Affiliate disclosure: this post contains an affiliate link to ElevenLabs (via PartnerStack). If you subscribe through it, SiftGuide may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Every price, limit and right below comes from ElevenLabs’ own pricing pages, Terms of Service and docs, checked on October 22, 2026. Prices are in US dollars and exclude taxes.
Short answer: ElevenLabs Voice Isolator removes background noise, music and chatter from a recording and gives you back the clean voice. It is on every plan, Free too, and costs 1,000 credits per minute of audio, so a plan’s credits translate straight into minutes: 10 a month on Free (personal use only), 30 on Starter (US$6), 121 on Creator (US$22), 600 on Pro (US$99). Each file can be up to 1 hour and 500 MB, audio or video. Through the API it is billed separately at US$0.12 per minute.
Voice Isolator by plan at a glance
This is the Voice Isolator tab of ElevenLabs’ “Compare plans” table on elevenlabs.io/pricing (rendered October 22, 2026; the same rows for Free to Pro appear in the “Voice Isolator Pricing” table on elevenlabs.io/voice-isolator). “Extra minute” is ElevenLabs’ own approximate figure, with the tilde.
Plan: Free
- Price a month: US$0
- Credits a month: 10,000
- Minutes a month: 10
- Extra minute: ~US$0.36
- Commercial use: Personal use only
- Max file: 1 hour / 500 MB
- Concurrent jobs: 2
- Seats: 1
Plan: Starter
- Price a month: US$6
- Credits a month: 30,000
- Minutes a month: 30
- Extra minute: ~US$0.20
- Commercial use: Commercial
- Max file: 1 hour / 500 MB
- Concurrent jobs: 3
- Seats: 1
Plan: Creator
- Price a month: US$22 (US$11 the first month)
- Credits a month: 121,000
- Minutes a month: 121
- Extra minute: ~US$0.18
- Commercial use: Commercial
- Max file: 1 hour / 500 MB
- Concurrent jobs: 5
- Seats: 1
Plan: Pro
- Price a month: US$99
- Credits a month: 600,000
- Minutes a month: 600
- Extra minute: ~US$0.17
- Commercial use: Commercial
- Max file: 1 hour / 500 MB
- Concurrent jobs: 10
- Seats: 1
Plan: Scale
- Price a month: US$299
- Credits a month: 1,800,000
- Minutes a month: 1,800
- Extra minute: ~US$0.17
- Commercial use: Commercial
- Max file: 1 hour / 500 MB
- Concurrent jobs: 15
- Seats: 3
Plan: Business
- Price a month: US$990
- Credits a month: 6,000,000
- Minutes a month: 6,000
- Extra minute: ~US$0.17
- Commercial use: Commercial
- Max file: 1 hour / 500 MB
- Concurrent jobs: 15
- Seats: 10
Every plan accepts 9 video formats and, per the table’s tick icons, includes full-quality download and API access. Paying yearly works out to about US$5 a month for Starter, US$18.33 for Creator and US$82.50 for Pro. Unused credits on paid plans roll over for up to two months (up to 2× the monthly quota); on Free they do not.
See ElevenLabs plans (PartnerStack referral)
How the minutes are counted
The pricing page tooltip says it plainly: “One minute costs 1,000 credits.” The pricing FAQ gives the same rate (“Voice Changer and Voice Isolator 1,000 credits per minute”), and credits are “charged per generation request, not per download”. Divide your monthly credits by 1,000 and you get exactly the minutes in the table. What that means in practice (our arithmetic):
- A full 1-hour file costs 60,000 credits. That is more than Starter’s 30,000 a month, so on Starter you can clean about 30 minutes of audio a month; a full hour needs Creator (121,000 credits, room for two one-hour files) or rolled-over credits.
- Free’s 10 minutes are enough to test the tool on a few clips, but the result is for personal use only.
- Price per included minute: about US$0.20 on Starter (US$6 / 30), US$0.18 on Creator (US$22 / 121) and US$0.165 on Pro (US$99 / 600), in line with ElevenLabs’ own “Extra minute” figures. On a yearly Starter plan it is about US$0.17.
- Credits are shared: the same pool pays for Text to Speech, Voice Changer, music and the rest, so every isolated minute is 1,000 credits you cannot spend elsewhere.
Where ElevenLabs’ own pages disagree (as of October 22, 2026):
- Characters or credits: the Voice Isolator page FAQ and the docs say it “costs 1000 characters for every minute of audio”; the pricing page says 1,000 credits per minute. Same number, older wording; credits is what your balance shows.
- Audio formats: the Voice Isolator page and the API pricing page list WAV, MP3, FLAC, OGG and AAC; the docs list eight: AAC, AIFF, OGG, MP3, OPUS, WAV, FLAC and M4A (plus nine video formats).
- Music vocals: the Voice Isolator page lists “Isolate vocals for music remixes or samples” as a use case, but its own FAQ says it is “not designed or optimized for this use case today” and the docs say it is “Not specifically optimized for isolating vocals from music”.
- “Free”: the page is titled “Free AI Voice Isolator”, but the Free plan is “Personal use only” in the table, and the Terms of Service limit Free Users to non-commercial purposes.
