--- title: "Text to Speech Cost Calculator: Compare TTS API Pricing" description: "Compare the monthly and yearly cost of ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Google Cloud, Azure and Amazon Polly text to speech for your character count, against a one-time local TTS license." canonical: "https://www.murmurtts.com/tools/tts-cost-calculator" --- [Murmur](https://www.murmurtts.com/)/[Tools](https://www.murmurtts.com/tools)/TTS cost calculator Free tool · prices checked 2026-11-05 # Text to speech cost calculator.*What will your voiceovers cost each year?* Enter how much text you turn into speech each month. See what ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Google Cloud, Azure and Amazon Polly would charge at list prices, next to a one-time local license. Start from a typical workload Providers bill by characters, including spaces. We count about 6 characters per English word, so 86,400 characters is roughly 96 minutes of audio at a narration pace. Murmur, one time $49 Launch price until Nov 30, commercial use included. From Dec 1 it is $69 personal or $99 commercial. **Cheapest cloud, month** $0 **Priciest cloud, year** $104 12 of 15 cloud options cost less than the license over the first year, mostly free tiers and basic voices. [Get Murmur · $49 once](https://murmur-licenses.tarunyadav9761.workers.dev/checkout)[Or start with the free plan](https://www.murmurtts.com/) ## Cost by provider at 86,400 characters a month Sorted from cheapest. Pay as you go list prices in US dollars, before tax and volume discounts. The last column shows the month a $49 license would have cost less in total. | Provider and voice | Per month | 12 months | 24 months | License cheaper from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech StandardInside the free tier | $0 | $0 | $0 | Free at this volume | | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech WaveNetInside the free tier | $0 | $0 | $0 | Free at this volume | | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Neural2Inside the free tier | $0 | $0 | $0 | Free at this volume | | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech Chirp 3: HDInside the free tier | $0 | $0 | $0 | Free at this volume | | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech StudioInside the free tier | $0 | $0 | $0 | Free at this volume | | Azure AI Speech NeuralInside the free tier | $0 | $0 | $0 | Free at this volume | | Amazon Polly StandardPay as you go | $0.35 | $4.15 | $8.29 | Over 3 years | | OpenAI tts-1Pay as you go | $1.30 | $16 | $31 | Over 3 years | | Amazon Polly NeuralPay as you go | $1.38 | $17 | $33 | Month 36 | | Azure AI Speech Neural HDPay as you go | $1.90 | $23 | $46 | Month 26 | | OpenAI tts-1-hdPay as you go | $2.59 | $31 | $62 | Month 19 | | Amazon Polly GenerativePay as you go | $2.59 | $31 | $62 | Month 19 | | ElevenLabs API Flash / TurboStarter plan | $6.00 | $72 | $144 | Month 9 | | ElevenLabs API Multilingual v2 / v4Starter plan + extra characters | $6.91 | $83 | $166 | Month 8 | | Amazon Polly Long-FormPay as you go | $8.64 | $104 | $207 | Month 6 | | Murmur local, one-time license | $0 | $49 | $49 | Paid once | The honest version ## When the cloud is the better deal If you only need a few thousand characters a month, free tiers cover you. Google gives 4 million Standard or WaveNet characters free every month, Azure gives 0.5 million neural characters, and ElevenLabs has a small free plan. Basic voices at $4 per million characters also take years to add up to a license. Cloud APIs also suit servers, apps with many users, and teams that need a hosted endpoint. A local license covers one computer, and it needs a reasonably modern Mac or Windows PC to generate quickly. Local wins when - you narrate books, courses or a weekly channel - you regenerate lines until they sound right - scripts are private or under NDA - you want a fixed cost instead of a meter ## Prices and sources Every rate was read from the provider's own pricing page on 2026-11-05. - **ElevenLabs API:** Multilingual v2 / v4 plans from $6 a month, then $0.08 per 1,000 characters; Flash / Turbo plans from $6 a month, then $0.04 per 1,000 characters. Free plan includes 10,000 multilingual characters a month, without a commercial license. [Source: elevenlabs.io/pricing/api](https://elevenlabs.io/pricing/api) - **OpenAI:** tts-1 $15 per 1M characters; tts-1-hd $30 per 1M characters. gpt-4o-mini-tts bills by tokens ($0.60 per 1M text tokens in, $12 per 1M audio tokens out), so it is not per character and is left out of the totals. [Source: developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing) - **Google Cloud Text-to-Speech:** Standard $4 per 1M characters (4,000,000 free a month); WaveNet $4 per 1M characters (4,000,000 free a month); Neural2 $16 per 1M characters (1,000,000 free a month); Chirp 3: HD $30 per 1M characters (1,000,000 free a month); Studio $160 per 1M characters (1,000,000 free a month). Free characters reset every month and are deducted before billing. [Source: cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing) - **Azure AI Speech:** Neural $15 per 1M characters (500,000 free a month); Neural HD $22 per 1M characters. [Source: Azure Speech pricing page and Azure Retail Prices API (East US)](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/speech-services/) - **Amazon Polly:** Standard $4 per 1M characters; Neural $16 per 1M characters; Generative $30 per 1M characters; Long-Form $100 per 1M characters. New AWS accounts get a free tier for the first 12 months (for example 1M Neural characters a month), so totals here assume an account past that period. [Source: aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/) ## More calculators Comparing a specific ElevenLabs plan? The ElevenLabs calculator matches a plan to your workflow. To turn a script into minutes first, use the speech time calculator. [ElevenLabs alternative calculator](https://www.murmurtts.com/tools/elevenlabs-alternative-calculator)[Speech time calculator](https://www.murmurtts.com/tools/speech-time-calculator)[Free text to speech online](https://www.murmurtts.com/tools/text-to-speech) ## Questions How many characters is one minute of speech? At a narration pace of about 150 words per minute, one minute of English speech is roughly 900 characters, since an average word plus its space and punctuation is about 6 characters. A one hour audiobook chapter is around 54,000 characters. Which text to speech API is cheapest? For small volumes the free tiers win. Google Cloud gives 4 million Standard or WaveNet characters free each month, and Azure gives 0.5 million neural characters free. Past those, Google Standard and Amazon Polly Standard are the cheapest at $4 per million characters, but they sound noticeably more robotic than neural and HD voices. When does a one-time local TTS license pay off? It depends on the voice quality you compare against. Against premium neural voices at $15 to $30 per million characters, a one-time license usually pays for itself within a few months at audiobook or YouTube volumes. Against free tiers or $4 per million voices at low volume, the cloud can stay cheaper for years. What does local text to speech need? Local models run on your own computer, so you need a reasonably modern machine. Murmur runs on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 15 or later, and on Windows 10 or 11 as a beta. Generation is slower on older hardware, and you do not get a hosted API for servers. Are these prices current? They were copied from each provider's official pricing page on 2026-11-05. Prices are pay as you go list prices in US dollars, before taxes, volume discounts or committed use deals. Check the linked source before you budget.