ElevenLabs WordPress Plugin: Add ElevenLabs Voices to Your Posts

To add ElevenLabs voices to WordPress, you need three things: an ElevenLabs account, an ElevenLabs API key, and an ElevenLabs WordPress plugin that sends your post text to the ElevenLabs text to speech API and plays the result on the page. With AtlasVoice Pro, you paste the key under AtlasVoice > Integrations, choose the ElevenLabs TTS player, pick a voice, and each post is turned into an MP3 that is saved on your own site.

One thing to know up front: ElevenLabs bills you directly for the text you convert, because you use your own API key. The AtlasVoice Pro licence is a separate purchase and does not include ElevenLabs usage.

What ElevenLabs is and why site owners want it

ElevenLabs is an AI audio company whose text to speech turns written text into lifelike speech. Its own text to speech page says it supports over 70 languages and lists several models, including Eleven v3 (its most expressive model), Multilingual v2, Flash v2.5 and Turbo v2.5. The models differ in speed, language coverage and price, which matters later when you think about cost.

WordPress site owners usually reach for ElevenLabs because they want a narrated version of their articles that sounds close to a human reader, for readers who prefer listening or find long text hard to read. If you are still deciding whether you need a premium voice at all, our free guide to adding text to speech to WordPress posts (opens in a new tab) covers the no-cost options first.

What you need before you start

An ElevenLabs account and the right plan

Sign up at elevenlabs.io. According to ElevenLabs' help center, most API endpoints are available on every plan, including the free plan, and each API request deducts from your account's allowance.

Before you publish audio on a real website, read ElevenLabs' rules for the free plan. As of September 2026, ElevenLabs states that the free plan does not include a commercial license and cannot be used for any commercial purpose, and that content published from a free plan must be attributed to ElevenLabs. All paid plans include a commercial license. For a business site, a blog with ads, or a store, plan on a paid ElevenLabs subscription.

As of September 2026, the ElevenLabs pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists a Free plan with 10,000 credits a month and paid plans starting with Starter at $6 a month. The separate ElevenLabs API pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists text to speech at $0.08 per 1,000 characters for Multilingual v2 and v3, and $0.04 per 1,000 characters for Flash and Turbo. Prices change, so check both pages before you commit.

An ElevenLabs API key

ElevenLabs' documentation describes the steps as follows:

1. Log in to ElevenLabs.

2. Click Developers in the left sidebar and open the API Keys tab (the direct link is elevenlabs.io/app/settings/api-keys (opens in a new tab)).

3. Create a new key and give it a name you will recognize, such as your site's domain.

4. Copy the key right away. ElevenLabs says you can only see the full key when you first create it.

New keys are restricted by default, and you choose which features the key may use. ElevenLabs also lets you set an optional credit limit per key, which is one of the best cost controls you have. AtlasVoice Pro uses the key for text to speech, for listing and looking up voices, and for reading your subscription usage, so allow those features when you set the restrictions. Treat the key like a password and never paste it into a public page.

How to set up the ElevenLabs WordPress plugin in AtlasVoice Pro

AtlasVoice Pro is our product. It works on top of the free AtlasVoice plugin (opens in a new tab) (listed on wordpress.org as "Text To Speech TTS Accessibility"), so install and activate the free plugin first, then AtlasVoice Pro. All the screens below live in the AtlasVoice menu in your WordPress admin.

1. Save your API key. Go to AtlasVoice > Integrations. Under Select Voice Service, choose ElevenLabs TTS. In the Set ElevenLabs API key box, paste your key and click Submit. The key is saved in your WordPress database, and requests to ElevenLabs are sent from your server, not from your visitors' browsers.

2. Check the usage panel. Once the key is saved, the same screen shows an ElevenLabs Usage panel with characters used against your limit, your plan name and the next reset date, pulled from your ElevenLabs account.

3. Choose the ElevenLabs player. Go to AtlasVoice > Customization. Under Player Customization, open Select Player, choose ElevenLabs TTS, and click Save. If you skipped step 1, AtlasVoice asks you to authenticate from the Integrations menu first. Your uploads folder must be writable, because the audio is stored there.

