Some links on this site are affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes our rankings or numbers. How we make money.
Free text-to-speech APIs
7 text-to-speech API options we price have a permanent monthly free allowance. The largest, Google Cloud Standard voices, covers 4 million characters a month, about 4,444 minutes of speech; after that it costs $0.004 a minute.
Permanent monthly free allowances
| API and voice | Free each month | About | After that | 10 hours a month | 50 hours a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Standard voices | 4 million characters | 4,444 min | $0.004/min | $0 | $0 |
| Google Cloud WaveNet voices | 4 million characters | 4,444 min | $0.004/min | $0 | $0 |
| Google Cloud Neural2 voices | 1 million characters | 1,111 min | $0.014/min | $0 | $27.20 |
| Google Cloud Chirp 3: HD voices | 1 million characters | 1,111 min | $0.027/min | $0 | $51 |
| Google Cloud Studio voices | 1 million characters | 1,111 min | $0.144/min | $0 | $272 |
| ElevenLabs API, Flash / Turbo | 10,000 characters | 11 min | $0.036/min | $21.20 | $108 |
| ElevenLabs API, v2 Multilingual | 10,000 characters | 11 min | $0.072/min | $42.40 | $215 |
Minutes assume 900 characters of text per minute of speech. The last columns are the monthly bill with the free allowance used first.
Free tiers with a catch
- Amazon Polly Standard: 5 million characters a month, but only for a new account's first 12 months; after that every character is billed at $0.004 a minute.
- Amazon Polly Neural: 1 million characters a month, but only for a new account's first 12 months; after that every character is billed at $0.014 a minute.
- Amazon Polly Generative: 100,000 characters a month, but only for a new account's first 12 months; after that every character is billed at $0.027 a minute.
- Amazon Polly Long-Form: 500,000 characters a month, but only for a new account's first 12 months; after that every character is billed at $0.09 a minute.
- Azure AI Speech Neural: a separate free tier (F0) with 0.5 million characters a month. It is a different resource from pay-as-you-go, so you choose one or the other.
- Murf: its API card says "$10 FREE, every month" while its FAQ says "$10 in free credits upon signup". Until Murf clarifies, treat it as a one-off; see Murf pricing.
No free tier
OpenAI, Deepgram, Resemble AI list no free monthly allowance on their pricing pages; you pay from the first character.
Over the free tier, compare every text-to-speech API by cost per minute or price your own monthly minutes.
Pricing pages read on 5 October 2026.
Prices on this page were checked against the official pricing pages on .