Text-to-speech API pricing, per million characters
On October 21, 2026, text-to-speech APIs listed between $4 and $160 per million characters. The cheapest were Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Standard voices, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech WaveNet voices and Amazon Polly Standard voices at $4; the most expensive was Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Studio voices at $160. Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page that day.
Last checked . List prices for pay-as-you-go use in US dollars; volume and committed-use discounts are not shown.
| VENDOR | PRODUCT | USD PER 1M | FREE ALLOWANCE | SOURCE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Standard voicesGoogle counts every character of the input, spaces and newlines included. | $4 | 4 million characters a month | cloud.google.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | WaveNet voices | $4 | 4 million characters a month | cloud.google.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Standard voicesAWS states a separate free tier and, for accounts created from July 15, 2025, Free Tier credits instead. | $4 | — | aws.amazon.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Speechify | Simba 3.0 / 3.2 (Starter plan)Lower on larger plans: $8 on Pro and $6 on Scale. | $10 | 500K characters a month | speechify.airead 2026-10-21 |
| OpenAI | tts-1 | $15 | — | developers.openai.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Microsoft Azure AI Speech | Neural / Neural HD Flash (pay as you go) | $15 | 0.5 million characters a month on the free (F0) tier | azure.microsoft.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Fish Audio | s2-pro / s2.1-pro (API)Priced per UTF-8 byte: one byte per character for plain English, two to four per character for most other scripts. | $15per 1M UTF-8 bytes | — | docs.fish.audioread 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Neural2 voices | $16 | 1 million characters a month | cloud.google.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Neural voices | $16 | — | aws.amazon.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Microsoft Azure AI Speech | Neural HD (pay as you go) | $22 | — | azure.microsoft.comread 2026-10-21 |
| OpenAI | tts-1-hd | $30 | — | developers.openai.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Chirp 3: HD voices | $30 | 1 million characters a month | cloud.google.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Generative voices | $30 | — | aws.amazon.comread 2026-10-21 |
| ElevenLabs | Flash / Turbo models (API)ElevenLabs' paid plans also include a monthly character allowance before this rate applies. | $40 | — | elevenlabs.ioread 2026-10-21 |
| ElevenLabs | Multilingual v2, v3 and v4 models (API)ElevenLabs' paid plans also include a monthly character allowance before this rate applies. | $80 | — | elevenlabs.ioread 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Long-Form voices | $100 | — | aws.amazon.comread 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Studio voices | $160 | 1 million characters a month | cloud.google.comread 2026-10-21 |
How the table is built
A row is in the table only when the vendor itself states the price per character (or, for Fish Audio, per UTF-8 byte, which the row says). Nothing is converted from minutes, credits or tokens, so every figure is the vendor’s own. The same table is available as plain Markdown at /compare/text-to-speech-api-pricing.md. Vendors change their prices: check their page before you decide anything on this one.
Questions
- What is the cheapest text-to-speech API?
- By list price per character, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Standard voices, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech WaveNet voices and Amazon Polly Standard voices, at $4 per million characters on October 21, 2026. Google's page also includes 4 million Standard or WaveNet characters a month at no charge. Price is not the only difference: each of those vendors' newer voice tiers in the same table costs more.
- How many minutes of speech is a million characters?
- About 1,000 minutes, or roughly 17 hours, at about 1,000 characters a minute — the rate ElevenLabs' own pricing page implies (read 2026-09-28). Speaking rate, punctuation and language move the real figure, so treat it as an estimate.
- Why are OpenAI's gpt-4o-mini-tts and Google's Gemini voices not in the table?
- Both are priced per token rather than per character, so turning them into a price per million characters would need an assumed number of tokens per character. The table only shows prices the vendor itself states per character (or, for Fish Audio, per UTF-8 byte).
- Why is Murf not in the table?
- Murf's own pages state its API price in two different units on the day we checked: per 1,000 characters in its help centre and per minute on its API marketing page. Until they agree, there is no single figure to quote.
- Does VoiceLabs charge per character?
- No. The VoiceLabs API is part of the VoiceLabs Pro plan, US$8 a month with 2 hours of generated audio a month as fair use: no per-character fee, no per-generation fee and no metered overage.
VoiceLabs is not priced per character: its API comes with the Pro plan, including voice cloning.
Product names are trademarks of their owners. VoiceLabs is not affiliated with any vendor in this table. See also the ElevenLabs credit calculator.