I know this is a common kneejerk reaction nowadays, but it's hard not to wonder if this is due to using AI to generate the text on these pages.

I assure you they didn't use an LLM to invent their pricing strategy. Elevenlabs subscription levels are designed around converting text-to-speech in the primary use-case. They charge by the character when converting text to speech, so characters are kind of the currency on their site. 1000 characters per minute makes sense in that context and I find it surprisingly expensive compared to generation

I still don't think I understand the pricing model based on your additional info. If characters are currency that you buy with real money, what does "characters per minute" mean? I guess if each character is $0.01 and then you want 20 minutes of audio, you can say that's $10.00 per minute for 20 minutes, but that means that the number of characters in the actual text wouldn't affect it at all, so...why even make up a different currency then?

Not to mention: What if the vocal portion of an audio clip doesn't translate to characters? What if it's all "oooh" and "ahhh," as in a choral segment?

"Audio generation consumes characters. 1k characters approximate 1 minute of audio. Character counts reset each billing cycle without rollover."

Do you not know of character meaning, for example, a single letter?

I know that meaning, as well as the meaning from stories. What I don't know is what this has to do with removing background noise from audio.

Ah I see. Have a look at the pricing page then: https://elevenlabs.io/pricing

Everything else they bill in characters, so that's the "currency" customers have. It works out I think as costing roughly the same per minute as generating audio.

“Costs 1000 characters for every minute of audio” suggests this is not about the text characters in the sample. It makes it sound like a form of digital credit.

Definitely a form of credit. Of course it seems to be rather obtuse but it's still possible to make some sense of it given the information on their pricing page.

The definitely-most-popular Creator price point is 100,000 "characters" for $22, meaning, according to the FAQ, 100 minutes of audio listening costs $22. Not sure why they can't just say "100 listening minutes" or whatever.

Though I just noticed they also claim that the 100k characters is ~120 minutes of audio but 30k is 30 minutes of audio. I'm not sure where they're getting their numbers but it looks like they're either being dishonest about the former or underselling the latter.

> The definitely-most-popular Creator price point is 100,000 "characters" for $22, meaning, according to the FAQ, 100 minutes of audio listening costs $22. Not sure why they can't just say "100 listening minutes" or whatever.

Because this part of the product is per minute, but the other (and earlier) one is charged per character of text.

> Though I just noticed they also claim that the 100k characters is ~120 minutes of audio but 30k is 30 minutes of audio. I'm not sure where they're getting their numbers but it looks like they're either being dishonest about the former or underselling the latter.

It's just a very rough estimate, the comparison points are "about 10 minutes, about half an hour, about 2 hours". I think that would be clearer if it said ~2 hours.

I believe that's exactly what he means with "text characters".. as in a character (or letter) of some text.

> text characters