4. Pick a language, voice and model. Go to AtlasVoice > Listening. Set Voice Language, then pick from Voice to speak. The list shows voices from the ElevenLabs Voice Library for that language, and you can search it by name, accent or gender. To use a specific voice from your own ElevenLabs account, paste its voice ID into Or paste a voice ID and click Use. Then choose a Model (the default is Multilingual v2) and an Output Format (the default is MP3 at 44.1 kHz, 128 kbps). Use the audio player on that screen to hear a preview.

5. Fine-tune the voice (optional). Depending on the voice, you will see sliders for Stability, Similarity Boost and Style Exaggeration. Speed (0.7 to 1.2) and a Speaker Boost switch are always available. Click Save.

From then on, the player on your posts uses your ElevenLabs voice. AtlasVoice sends the post's text to ElevenLabs in batches, joins the results into one MP3, saves it in your uploads folder, and plays it from your site. The audio is created the first time a post is opened with the player on it. While AtlasVoice is in Staging mode, where only administrators see the player, it waits until you press play instead.

Generate audio for many posts at once

You do not have to wait for visitors to trigger each post. In Posts, tick the posts you want, choose AtlasVoice Generate MP3 File from the Bulk actions menu, and click Apply. AtlasVoice opens the Bulk MP3 Generate page, which lists each post with a check mark once its MP3 exists. Click Generate MP3 File to create them. Only tick Regenerate All MP3 Files when you really want fresh audio, because that sends the text to ElevenLabs again.

Read-along highlighting

If you turn on highlighting in the free plugin's Highlight tab, ElevenLabs audio highlights each word as it is spoken. Word timing is captured only while audio is being generated, so posts made before you enabled highlighting need to be regenerated to get it, and that regeneration uses ElevenLabs characters again.

Who pays for what

In plain terms:

• ElevenLabs bills you, the site owner, directly for the characters converted with your API key, under your ElevenLabs plan. AtlasVoice does not resell or mark up ElevenLabs usage.

• AtlasVoice Pro is a separate licence from AtlasAiDev (opens in a new tab). It unlocks the ElevenLabs player and the other Pro features, but it does not pay for your ElevenLabs characters.

The same bring-your-own-key model applies to the Google Cloud and OpenAI voices in AtlasVoice Pro. If you are weighing Google instead, see our guide to getting a Google Cloud text to speech API key (opens in a new tab).

How to keep ElevenLabs costs under control

ElevenLabs charges per character converted, not per listen, and AtlasVoice is built around that:

• Each post is converted once, then reused. After the MP3 is saved, every later play streams that file from your site. Repeat plays, from one reader or ten thousand, do not call ElevenLabs and do not spend credits.

• One generation per post at a time. If several visitors open a new post at the same moment, AtlasVoice runs a single generation and the others wait for the finished file, so you are not billed several times for the same text.

• Changes cost characters. A new voice or a new language creates a new MP3, which means a new conversion. Settle on your voice before you bulk-generate a large archive.

• Editing a post does not create new audio by itself. The saved MP3 keeps playing until you regenerate it, so you decide when to spend characters on an update.

• Set a credit limit on the API key in your ElevenLabs dashboard. ElevenLabs lets you cap each key, so a mistake cannot drain your whole plan.

• Pick the model with the price in mind. On ElevenLabs' API pricing page (as of September 2026), Flash and Turbo cost half as much per 1,000 characters as Multilingual v2.

• Read only what matters. Use AtlasVoice's settings to limit the player to the post types you need and to leave out categories or tags that do not need audio, so you are not converting pages nobody will listen to.

• Watch the usage panel on the Integrations screen after a bulk run.

Alternatives to ElevenLabs on WordPress

ElevenLabs is a strong choice when voice quality is the priority, but it is not the only one. Here is how the options in AtlasVoice compare (AtlasVoice is our product):

If you want a natural voice without managing another account and bill, the AtlasVoice Cloud voices included with Pro are the simplest path. If your budget is zero, the free browser voices work on every post with no setup. For a wider look at the market, see our comparison of the best text to speech WordPress plugins (opens in a new tab). Developers who want MP3s outside WordPress can use the AtlasVoice API (opens in a new tab).

Your next step

Create your ElevenLabs API key, give it a sensible credit limit, and try one post first: save the key under Integrations, select the ElevenLabs TTS player, pick a voice in Listening, and listen to the result on your site. When you are happy with the voice, use Bulk MP3 Generate for the rest. If you do not have AtlasVoice Pro yet, you can see what Pro includes (opens in a new tab), or start with the free plugin and add ElevenLabs later.