Bring Your Own ElevenLabs Account: How It Works

Bringing your own ElevenLabs account means your phone system runs its AI agents inside your ElevenLabs workspace instead of the phone provider's. ElevenLabs bills you directly for the voice AI usage on your plan, the phone provider charges a smaller platform fee, and you can use voices from your own workspace. In Callata, you connect by pasting an ElevenLabs API key; new agents then run on your account.

This guide explains how the setup works, what it costs, and the trade-offs. For a cost breakdown, see managed vs bring-your-own voice AI cost.

How a BYO setup works

A phone AI agent has a few moving parts:

1. The phone system answers the call on your business number and decides when the AI should take it.
2. The voice AI platform (ElevenLabs here) handles speech recognition, the language model and the voice.
3. Tools let the agent act: look up a contact, take a message, schedule a callback, text, email or transfer. These call back to the phone system.
4. A post-call webhook sends the transcript and summary back to the phone system after each conversation.

In a managed setup, all of this runs on the phone provider's ElevenLabs account. With BYO, steps 2 to 4 run in your workspace, under your plan and limits.

Who it's for

Situation	BYO makes sense?
You already pay for an ElevenLabs plan with spare agent minutes	Often yes
You've built or licensed custom voices in ElevenLabs	Yes, to use them on calls
You want AI usage on one ElevenLabs bill across products	Yes
You use a small number of AI minutes and have no ElevenLabs plan	Usually no; managed is simpler
You want the least setup	No

Requirements

• An ElevenLabs account on a plan that includes Agents (Conversational AI).
• An API key with Agents access. In Callata, keys start with sk_.
• Permission for the key to create a webhook in your workspace. Callata creates a post-call webhook there so transcripts and usage come back to your call history, and creating that webhook needs an admin key.
• An active Callata subscription and a prepaid AI minute balance (BYO agents draw a platform fee from it).

Setup steps in Callata

1. Create or copy an API key in your ElevenLabs workspace settings.
2. In Callata, open AI Workforce and find Your own AI provider.
3. Paste the key and connect. Callata checks the key, creates the webhook in your workspace, and stores the key encrypted.
4. Create a new agent. It's provisioned in your ElevenLabs workspace, with its tools and a SIP connection to Callata's voice edge.
5. Pick a voice. The voice list now comes from your workspace, so voices you've added there are available.
6. Publish, then test with a call. See testing an AI receptionist before launch.

Existing agents created before you connected stay on Callata's managed setup. To move one, re-create it after connecting.

Billing with BYO

Cost	Who bills it
Agent minutes and LLM usage	ElevenLabs, on your plan
Platform fee	Callata, at a quarter of an AI minute per conversation minute
AI text replies	Callata, at a quarter of the normal text-reply rate
Phone plan	Callata, $99/month for 5 users ($20 per extra user) as usual

At $0.25 per Callata AI minute, the BYO platform fee works out to about $0.0625 per minute of conversation, rounded up per call like managed minutes. Your ElevenLabs costs depend on your plan: as of October 2026, ElevenLabs lists agent plans with included minutes, additional minutes at $0.08 each, and LLM usage billed separately on top.

What stays the same

Callata still handles:

• Routing: which calls go to which agent (a number it answers directly, after hours, overflow, texts).
• Opt-out list checks and consent confirmation on outbound AI calls.
• The 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. window for outbound AI calls.
• Transcripts and summaries on each call, saved to the contact's history.
• Messages, callback tasks and transfers to your team.

The agent's role, instructions, business facts, greeting and permissions are set in Callata exactly as with managed agents. See writing AI phone agent instructions.

What changes

• Limits: your ElevenLabs plan's concurrency and usage limits apply in addition to Callata's per-agent limits.
• Account health: if your ElevenLabs subscription lapses or the key is revoked, your agents stop working. Callata's AI minute balance doesn't cover ElevenLabs charges.
• Visibility: you can see the agents and conversations in your ElevenLabs workspace as well as in Callata.
• Data: call audio and transcripts are processed in your ElevenLabs workspace under your agreement with ElevenLabs. Review its terms. See AI receptionist privacy.

Choosing voices from your workspace

One practical reason to connect your own account is voice choice. Once connected, the voice picker in Callata lists voices from your ElevenLabs workspace, including any you've added from its library or created yourself. A few guidelines for phone use:

• Preview voices on a phone speaker, not studio headphones. Phone audio is narrowband, and some voices lose clarity.
• Pick a voice that matches the agent's name and your business. A mismatch can confuse callers.
• Only use a cloned voice of a real person with that person's written permission, and still disclose that callers are speaking with an AI assistant. See AI disclosure laws.

More on picking voices: choosing a voice for your AI phone agent.

A troubleshooting checklist

Symptom	Likely cause
"That key didn't work" when connecting	Key lacks Agents access, or was copied incorrectly
"Couldn't create a webhook"	Key isn't an admin key for the workspace
Agent fails to publish	ElevenLabs plan doesn't include agents, or a workspace limit was hit
Calls reach voicemail instead of the agent	Agent paused, ElevenLabs account issue, or Callata AI minute balance at zero
No transcript after calls	Webhook removed or changed in the ElevenLabs workspace

Don't edit agents in ElevenLabs directly

Callata configures each agent's prompt, tools and webhook. Changes made directly in the ElevenLabs dashboard can be overwritten the next time you save the agent in Callata, or can break tools. Make changes in Callata.

Disconnecting

If you disconnect your ElevenLabs account in Callata:

• Agents running on your account are paused and deleted from your workspace.
• Your stored key and webhook secret are removed from Callata.
• You can re-create agents on Callata's managed setup and publish them again.

Plan a disconnect for a quiet time, since paused agents stop answering until replaced.

Security tips

• Create a dedicated key for Callata rather than reusing a personal key.
• Limit who in your ElevenLabs workspace can see or rotate keys.
• If a key is exposed, revoke it in ElevenLabs and connect a new one.
• Review the ElevenLabs workspace's webhooks occasionally and remove any you don't recognize.

Getting started

Callata Office is $99 per month with five users included. AI agents run on Callata's managed setup at $0.25 per minute, or on your own ElevenLabs account with a platform fee of a quarter minute per minute. Create your Callata account.