Text-to-speech API pricing, side by side
Every character-billed price we could verify, sorted cheapest first, with the official source for each. Prices read 2026-10-08; they change.
List price per million characters
| Provider and model | USD per 1M characters | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Speakvora catalog voices | $0.70 | this site |
| Amazon Polly Standard | $4.00 | source |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Standard | $4.00 | source |
| Speakvora your own voice | $6.00 | this site |
| Deepgram Aura-1 | $15.00 | source |
| OpenAI tts-1 | $15.00 | source |
| Amazon Polly Neural | $16.00 | source |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Neural2 | $16.00 | source |
| Deepgram Aura-2 | $30.00 | source |
| Amazon Polly Generative | $30.00 | source |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Chirp 3 HD | $30.00 | source |
| OpenAI tts-1-hd | $30.00 | source |
| Cartesia Sonic, Scale overage | $38.00 | source |
| ElevenLabs Flash / Turbo | $40.00 | source |
| Cartesia Sonic, Pro plan credits | $50.00 | source |
| ElevenLabs v2 Multilingual | $80.00 | source |
| ElevenLabs v3 | $80.00 | source |
| Amazon Polly Long-Form | $100 | source |
| Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Studio | $160 | source |
Not in the table because their native unit is not characters: OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts (tokens), Cartesia (credits; $37 to $65 per million characters effective across its plans and overage), and the ElevenLabs v4 promotion (a temporary discount, list $80).
How to compute your own bill
Monthly cost = characters per month ÷ 1,000,000 × price per million. A notification of 45 characters sent 100,000 times is 4.5 million characters. That is $3.15 at $0.70, $72 at $16 and $360 at $80. Add what the provider charges for anything else you use.
What the free allowances really are
| Provider | Free allowance read on its page | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| Speakvora | 100,000 characters per account | Once; not monthly |
| Amazon Polly | 5M Standard characters a month; 1M Neural for 12 months | Standard is the older tier |
| Deepgram | $200 credit | A credit, not an allowance |
| Cartesia | Free plan 20K credits | Monthly plan credits |
| ElevenLabs | A Free plan exists | Allowance not labelled on the page we read |
Which one should you pick?
- Inside Polly's free tier: use Polly Standard.
- Mostly repeated English prompts: download a Speakvora pack, no per-play cost.
- Premium expressive voices: ElevenLabs or OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts.
- Low-latency voice agents on the phone: Cartesia or Deepgram.
- Already on Google Cloud or AWS with committed spend: stay put until the commitment ends.
One-on-one pages: , , , , , .