# Text-to-speech API pricing, per million characters (https://voicelabs.now/compare/text-to-speech-api-pricing)

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: 2026-10-21

| Vendor | Product | USD per 1M | Unit | Free allowance | Source | Checked |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Standard voices | $4 | characters | 4 million characters a month | https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing | 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | WaveNet voices | $4 | characters | 4 million characters a month | https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing | 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Standard voices | $4 | characters |  | https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/ | 2026-10-21 |
| Speechify | Simba 3.0 / 3.2 (Starter plan) | $10 | characters | 500K characters a month | https://speechify.ai/pricing | 2026-10-21 |
| OpenAI | tts-1 | $15 | characters |  | https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing | 2026-10-21 |
| Microsoft Azure AI Speech | Neural / Neural HD Flash (pay as you go) | $15 | characters | 0.5 million characters a month on the free (F0) tier | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/speech-services/ | 2026-10-21 |
| Fish Audio | s2-pro / s2.1-pro (API) | $15 | UTF-8 bytes |  | https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/pricing-and-rate-limits | 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Neural2 voices | $16 | characters | 1 million characters a month | https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing | 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Neural voices | $16 | characters |  | https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/ | 2026-10-21 |
| Microsoft Azure AI Speech | Neural HD (pay as you go) | $22 | characters |  | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/speech-services/ | 2026-10-21 |
| OpenAI | tts-1-hd | $30 | characters |  | https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing | 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Chirp 3: HD voices | $30 | characters | 1 million characters a month | https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing | 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Generative voices | $30 | characters |  | https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/ | 2026-10-21 |
| ElevenLabs | Flash / Turbo models (API) | $40 | characters |  | https://elevenlabs.io/pricing/api | 2026-10-21 |
| ElevenLabs | Multilingual v2, v3 and v4 models (API) | $80 | characters |  | https://elevenlabs.io/pricing/api | 2026-10-21 |
| Amazon Polly | Long-Form voices | $100 | characters |  | https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/ | 2026-10-21 |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Studio voices | $160 | characters | 1 million characters a month | https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing | 2026-10-21 |

## 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.