TTS Per Minute

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Updated Nov 10, 2026 (America/New_York) · Companion to How much does ElevenLabs cost per minute?

What is the cheapest text to speech API in 2026?

Short answer: Google Cloud WaveNet or Standard voices, and Amazon Polly Standard voices, at $4 per 1 million characters — about $0.004 per minute if you use 1,000 characters per minute. Both numbers were read from the official pricing pages on Nov 10, 2026. Google also gives the first 4 million WaveNet/Standard characters free each month; Polly’s Standard free tier is 5 million characters per month.

“Cheapest” here means the lowest published character-billed list price after the free allowance, not the best voice. A $0.004 voice and an $0.08 voice are not interchangeable. Token-billed models (Gemini TTS, OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts) can land near $0.009–$0.0135 per minute of output audio before text-input charges, but those figures use each vendor’s token math, not a character rate, so they are discussed on the ElevenLabs cost-per-minute page rather than ranked in this table.

Official list prices, cheapest first

Click a column header to sort. Estimated $/min uses 1,000 characters = 1 minute.
Vendor Model Official unit price Est. $ / minute Notes Source Link
Google CloudWaveNet / Standard voices $4 per 1M characters $0.0040 First 4 million characters each month are free, then this rate. Price is per input character, including spaces, newlines, and most SSML tags. Google Cloud pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Google
Amazon PollyStandard voices $4.00 per 1M characters $0.0040 Pay-as-you-go, outside the free tier. Free tier: 5 million characters per month for Standard voices. Amazon Polly pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Polly
MurfFalcon (API pay-as-you-go) $0.01 per 1,000 characters $0.0100 Official help article. Minimum purchase on that page is $10. You add credits or turn on autopay. Murf pay-as-you-go, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Murf
DeepgramAura-1 (pay as you go) $0.0150 per 1K characters $0.0150 Billed per 1,000 characters of input text. Growth plan lists $0.0135 per 1K. Deepgram pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Deepgram
OpenAItts-1 $15.00 per 1M characters $0.0150 Still listed on the API pricing page. Deprecated; scheduled to shut down Jan 6, 2027. Replacement named there: gpt-realtime-2.1-mini.Ends Jan 6, 2027 OpenAI pricing and deprecations, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open OpenAI
AssemblyAIAssemblyAI-TTS-1 $15 per 1M characters $0.0150 Pay as you go. Billed on input characters. The pricing page says cloned voices and EU processing are the same price. AssemblyAI pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open AssemblyAI
Google CloudNeural2 / Polyglot voices $16 per 1M characters $0.0160 First 1 million characters each month are free, then this rate. Google Cloud pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Google
Amazon PollyNeural voices $16.00 per 1M characters $0.0160 Pay-as-you-go, outside the free tier. Free tier: 1 million characters per month for the first 12 months. Amazon Polly pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Polly
DeepgramAura-2 (pay as you go) $0.030 per 1K characters $0.0300 Growth plan lists $0.027 per 1K. Deepgram pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Deepgram
OpenAItts-1-hd $30.00 per 1M characters $0.0300 Deprecated; scheduled to shut down Jan 6, 2027.Ends Jan 6, 2027 OpenAI pricing and deprecations, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open OpenAI
Google CloudChirp 3: HD voices $30 per 1M characters $0.0300 First 1 million characters each month are free, then this rate. Official page also lists US$0.00003 per character. Google Cloud pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Google
Amazon PollyGenerative voices $30 per 1M characters $0.0300 Pay-as-you-go, outside the free tier. Free tier: 100 thousand characters per month for the first 12 months. Amazon Polly pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Polly
MurfGen 2 (API pay-as-you-go) $0.03 per 1,000 characters $0.0300 Official help article. Same $10 minimum purchase note as Falcon. Murf pay-as-you-go, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Murf
CartesiaSonic, Scale plan (included credits) $299 / 8M credits $0.0374 Worked out: the pricing page sells Scale at $299 per month with 8 million credits, and says Sonic TTS is 1 credit per character. $299 ÷ 8,000,000 × 1,000 = $0.037375 per 1K characters, which is $0.0374 per minute at the 1,000-character assumption. Official overage on Scale is $38 per 1M credits ($0.038 per 1K). Cartesia pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Cartesia
ElevenLabsv4 Turbo / v3 Conversational / Flash / Turbo $0.04 per 1K characters $0.0400 Official API list price. ElevenLabs’ own table equates 1,000 characters with about 1 minute for these models. ElevenLabs API pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open ElevenLabs
DeepgramFlux TTS (pay as you go) $0.0450 per 1K characters $0.0450 Same rate on Growth. Page notes $1 in credits for every $1 spent, up to $500, through Dec. 31, 2026. Deepgram pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Deepgram
Google CloudInstant custom voice $60 per 1M characters $0.0600 No free-usage row listed for this SKU on the pricing page. Google Cloud pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Google
ElevenLabsv4 / v3 / Multilingual v2 $0.08 per 1K characters $0.0800 Official API list price for the higher-quality / multilingual models. This is the figure most “ElevenLabs cost per minute” answers should start from if you are using v4, v3, or Multilingual v2, not Flash or Turbo. ElevenLabs API pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open ElevenLabs
Amazon PollyLong-Form voices $100.00 per 1M characters $0.1000 Pay-as-you-go, outside the free tier. Free tier: 500 thousand characters per month for the first 12 months. Amazon Polly pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Polly
Google CloudStudio voices $160 per 1M characters $0.1600 First 1 million characters each month are free, then this rate. Google Cloud pricing, as of Nov 10, 2026 Open Google

Cost calculator

This only multiplies a listed per-character rate by the number of characters you choose. It does not include taxes, free-tier allowances, overages, or token-billed models.

Estimated cost: —

Speechify is not in the API table because it bills a subscription, not characters. Official Premium price, checked Nov 10, 2026: $29 a month or $139 a year on speechify.com. Studio Starter is $100 a year. Full breakdown: How much does Speechify cost?

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FAQ

What is the cheapest text to speech API right now?

Among character-billed APIs checked on Nov 10, 2026, Google WaveNet/Standard and Amazon Polly Standard are $4 per 1 million characters. Murf’s Falcon API rate is $0.01 per 1,000 characters ($10 per 1 million), which is the next official step up.

Is the cheapest API good enough for YouTube or a podcast?

That depends on the voice and language, not the unit price. This page only ranks published rates. Listen to official samples before you commit.

How much does ElevenLabs cost per minute?ElevenLabs cost / minHow much does Speechify cost?Speechify costSpeechify vs ElevenLabsSpeechify vs ElevenLabsCheaper alternative to ElevenLabsCheaper ElevenLabs alternativesElevenLabs vs MurfElevenLabs vs Murf

Sources (as of Nov 10, 2026)

Every price on this page was read from the vendor page linked here on Nov 10, 2026. If a number cannot be shown as a direct quote from that page, it is labeled “worked out.”

Azure Speech lists text-to-speech prices on its public pricing page, but the dollar amounts were hidden without a region selected, so Azure is omitted rather than guessed. PlayHT / PlayAI is omitted because the product shut down (see Cartesia’s PlayHT migration note).

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