- Two prices per minute: in the app you pay with credits (the table’s ~US$0.17 to ~US$0.36 per extra minute); the API pricing page bills Voice Isolator in US dollars at US$0.12 per minute. The help center confirms pricing “depends on whether you generate via the website or the API”.
Can you use the cleaned audio commercially?
Only on a paid plan. The compare table marks Free as “Personal use only” and every paid plan as “Commercial”, and the Terms of Service say Free Users “may only use the Services for non-commercial purposes” while Paid Users “may use the Services for commercial purposes”. So for a monetised podcast, a client interview, a YouTube video or a film, Starter (US$6) is the minimum.
How to use ElevenLabs Voice Isolator
- In the ElevenLabs app open Voice Isolator under Audio Tools.
- Upload or drag and drop an audio or video file (up to 1 hour and 500 MB), or record with your microphone.
- Click Isolate voice. The tool separates the voice from the background in a single pass.
- Play the result in the app and download the clean file.
Tips before you spend credits
- Trim first. You pay per minute of audio you send, so cut silence, intros and parts you will not use before uploading (our tip, based on the per-minute billing).
- Speech, not songs. It is built for dialogue: ambient noise, mic feedback, street sounds, background music and overlapping conversations. For pulling vocals out of a song ElevenLabs itself says results may vary.
- Video works directly. MP4, MOV, MKV and six more video formats are accepted, so you do not need to extract the audio first.
- Clean before you transcribe or convert. ElevenLabs’ quickstart points to Speech to Text and Voice Changer as next steps for the isolated voice.
Try ElevenLabs Voice Isolator (PartnerStack referral)
For developers: the Audio Isolation API
One call: POST https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/audio-isolation as multipart/form-data with the audio file (required). The optional file_format can be pcm_s16le_16 (16-bit PCM, 16 kHz, mono, little-endian) for lower latency, or other. There is also a streaming version, POST /v1/audio-isolation/stream, and GET /v1/audio-isolation/history to list past jobs. In the Python SDK it is elevenlabs.audio_isolation.convert(audio=...); the CLI command is elevenlabs audio-isolation convert --audio in.mp3 --output isolated.mp3. API usage is “billed in US dollars, not credits”: Voice Isolator is US$0.12 per minute, so a one-hour file is about US$7.20 (our arithmetic). Files up to 500 MB / 1 hour, as in the app.
Which plan to pick
If you want to: Try it on a few personal clips (up to 10 minutes a month)
- Pick: Free
If you want to: Clean a weekly short podcast or a few videos for commercial use (about 30 minutes a month)
- Pick: Starter, US$6 a month
If you want to: Full-length episodes or interviews (up to about two hours a month)
- Pick: Creator, US$22 a month (US$11 the first month)
If you want to: Daily production, 10 hours a month, 10 jobs at once
- Pick: Pro, US$99 a month
If you want to: A team, or an app processing user uploads
- Pick: Scale / Business, or the API at US$0.12 per minute
More from ElevenLabs on SiftGuide
For how credits work across every ElevenLabs tool, see the ElevenLabs pricing guide. Want to change the cleaned voice into another one? See ElevenLabs Voice Changer pricing (same 1,000 credits per minute). Need a brand-new voice from a text prompt? See ElevenLabs Voice Design pricing. Turning the clean audio into text? See the ElevenLabs Speech to Text guide. Putting the clean voice on a video? See ElevenLabs Image & Video pricing (video from Starter, lip-sync included on paid plans).
FAQ
Is ElevenLabs Voice Isolator free?
Yes, on the Free plan you get 10 minutes a month (10,000 credits at 1,000 credits per minute), for personal use only.
How much does Voice Isolator cost per minute?
1,000 credits per minute of audio in the app. That is about US$0.20 a minute on Starter (US$6 for 30 minutes, our arithmetic); the API charges US$0.12 per minute.
What is the maximum file size and length?
500 MB and 1 hour per file, on every plan.
Does it work on video files?
Yes. The docs list MP4, AVI, MKV, MOV, WMV, FLV, WEBM, MPEG and 3GPP, plus audio formats such as MP3, WAV, FLAC, M4A and OGG.
Can I use the result on YouTube or in a podcast I monetise?
On any paid plan (Starter and up). Free is personal use only.
Can it remove vocals from music or isolate a singer?
ElevenLabs says it is not designed or optimized for that today, though it may work depending on the content.
Is there an API?
Yes: POST /v1/audio-isolation (and /v1/audio-isolation/stream), billed at US$0.12 per minute.
Sources
All checked on October 22, 2026:
- ElevenLabs pricing (plans, credits FAQ, Compare plans: Voice Isolator)
- ElevenLabs Voice Isolator page, pricing table and FAQ
- ElevenLabs API pricing
- ElevenLabs Terms of Service
- Voice isolator (capability overview, formats, FAQ)
- Voice isolator (product guide)
- Voice Isolator quickstart (API)
- API reference: Audio isolation
- API reference: Audio isolation stream
- Help Center: how much does Voice Isolator cost?
- Help Center: maximum file size
