ElevenLabs prices music by the minute, gates rights by tier

The system

ElevenLabs is an AI audio company whose Music service generates songs from text prompts, priced through its API pricing page and governed by its separate Music Terms, last updated 26 May 2026 per the document's own header. Distinct from the generation API, ElevenLabs also runs a Music Marketplace where users license songs other ElevenLabs creators have published. All three are living documents; the description below reflects the versions retrieved on 16 September 2026.

What the documents establish

The API pricing page states Music generation costs 0.15 US dollars per minute, with a five-minute duration limit per generation, and states commercial-use licensing applies on Starter-plan subscriptions and above, meaning the free or pay-as-you-go tier does not include commercial rights. The Music Terms document states Music output is prohibited for customers in specific sectors, including firearms, tobacco, adult content, religious organisations and political campaigning, and prohibits submitting a real artist's name, a specific song or album title, or a substantial portion of existing lyrics as an input prompt. The separate Music Marketplace page states that standard purchased usage types, such as its Social Media and Paid Marketing licences, exclude several categories entirely: television, film, cinema and streaming-platform distribution, large-scale commercial distribution, radio, and large studio games, all of which the page states require a custom Enterprise agreement instead.

Craft and rights

The rights boundary here runs along two separate lines: the per-minute API is gated by subscription tier, so a Starter-plan or higher subscriber generating original Music gets commercial rights the free tier does not, while the Marketplace's purchased-track licences are gated by use case regardless of what plan the buyer holds, with certain professional media categories reserved for a negotiated Enterprise deal. A producer scoring an independent short film using API-generated Music on a Starter plan appears covered by the API's own commercial terms; the same producer trying to license a Marketplace track for that film would need the Enterprise path the Marketplace page names explicitly.

Outcomes and open questions

Because the per-minute rate, the Starter-plan gate, and the Marketplace's excluded-use list all sit on pages ElevenLabs can update at any time, the specific dollar figure and exact excluded categories should be reconfirmed against the live pages before being relied on for a real production budget or licence decision. It is not established from these pages alone how the two licensing regimes interact when a single project mixes API-generated and Marketplace-purchased music.

• Which of the two products, the per-minute generation API or the Marketplace, does the intended use actually fall under, and which terms document governs it?
• Does the subscription plan in use include commercial-use licensing for API-generated Music, or only non-commercial use?
• Does the intended use fall into one of the Marketplace's named Enterprise-only categories, such as film or broadcast distribution?

ElevenLabs prices and licenses two related but distinct products differently, and a producer should confirm which one, and which tier, actually applies before assuming a generated or purchased track is cleared for a specific commercial release.