. ElevenLabs currently absorbs LLM costs but has stated these may be passed through in the future.
• SIMBA supports up to 10 concurrent agents on the free tier and 500 on Scale. ElevenLabs caps concurrency at 4 on Free and 20-30 on their paid tiers.
• SIMBA offers a Build Grant of 1,000,000 free minutes for builders getting started with voice.

Pricing table: side by side

SIMBA plans

Plan	Monthly price	Minutes included	Overage rate	Concurrent agents
Free	$0	10,000	--	10
Pro	$99	50,000	$0.06/min	50
Scale	$499	500,000	$0.04/min	500
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	From $0.03/min	Unlimited

All SIMBA plans include TTS + STT + LLM + orchestration. No LLM passthrough fees on any tier. Commercial use is allowed on every plan, including Free.

ElevenLabs plans (Conversational AI / Agents)

Plan	Monthly price	Conversational AI rate	Concurrency
Free	$0	Included in 10,000 credits (~15 min)	4
Starter	$5	Credits-based (~limited)	6
Creator	$22	$0.10/min (usage-based)	10
Pro	$99	$0.10/min (usage-based)	20
Scale	$299	$0.10/min (usage-based)	30
Business	$990	$0.08/min (annual)	30-40
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Custom

ElevenLabs uses a credit-based system for their base plans. Conversational AI consumes credits at a different rate than standard TTS. On Creator and above, usage-based billing can be enabled at $0.10/min. LLM costs are currently absorbed but may be passed through.

Note: ElevenLabs pricing changes frequently. These figures are based on their published rates as of early 2026. Check their pricing page for the latest numbers.

What is included in the per-minute rate

This is where the comparison gets important, because a per-minute rate means different things on each platform.

SIMBA's per-minute rate includes:

• Speech-to-text (transcription of the caller)
• Text-to-speech (generating the agent's voice)
• LLM inference (the language model that powers the conversation)
• Orchestration (function calling, tool use, routing logic)
• No additional passthrough fees, ever

When SIMBA quotes $0.06/min on Pro or $0.04/min on Scale, that is the fully loaded cost. There is nothing else to add.

ElevenLabs' per-minute rate includes:

• Text-to-speech (their core strength)
• Speech-to-text
• LLM inference (currently absorbed, not guaranteed long-term)

ElevenLabs has publicly stated that they are absorbing LLM costs for now but may pass them through in the future. Industry estimates suggest LLM inference adds 10-30% to the per-minute cost when not absorbed. If and when ElevenLabs starts billing LLM costs separately, a $0.10/min call could become $0.11-$0.13/min.

Hidden costs to watch for

On ElevenLabs

Credit complexity. ElevenLabs uses a credit system where different features consume credits at different rates. Standard TTS uses roughly 1 credit per character. Conversational AI consumes credits at approximately 1,000 per minute. This means your monthly credit allocation gets eaten at different speeds depending on your mix of features, making cost forecasting harder.

Burst pricing. If your agent traffic spikes beyond your plan's concurrency limit, ElevenLabs offers burst pricing that allows up to 3x your normal concurrency, but at double the standard per-minute rate. A $0.10/min call becomes $0.20/min during burst periods. If you have unpredictable traffic, this adds up.

LLM cost uncertainty. The absorbed-for-now LLM pricing is a risk factor for anyone building a business on top of the platform. You cannot lock in a rate that includes a component the vendor has explicitly said may change.

Concurrency ceilings. Even on the Business plan ($990/mo), concurrency tops out at 30-40 simultaneous calls. For contact centers or high-volume use cases, this is a real constraint that pushes you to Enterprise pricing quickly.

On SIMBA

Telephony is separate. SIMBA's per-minute rate covers the AI stack, but if you need phone numbers and PSTN connectivity, you bring your own Twilio (or similar) account. Twilio usage typically adds $0.01-$0.02/min for voice. This is true of most platforms, but worth noting.

Overage rates apply. If you exceed your plan's included minutes, overage kicks in. On Pro that is $0.06/min; on Scale, $0.04/min. These are predictable and clearly published, but you should right-size your plan.

Real-world cost at different volumes

Here is what each platform costs at four common volume levels. For ElevenLabs, we use the $0.10/min rate (Creator/Pro tier, usage-based). For SIMBA, we use the most cost-effective plan for each volume.

1,000 minutes per month

	SIMBA	ElevenLabs
Plan	Free ($0/mo)	Creator ($22/mo) + usage
Included minutes	10,000	~0 for agents (credit-based)
Overage cost	$0	1,000 x $0.10 = $100
Total monthly cost	$0	$122

At low volume, SIMBA's free tier covers the entire workload. ElevenLabs requires a paid plan plus usage-based billing.

10,000 minutes per month

	SIMBA	ElevenLabs
Plan	Free ($0/mo)	Pro ($99/mo) + usage
Included minutes	10,000	~500 (credit-based TTS)
Overage cost	$0	9,500 x $0.10 = $950
Total monthly cost	$0	$1,049

SIMBA's free tier still covers the full 10,000 minutes. On ElevenLabs, you are well into usage-based territory and paying over a thousand dollars monthly.

