Why compare ElevenLabs and Sonex Labs now?
ElevenLabs launched Eleven v4 on 28 September 2026, and it moved to the top of the Artificial Analysis text-to-speech arena. For narration and English media work, it is an obvious name on any shortlist. Teams running voice on phone calls usually have a different brief. They might be running outbound collections in Bhojpuri, a clinic line in Telugu, or support in several countries at once. Their audio ends up on an 8 kHz phone line rather than in a podcast, and their bill is measured in tens of millions of characters a month.
This article compares the two for that kind of work. It sets out what each product documents, what each costs at realistic volumes, and how to test both on your own audio. Every ElevenLabs fact links to ElevenLabs' own pages, checked on 24 October 2026.
Five things tend to decide this choice. First is whether the exact languages and dialects your callers speak are supported, and not just the national language. Second is how the voice sounds after the phone network has squeezed it into narrowband audio. Third is time to first audio, because callers notice gaps of a few hundred milliseconds. Fourth is cost at your real monthly volume, including plan fees. Fifth is how far one bill and one platform can carry you, from text to speech through transcription to a full voice agent.
What are ElevenLabs and Sonex Labs?
Sonex Labs is a voice platform for calls in many languages. Its text-to-speech model, Pāṇini, covers 250+ languages in 34 writing systems and starts streaming audio in under 200 ms (time to first byte) (text-to-speech docs). Valmiki, its speech-to-text model, covers 100+ languages with automatic language detection and is billed by the second (speech-to-text docs). Sonex voice agents combine both with telephony at $0.055 a minute and let you bring your own LLM key at zero markup. Text to speech is one per-character rate for every language (pricing), and every language page has a live playground.
ElevenLabs is a voice AI company whose API, studio products and agent platform are built around expressive text to speech. Its current models are Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo, with v3, Multilingual v2 and Flash v2.5 still available (models docs). It also sells Scribe speech to text and an agents product, and it runs a community Voice Library of more than 10,000 shared voices (voices docs). API usage is billed per 1,000 characters, and subscriptions from $6 to $990 a month bundle credits, seats and features (plans); on 24 October 2026 the plans page also showed first-month discounts on Starter and Creator.
ElevenLabs and Sonex Labs at a glance
| Factor | Sonex Labs (Pāṇini) | ElevenLabs | How to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Languages | 250+ languages in 34 writing systems (source) | Eleven v4 / v4 Turbo: 90+; v3: 70+; Flash v2.5: 32 (source) | Look up each language your callers speak, not the country |
| Indian languages | 36+ Indian languages and dialects, including Bhojpuri, Marwari, Haryanvi, Garhwali, Maithili, Chhattisgarhi, Saraiki, Bundeli, Braj, Angika and Bhili (source) | v4: 14, including Assamese, Odia, Sindhi and Urdu; Flash v2.5: Hindi and Tamil (source) | Have native speakers score the same script |
| Mixed-language text | Hinglish and other mixed text read in one voice (source) | India page describes voices tuned for code-switched speech, and agents for Hinglish (source) | Test your own mixed-language lines |
| Phone audio | Trained for 8 kHz phone audio (playgrounds) | 8 kHz μ-law, A-law and PCM output formats (source) | Listen on a real phone call, not on headphones |
| Voices | 63 platform voices; clone from a 10-second sample; a voice or clone speaks across languages (source) | 10,000+ community voices (source) | Count the voices you would actually ship |
| Speed (vendor-reported) | Under 200 ms to first byte (source) | Flash v2.5 ~75 ms; v4 Turbo ~100 ms median inference, network excluded (source) | Measure time to first audio from your own region |
| List price per 1M characters | $31.25 pay as you go; $28.125 on the $5/month plan; same for every language (source) | $80 (v4), $40 (v4 Turbo, Flash) (source) | Price your real monthly volume, plan fees included |
Which covers the languages your callers speak?
Pāṇini's language list runs to 250+ languages, and the difference shows most below the level of national languages. Alongside the major Indian languages, it covers the dialects many callers speak at home: Bhojpuri, Marwari, Haryanvi, Garhwali, Maithili, Chhattisgarhi, Mewari, Saraiki, Bundeli, Braj, Angika and Bhili, as well as Dogri, Konkani, Tulu and Santali. Outside India it covers Arabic in Modern Standard Arabic and nine dialects: Gulf, Egyptian, Levantine, Najdi, Iraqi, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian and Sudanese. Every one of them is priced the same per character.
