TTS Per Minute

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Updated Nov 10, 2026 (America/New_York) · Google autocomplete: “elevenlabs alternatives cheaper” / “cheaper alternative to elevenlabs”

Cheaper alternative to ElevenLabs

On official list prices checked Nov 10, 2026, ElevenLabs’ API is $0.04 or $0.08 per 1,000 characters ($40 or $80 per 1 million), depending on the model. Several character-billed APIs print a lower unit price. That is not the same thing as sounding the same. This page ranks published unit prices, then flags consumer apps (including Speechify) that use a different meter.

Character-billed APIs cheaper than $0.04 / 1K

Vendor / modelOfficial unit priceEst. $ / min at 1,000 charsSource, Nov 10, 2026
Google WaveNet / Standard$4 per 1M characters$0.0040Google Cloud pricing (first 4M chars/month free)
Amazon Polly Standard$4.00 per 1M characters$0.0040Polly pricing
Murf Falcon / conversational API$0.01 per 1,000 characters$0.0100murf.ai/pricing and pay-as-you-go help
Deepgram Aura-1 (PAYG)$0.0150 per 1K characters$0.0150Deepgram pricing
OpenAI tts-1$15 per 1M characters$0.0150OpenAI pricing — scheduled to shut down Jan 6, 2027
AssemblyAI-TTS-1$15 per 1M characters$0.0150AssemblyAI pricing
Google Neural2$16 per 1M characters$0.0160Google Cloud pricing
Amazon Polly Neural$16.00 per 1M characters$0.0160Polly pricing
Deepgram Aura-2 / Google Chirp 3 HD / Polly Generative / Murf Gen 2$30 per 1M, or $0.03 per 1K$0.0300Each vendor’s pricing page, as of Nov 10, 2026
ElevenLabs Flash / Turbo / v4 Turbo$0.04 per 1K characters$0.0400ElevenLabs API pricing
ElevenLabs v4 / v3 / Multilingual v2$0.08 per 1K characters$0.0800ElevenLabs API pricing

Full sortable table: Cheapest text to speech API in 2026.

Speechify, if you want a yearly subscription instead of an API

Speechify is not a drop-in API replacement, but it is often what people mean by a “cheaper alternative” on a monthly bill. Official prices, checked Nov 10, 2026: Premium $29 / month or $139 / year for the reading app; Studio Starter $100 / year (86,400 credits; 1 credit per second of voiceover; commercial rights) or $300 / year (345,600 credits). See How much does Speechify cost?

Try Speechify Speechify Studio

ElevenLabs’ own Creative plans, from elevenlabs.io/pricing on Nov 10, 2026: Starter $6 / month after a $1 first month (30,000 credits, commercial license, instant voice cloning); Creator $22 / month after an $11 first month (121,000 credits, professional voice cloning).

How much does ElevenLabs cost per minute?ElevenLabs cost / minCheapest text to speech API in 2026Cheapest TTS APIsHow much does Speechify cost?Speechify costSpeechify vs ElevenLabsSpeechify vs ElevenLabsElevenLabs vs MurfElevenLabs vs Murf

Sources (as of Nov 10, 2026)

All comparisons on this site