ElevenLabs vs Whisper
Compare ElevenLabs and Whisper on pricing, free tier, open source, API, self-host, verdict and momentum.
Both are audio tools. ElevenLabs is freemium (free tier (10k credits/mo, non-commercial); Starter $6/mo, Creator $22/mo) with an API, a free tier; Whisper is free (open source (MIT), self-host free; hosted: gpt-4o-transcribe $0.006/min) with open source, an API, self-hostable and a free tier. The catalog stamp is ship for ElevenLabs and ship for Whisper, last verified 2026-09-01 and 2026-08-19 respectively.
Auto-paired from catalog data — the verdicts are hand-set, the pairing is algorithmic.
ElevenLabs
The reference standard for AI voice — TTS, cloning, dubbing and voice agents.
Whisper
OpenAI's open-weights speech recognition — the default transcription model.
| field | ElevenLabs | Whisper |
|---|---|---|
| pricing | freemium · free tier (10k credits/mo, non-commercial); Starter $6/mo, Creator $22/mo | free · open source (MIT), self-host free; hosted: gpt-4o-transcribe $0.006/min |
| free tier | yes | yes |
| open source | no | yes |
| api | yes | yes |
| self-host | no | yes |
| verdict | ship | ship |
| momentum | blueshift | steady |
| last verified | 2026-09-01 | 2026-08-19 |
| key limitation | Credit-based pricing makes budgeting confusing. | Hallucinates text on silence and noisy segments. |
The call
Pick ElevenLabs for product voice, dubbing, or agents where quality is the bott…
Pick Whisper if open source matters.
ElevenLabs sources
Whisper sources
Open live compare →ElevenLabs pageWhisper pageElevenLabs.jsonWhisper.json