ElevenLabs' models page lists 14 Indian languages for Eleven v4 and v3: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Flash v2.5, its lowest-latency model, lists Hindi and Tamil among Indian languages. Bhojpuri, Maithili and Marwari don't appear on the page.
If your callers speak standard Hindi, Tamil or Bengali, both products are in scope. For anything else, open the language's page under text to speech and listen to the live playground with your own lines, including the English terms your customers mix into their own language. Pāṇini reads mixed text such as Hinglish in one voice.
How do they compare for Hindi?
Hindi is in scope on both. ElevenLabs lists Hindi for Eleven v4, v3 and Flash v2.5 (models docs), and its India page describes voices tuned for Indian accents and code-switched speech, voice agents built for Hinglish, and a library that includes 12 Indian languages and accents. Sonex has four Hindi voices (Priya, Alok, Anchal and Riya) and three voices recorded for Hinglish (Shruti, Vikas and Neeraj), and Pāṇini reads mixed Hindi and English in one voice. You can play all of them on the Hindi page.
On price in rupees, the Sonex pricing page has a rupee view that shows ₹3.00 per 1,000 characters, the same rate as every other language. ElevenLabs' plans page listed its prices in US dollars, excluding taxes, when we checked on 26 October 2026, and we found no rupee price list there or on its India page.
On the free tier, the terms differ. ElevenLabs' terms of service (last updated 9 October 2026) say that free users may use the services only for non-commercial purposes, and that commercial use needs a paid plan. We found no attribution requirement in those terms. Sonex's terms allow commercial use of audio made on the free tier, such as a monetised YouTube video, with no attribution. For a creator testing Hindi voice-overs before paying, that is the practical difference.
How do they sound on a real phone line?
Pāṇini is trained for 8 kHz phone audio, the narrowband channel a call actually uses. ElevenLabs' text-to-speech API offers 8 kHz μ-law, A-law, PCM and WAV outputs, and notes that μ-law is commonly used for Twilio audio, so it can send audio in the format phone networks use.
A voice tuned for wideband audio is downsampled when it goes out over a phone line, and breathy detail and wide pitch range, which are strengths on headphones, can blur once that happens. Neither company has published a phone-line comparison, so place real calls with both and listen on a handset.
How quickly does a caller hear audio?
Pāṇini starts streaming audio in under 200 ms, measured from the request to the first byte, and Sonex voice agents answer in about 300 ms end to end, from when the caller stops speaking to when the agent starts. ElevenLabs publishes lower synthesis figures: about 75 ms for Flash v2.5 and about 100 ms median inference for Eleven v4 Turbo, both excluding application and network time (models docs).
On a phone call, the number the caller feels is the whole turn, from the moment they stop speaking to the moment they hear a reply. Inference time and time to first byte are measured at different points, so the two figures are not directly comparable. Coverage also changes the picture: Flash v2.5 covers two Indian languages, so an Indian-language team on ElevenLabs would most likely use v4 Turbo, at $0.04 per 1,000 characters.
How do voices, cloning and free tiers compare?
Pāṇini clones from a 10-second sample, and one clone is included in the free tier. A voice or a clone carries across languages, so one brand voice can speak to every queue. ElevenLabs says Instant Voice Clones need about 10 seconds of audio (announcement), and Professional Voice Cloning, which needs longer training audio, starts on the Creator plan (voices docs).
ElevenLabs' clearest advantages are here. Its community library of more than 10,000 voices is a real difference for teams casting many characters (voices docs), against our 63 platform voices, and on the Artificial Analysis arena, which ranks models by blind listener preference, Eleven v4 Turbo (Elo 1336) and Eleven v4 (1332) were first and second on 24 October 2026, with inline audio tags for laughter and delivery directions (announcement).
The free tiers differ in what you can try. Sonex's free tier gives 10,000 text-to-speech characters and one voice clone, with no card required, and every language page has a live playground (pricing, text to speech). ElevenLabs' free plan gives 10,000 credits a month, but voice cloning and a commercial licence start on the $6 Starter plan, and Voice Library voices aren't available through the API on the free tier (plans, voices docs).
What does each cost at 1M and 10M characters a month?
