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ElevenLabs v3 Environmental Impact

Q: What is ElevenLabs v3's carbon footprint?

Based on the carbon intensity of its inference location (Cloud (US / EU)), each ElevenLabs v3 query produces approximately 0.79g of CO2.

Q: How does ElevenLabs v3 compare to a Google search?

A ElevenLabs v3 query uses 6x more than a traditional Google search in terms of energy consumption. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while ElevenLabs v3 uses 1.8 Wh per query.

Q: How much water does ElevenLabs v3 use?

Each ElevenLabs v3 query consumes approximately 6.5 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.

StandardEstimated

Latest TTS with emotional expressiveness — sighs, whispers, laughs

Architecture: Neural voice synthesis (next-gen)
Provider: ElevenLabs

1.8 Wh

Energy per query

0.79 g

CO₂ per query

7 mL

Water per query

6x more than

vs Google search

Energy per query

1.8 Wh

6x more than a Google search (0.3 Wh)

CO2 per query

0.79 g

US East (Virginia) grid (450 gCO₂/kWh)

Water per query

7 mL

~154 queries to fill 1 litre

Processing location

Cloud (US / EU)

Provider

ElevenLabs

How does ElevenLabs v3 compare?

Ranked #84 of 152 models by energy per query

View full comparison

Detailed Breakdown

Energy Consumption

ElevenLabs v3 introduces emotional expressiveness through "audio tags" — enabling sighs, whispers, laughs, and other paralinguistic features. At ~1.8 Wh per minute, it is slightly more energy-intensive than v2 due to the additional expressiveness modelling. Supports 70+ languages.

ElevenLabs — v3

Power Source & Carbon

Runs on US and EU cloud infrastructure.

ElevenLabs — About

Water Usage

At ~6.5 mL per minute of speech.

UC Riverside — Making AI Less Thirsty (2023)

About ElevenLabs v3

ElevenLabs v3 is a audio model from ElevenLabs, released in October 1, 2025. Latest TTS with emotional expressiveness — sighs, whispers, laughs. Each query uses 1.8 Wh of energy and produces 0.79 g of CO₂. That's 6x the energy of a Google search — reflecting the computational demands of audio.

These figures are estimates derived from hardware specifications and API benchmarks — ElevenLabs has not published official energy data for ElevenLabs v3. Actual consumption may vary significantly depending on batching, quantisation, and infrastructure optimisations that we cannot observe from outside.

What does your ElevenLabs v3 usage cost the planet?

Use our calculator to estimate your personal environmental footprint based on how often you use ElevenLabs v3.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How much energy does ElevenLabs v3 use per query?

Each ElevenLabs v3 query consumes approximately 1.8 Wh of energy. This is 6x more than a traditional Google search (~0.3 Wh).

What is ElevenLabs v3's carbon footprint?

Based on the carbon intensity of Cloud (US / EU), each query produces approximately 0.79 g of CO2. The grid in this region has a carbon intensity of 450 g CO2/kWh with 25% renewable energy.

How much water does ElevenLabs v3 use?

Each query consumes approximately 7 mL of water, primarily used for cooling the data centers that process the request.

How does ElevenLabs v3 compare to a Google search?

A ElevenLabs v3 query uses 6x more than a Google search in terms of energy. A Google search uses approximately 0.3 Wh, while ElevenLabs v3 uses 1.8 Wh.