50,000 minutes per month

	SIMBA	ElevenLabs
Plan	Pro ($99/mo)	Business ($990/mo) + usage
Included minutes	50,000	Credits (limited)
Overage cost	$0	~50,000 x $0.08 = $4,000
Total monthly cost	$99	$4,990

At 50,000 minutes, the gap becomes dramatic. SIMBA's Pro plan covers the full volume within its included minutes. ElevenLabs, even at the discounted Business annual rate, costs roughly 50x more.

500,000 minutes per month

	SIMBA	ElevenLabs
Plan	Scale ($499/mo)	Enterprise (custom)
Included minutes	500,000	Custom
Overage cost	$0	Estimated $0.05-$0.08/min
Total monthly cost	$499	$25,000-$40,000 (estimated)

At scale, SIMBA's pricing stays flat within the plan. ElevenLabs Enterprise pricing is negotiable, but even at aggressive volume discounts, the per-minute rate is unlikely to match SIMBA's effective rate of under $0.001/min at this volume.

Free tier comparison

This is where the difference is starkest.

SIMBA Free:

• 10,000 minutes per month
• 10 concurrent agents
• Full TTS + STT + LLM + orchestration
• Commercial use allowed
• No credit card required

ElevenLabs Free:

• 10,000 credits per month (approximately 15 minutes of agent conversation)
• 4 concurrent agents
• No commercial use license
• Limited voice selection

SIMBA's free tier gives you roughly 667x more agent conversation time than ElevenLabs' free tier. For a developer building a prototype, a startup validating an idea, or a small business testing voice AI, this is the difference between being able to actually use the product and hitting a wall within the first hour.

Additionally, SIMBA offers a Build Grant of 1,000,000 free minutes for anyone building with voice. That is enough to run a serious pilot, train your agents on real conversations, and validate your use case before spending a dollar.

When ElevenLabs might make more sense

Being honest about this: ElevenLabs has legitimate strengths.

Pure TTS workloads. If your primary use case is text-to-speech generation rather than conversational agents -- audiobooks, content narration, voiceovers -- ElevenLabs has deep expertise and a mature product in this space. Their voice quality has a strong reputation, and their model library is extensive. SIMBA is purpose-built for conversational voice agents, not batch TTS generation.

Voice cloning at lower tiers. ElevenLabs offers professional voice cloning starting at their Creator tier ($22/mo). If you need a custom cloned voice for non-conversational use and your volumes are very low, their lower entry price for cloning access could make sense.

Existing ElevenLabs integration. If your stack is already deeply integrated with ElevenLabs' TTS API for non-conversational use and you want to add a simple agent on top, the integration convenience might outweigh the cost difference at very small scale.

Brand and ecosystem. ElevenLabs has strong brand recognition in the voice AI space. For some buyers, particularly in media and entertainment, the brand association matters.

When SIMBA is the better choice

You are building conversational voice agents. This is what SIMBA is designed for. The entire pricing model, infrastructure, and feature set are optimized for multi-turn voice conversations, not batch audio generation.

You need predictable costs. SIMBA's included minutes model means your bill is predictable month to month. No credit conversions, no surprise LLM passthrough charges, no burst pricing multipliers.

You are scaling. The cost gap widens dramatically as volume increases. At 50,000 minutes per month, the difference between $99 and nearly $5,000 is not marginal -- it is the difference between a viable business model and one that does not work.

You need concurrency. SIMBA supports 10 concurrent agents on Free, 50 on Pro, and 500 on Scale. ElevenLabs caps at 4 on Free and 20-30 on their highest self-serve plans. For contact centers, multi-location businesses, or any use case with concurrent call volume, SIMBA's concurrency headroom avoids the need to negotiate Enterprise contracts early.

You want no LLM cost risk. SIMBA's pricing includes LLM inference permanently, not as a temporary absorption that may change. You can model your unit economics without an asterisk.

You are a builder or startup. The combination of 10,000 free minutes per month and the 1,000,000-minute Build Grant means you can build, test, iterate, and even launch without spending on voice infrastructure. That runway matters when you are trying to find product-market fit.

Bottom line

The pricing comparison between SIMBA and ElevenLabs for conversational AI is not close. At every volume tier, SIMBA is meaningfully less expensive, often by an order of magnitude or more. The included-minutes model eliminates the credit math and cost uncertainty that comes with ElevenLabs' system. The bundled LLM inference removes a cost variable that ElevenLabs has explicitly flagged as temporary.

ElevenLabs is a strong company with excellent TTS technology. If your workload is primarily text-to-speech generation, they are a reasonable choice. But for conversational voice agents -- the use case where an AI handles real phone calls, qualifies leads, books appointments, and resolves support tickets -- SIMBA's pricing is built for that workload in a way that ElevenLabs' is not.

The numbers are public on both sides. Run them for your expected volume and see where you land.