Sonex lists $0.03125 per 1,000 characters pay as you go, or $0.028125 on the $5-a-month plan, for every language, dialects included (pricing). ElevenLabs' API pricing lists $0.08 per 1,000 characters for Eleven v4, v3 and Multilingual v2, and $0.04 for v4 Turbo and Flash. All prices were checked on 24 October 2026.
The assumptions are as follows. Prices are in US dollars, before tax. Characters are billed text characters. ElevenLabs figures use API list rates and leave out subscription credit bundles, which can change the effective rate depending on your plan, so check them against your own plan. For Sonex, the $5 plan pays for itself above 1.6 million characters a month, so the cheaper option is shown at each volume. Free allowances are ignored.
| Monthly volume | Sonex Labs Pāṇini | ElevenLabs v4 Turbo / Flash | ElevenLabs v4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M characters | $31.25 (pay as you go) | $40.00 | $80.00 |
| 10M characters | $286.25 ($5 plan + $281.25) | $400.00 | $800.00 |
Against v4 Turbo, the model an ElevenLabs customer would most likely use for calls, Sonex costs about 22% less at 1M characters and about 28% less at 10M, a saving of over $110 a month at that volume. Against full Eleven v4, the difference is about 61% at 1M and 64% at 10M. Because Sonex charges the same for Bhojpuri as for Hindi or English, a multilingual call centre can budget one rate across every queue.
For speech to text, Valmiki is $0.00525 per minute of audio, billed by the second (pricing). ElevenLabs' Scribe v2 Realtime is $0.39 an hour, about $0.0065 a minute, and batch Scribe v2 is $0.22 an hour, about $0.0037 a minute (API pricing), so Sonex is cheaper for live transcription and ElevenLabs for batch. For voice agents, Sonex lists $0.055 a minute, including speech to text, text to speech and telephony on Sonex numbers, with no minute charge for bring-your-own telephony. The LLM is either your own key at zero markup or Sonex's Vyas model at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens. ElevenLabs lists $0.08 a minute for agents ($0.16 burst pricing above your concurrency limit); its agents pricing page says LLM usage is billed separately on top, and that ElevenLabs adds no telephony charge, with your carrier billing you directly. At 10,000 agent minutes a month, that is $550 on Sonex against $800 at ElevenLabs' rate, before the LLM, and before carrier charges on ElevenLabs.
When is Sonex Labs the better choice?
Choose Sonex Labs when your callers speak languages or dialects ElevenLabs doesn't list. That includes Bhojpuri, Marwari, Haryanvi, Garhwali, Maithili, Chhattisgarhi, Bundeli, Braj, Angika or Bhili in India, and the rest of a 250+ language list, at one per-character price. It suits call centres and collections teams running outbound campaigns across several states, where each queue needs a voice in the caller's own language and the same price per character applies to every one.
It also fits when you want the whole call on one platform: Sonex voice agents run at $0.055 a minute including speech to text in 100+ languages, text to speech and telephony on Sonex numbers, about 300 ms end to end, with your own LLM key at zero markup. Agents can transfer a live call to a human agent, use MCP and tool calling, and connect to HubSpot, Salesforce, n8n, Zapier and Make, and calls can be recorded and transcribed. And it fits when volume is high: at 10M characters a month, Pāṇini costs about 28% less than v4 Turbo. For a comparison with another low-latency engine, see Sonex Labs vs Cartesia.
When is ElevenLabs the better choice?
Choose ElevenLabs when the voice is the product, as in audiobooks, dubbing, games or ads, and expressive range matters more than unit cost. It also fits when you need many characters from a large library, want studio editing, need the lowest published synthesis latency, prefer cheaper batch transcription, or build on a platform that already offers it, such as Vapi or Retell AI, or on its own agents SDKs.
How do you test both fairly?
Write 30 to 50 lines from your real calls, including names, amounts, dates, addresses and the English words your customers mix into their own language. Start with the live playground on each language's Sonex page to shortlist voices, then generate each line with one Pāṇini voice and one ElevenLabs voice on v4 Turbo, in the format you will send to the phone network. Play them over a real phone call to a handset, record what arrives, and have native speakers of each language score them blind for naturalness and accuracy. Measure time to first audio from the region your servers run in, and note the 95th percentile, not only the median. Then price the result at your expected monthly volume using the arithmetic above. A test like this takes a day and gives you results specific to your own traffic.