Can you get ElevenLabs for free? Every official program explained

Partly, yes. ElevenLabs has a permanent Free plan, and it also runs official programs that give paid plans away at no cost: 12 months of the Scale plan for small startups, 12 months of Pro for registered nonprofits, and 3 months of free access for university students. If you fit none of those groups, the cheapest official way into a paid plan is the Creator plan at half price for its first month.

We went through each program on ElevenLabs' own pages and wrote down who qualifies, what you actually receive, how the application works and what happens when the free period runs out. Every offer below is run by ElevenLabs itself, with no reseller codes involved.

The Free plan, and why most people outgrow it

Anyone can open an ElevenLabs account without paying. The pricing page lists a Free plan next to the paid tiers, and the startup grant terms say that accounts move back to the Free plan when a grant ends, so this is a standing tier rather than a short trial. We are not quoting its monthly allowance here, because it is not part of the offers we verified and ElevenLabs adjusts plan details from time to time. Check the current figures on the official ElevenLabs pricing page before you plan a project around them.

In practice the Free plan works as a test bench. You can listen to the voices, run a few of your own scripts through them and decide whether the output fits your work. Once you need steady volume, or a feature that sits in a paid tier, you will need one of the programs below or a paid subscription.

Startups: 12 months of Scale and 33M characters

The most valuable program by far is the ElevenLabs startup grant. Approved companies get 12 months of free platform access on the Scale plan plus 33,000,000 characters of usage. The grant ends after 12 months or when the 33M characters are used up, whichever comes first. After that, the account moves to the Free plan.

Who qualifies

• Startups or companies with fewer than 25 employees at the time ElevenLabs receives the application.
• Applicants need a business email address.
• The company needs a long-term product with a business or monetization plan. A side experiment with no revenue model is unlikely to pass.

Who is excluded

Agencies, consultancies and SMBs are excluded, and so are products aimed at users 18 or under. Each company can apply only once, and existing ElevenLabs enterprise customers cannot apply at all.

The SMB exclusion is the one that surprises people. The program is meant for small teams building their own product. A small service business using ElevenLabs for client work does not fit, however few staff it has.

How to apply

1. Read the requirements on the ElevenLabs Startup Grants page and confirm you meet all of them: fewer than 25 employees, a business email and a long-term product.
2. Create an ElevenLabs account with your business email. The grant is applied to the account you apply with, so do not sign up with a personal address and apply from a different one.
3. Fill in the grant form with details about your startup, your team and the growth you expect. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so there is no deadline to wait for.
4. Wait for the decision. ElevenLabs replies within about a week. If you are approved, the Scale plan and the 33M characters appear on your account.

When you fill in the form, assume the reviewer has a couple of minutes per application. Say plainly what the product does and who pays for it. The terms ask for a monetization plan, so do not skip that part.

Nonprofits: 12 months of Pro through the Impact Program

ElevenLabs runs the Impact Program for organizations that cannot justify a commercial voice budget. Registered nonprofits in good standing can get 12 months of free ElevenLabs Pro access, and they can reapply near the end of the year. Healthcare, education and culture organizations are prioritised.

Verification runs through Goodstack, a third-party service that checks charity registrations. Organizations that fail that check, or that break ElevenLabs' Prohibited Use Policy, are not eligible. If your organization is already paying for a yearly ElevenLabs plan, contact support and ask for a refund before you apply the discount code, because the Pro access arrives as a code that you redeem on your account.

The same program also covers two other groups, each with its own application: professors and their students, and people with permanent voice loss. If you belong to one of those groups, use the matching application on the Impact page instead of the nonprofit form.

How to apply as a nonprofit

1. Open the Impact Program page, read the eligibility details and choose "I'm a nonprofit".
2. The application opens a Goodstack verification form. Pick the country your organization is registered in.
3. Provide your organization's registration details so Goodstack can confirm your nonprofit status.
4. Once you are approved, apply the discount code to your ElevenLabs account to activate 12 months of Pro.

Have your registration number and the exact legal name of the organization ready before you start. Verification services compare what you type against public registers, and a small spelling difference is one of the most common reasons an application stalls.

Students: 3 months free plus a year of ElevenReader Ultra

The newest program is ElevenLabs for Students. It includes 3 months of free access across ElevenCreative, ElevenAgents and the ElevenAPI, plus a free year of ElevenReader Ultra, which ElevenLabs describes as its most advanced text-to-speech reader.

The offer is open to university students aged 18 and above in the US, Canada, the EU27, Australia and the UK. Student status has to be verified before the plan activates. If you study outside those countries, the offer is not available to you at the moment, and there is no point trying to work around the verification step.

1. Go to the ElevenLabs for Students page and click Get 3 months free.
2. Log in to ElevenLabs or create an account.
3. Complete student verification in the app to activate the plan.
4. For the ElevenReader year, sign up on ElevenReader with your .edu email or your university's equivalent address.

Three months passes quickly in a semester. Claim it when your project actually starts, not the week you first read about it.

Everyone else: 50% off the first Creator month

If you do not run a startup or a nonprofit and you are not a student, the official route to a cheaper paid plan is the ElevenLabs Creator plan at 50% off for the first month. Creator normally costs $22 a month and includes 121,000 credits. The first month costs $11. The discount appears automatically on the pricing page when monthly billing is selected, so there is no code to look for.

The fine print is short. The offer covers only the first month of the monthly Creator plan, and from month two the regular $22 a month applies. A card is required, and prices exclude taxes. The pricing page does not say more about eligibility. Third-party sources describe it as an offer for new subscribers, so do not count on it if you have paid for Creator before.

1. Open the ElevenLabs pricing page and keep billing on Monthly. The Creator card should show "First month 50% off".
2. Sign up with email or Google, or log in if you already have a free account.
3. Select the Creator plan. Checkout should show $11 for the first month.
4. Enter your card details and confirm. The plan renews at $22 a month unless you cancel before the next billing date.

The programs side by side

Which one should you go for

Most readers fit one group cleanly, and the order of preference is simple. If your company has fewer than 25 people and builds its own product, apply for the startup grant first. Nothing else here comes close in value, and the worst outcome is a rejection after about a week.

Nonprofits should go through the Impact Program and put a note in the calendar to reapply before the 12 months end. Students in the listed countries should take the student plan, ideally timed to a real project. Professors have their own application under the same Impact Program, which also covers their students.

Freelancers, YouTubers and small agencies are the group the programs leave out. Agencies and consultancies are explicitly excluded from the grant, so the realistic path is the Free plan for testing and the Creator discount once you are ready to pay. Use that discounted month to measure how much you really generate. If it fits inside Creator, you know your monthly cost. If not, you found out for $11.

Common mistakes, and what happens when the free period ends

• Applying from the wrong account. The startup grant lands on the account you apply with. Use your business email from the first sign-up.
• Losing track of the end date. The startup grant stops after 12 months or 33M characters and the account returns to the Free plan. If your product relies on ElevenLabs in production, move to a paid plan before you reach either limit, not after.
• Paying twice. A nonprofit already on a paid yearly plan should ask support for a refund before redeeming the Pro code.
• Reading the Creator price as permanent. $11 is the price of one month. The plan renews at $22 a month until you cancel.
• Ignoring the country list. The student plan covers the US, Canada, the EU27, Australia and the UK, and nowhere else for now.

One habit helps with every offer on this page. On the day you claim it, put the expiry or renewal date in your calendar with a reminder a week earlier. That leaves time to decide before anything renews.

We keep each of these offers on its own page and recheck them against ElevenLabs' official pages. All current ElevenLabs deals, including new ones as they appear, are listed on our ElevenLabs tool page.