The cost to narrate a novel with AI comes to 31,765 points for a 90,000-word book: about 540,000 characters, 8 hours 49 minutes of finished audio, and $72 on a Pro plan if you finish inside three months.
The rest of this post shows the arithmetic, so you can swap in your own manuscript's numbers and see where the money goes. Everything uses the app rate: one point per 17 characters, rounded up. The API charges one point per 15 characters, so the same book through the API is about 36,000 points, roughly 13% more.
From word count to points
Start with characters, because that is what the meter reads. Points are not charged by the minute of finished audio, so a slow narrator and a fast one cost the same for the same text.
If you only know your word count, 6 characters per word (spaces and punctuation included) is close enough for a first estimate. Word and Google Docs both report a real character count. Use that once the manuscript is final, since dialogue-heavy books and books full of long words drift away from the average.
| Step | Arithmetic | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Words | 300 pages × 300 words | 90,000 words |
| Characters | 90,000 × 6 | 540,000 characters |
| Points | ⌈540,000 ÷ 17⌉ | 31,765 points |
| Audio | 1 point ≈ 1 second | about 8 h 49 min |
The one-point-per-second figure is an average, not a promise. Our audiobook cost calculator page works the same novel at about 36,000 points because it assumes a ten-hour runtime. Your own count can land on either side of that, so budget against the character count and treat the audio length as a guide.
What AI audiobook narration costs for a 90,000-word novel
Free gives you 60 points once, about a minute of audio. That is enough to audition a page and not much else. Past that, you are choosing between monthly plans and top-ups, and the real difference is whether leftover points survive.
Monthly plan points reset every billing cycle. Top-up points never expire. The table prices the same 31,765-point book each way.
| Option | What you buy | Cost | Left over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | 11 months × 3,000 points | $99 | 1,235 expire |
| Pro | 3 months × 12,000 points | $72 | 4,235 expire |
| Max | 1 month × 150,000 points | $299 | 118,235 expire |
| Top-ups | 3 × $30 (12,000 points each) | $90 | 4,235, kept |
| Top-ups | 1 × $119 (60,000 points) | $119 | 28,235, kept |
Pro is the cheapest way to get through one novel, if you can finish inside its months. $24 buys 12,000 points, about $0.002 each, against $0.0025 for a $30 top-up. At that rate the book works out to roughly $8 per finished hour.
Top-ups win when you have no deadline. You buy $30 at a time, never lose a point, and the 4,235 left after this book go toward the next one.
Lite is the wrong tool for a whole novel. Its 3,000 points a month cover about 8,500 words, a little under 30 pages, so you would pay for eleven months to finish. Max only makes sense for volume: 150,000 points is almost five of these novels in a month, which is a publisher's schedule, not a first-time author's.
There is one more lever. The app also has two lighter model options priced at 0.75 and 0.5 times the standard points, which would bring this book to about 23,800 or 15,900 points. Whether the saving is worth it is a listening decision, so test your own opening chapter in each before you decide.
Estimate your own book in four steps
The novel above is a stand-in. Your book has its own length, its own dialogue ratio and its own proper nouns, so run the same sum on the real file. It takes about two minutes.
Get the character count
Open the final manuscript and read the character count, spaces included, from your word processor.
Divide by 17 and round up
That is one clean pass in the app. For the API, divide by 15 instead, which gives a larger number for the same text.
Add a redo allowance
Multiply by 1.1 for a 10% cushion. For the novel above that is about 34,942 points, and more if your names are unusual.
Match the number to a plan or pack
Three Pro months hold 36,000 points, so they still cover the cushioned total. Anything bigger is a case for top-ups or a longer schedule.
Chapters give you a second way to plan. If the book has 30 chapters of about 3,000 words each, every chapter costs about 1,059 points, so a Pro month of 12,000 points narrates roughly 11 chapters. Spread the work across three months and the schedule writes itself.
Where the budget leaks
Three things move the total after the first estimate. One of them costs real money and two do not.
Re-voicing a line
Regenerating a line spends its points again. Redo 10% of the book and that is about 3,200 extra points, roughly $8 at the $30 top-up rate. Ten percent is a planning guess, not a measured rate. Fixing pronunciations up front with pronunciation rules means fewer redos.
A bigger cast
Cost follows characters of text, not the number of voices. Auto-cast can give every speaking character a voice of their own and the book still costs 31,765 points. Ten voices bill the same as one.
Exporting
Packaging the finished book as M4B with chapter markers, MP3, a ZIP of chapter files or WAV spends no points. Try every format.
Before the full book, pay for one chapter. A 3,000-word chapter is 18,000 characters, or 1,059 points. Free's 60 points will not cover that, but a single $5 top-up of 1,200 points will, and it never expires. Narrate your opening chapter with a fiction narration voice, listen on the device your readers use, and decide with the evidence in your ears.
AI audiobook narration cost against a human narrator
Human narrators quote by the finished hour, and this book finishes at around nine. Multiply by real quotes from the people you would hire. We are not going to guess a rate for you, and a made-up midpoint would only make the comparison look tidier than it is.
What the points do not buy is a performance. A good human narrator can hold a grieving widow and a sarcastic teenager in the same chapter, take direction, and sell a memoir as the person who lived it. If your book rests on that, the savings are beside the point. Some retail channels also require a human narrator, so read your target store's rules before you generate anything.
AI narration is the better call for non-fiction, backlist titles, drafts you want to hear before booking a studio, and any book where the alternative is no audiobook at all. A calm narrator like this one suits intimate fiction, while a how-to wants something steadier and more brisk.
If you want to see how the meter behaves on shorter jobs, our pricing breakdown covers re-takes and top-ups in more detail.
Frequently asked questions
How many points does a 300-page novel cost?
A 90,000-word novel is about 540,000 characters, so ⌈540,000 ÷ 17⌉ = 31,765 points in the app, near 8 hours 49 minutes of audio. Your own character count replaces the 6-per-word estimate.
Does a multi-voice audiobook cost more than one narrator?
No. Points follow the characters of text generated, not the number of voices. A ten-voice cast costs the same as one narrator, unless you re-voice lines, which spends their points again.
Does exporting the audiobook cost points?
No. Generating the audio spends points. Packaging it as M4B, MP3, a ZIP of chapters or WAV is free.
Do unused points roll over to the next month?
Monthly plan points reset each billing cycle. Top-up points never expire, which makes them the safer buy for a book you will finish over several months.