The short answer
OpenAI TTS is billed per 1m characters / tokens. It has no free tier (None (pay-as-you-go credits)). The paid plans we list start at $15 / 1M characters (tts-1 (standard)).
Plans and prices
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| tts-1 (standard) | $15 / 1M characters | Latency-optimized model; ~$0.015 per 1K characters. Per-character billing. |
| tts-1-hd | $30 / 1M characters | Higher-fidelity, quality-optimized model; ~$0.030 per 1K characters. Per-character billing. |
| gpt-4o-mini-tts | $0.60 / 1M text input tokens + $12 / 1M audio output tokens | Token-based pricing; OpenAI estimates ~$0.015 per minute of generated audio. Newest, steerable model. |
How OpenAI TTS bills you
The pricing model is per 1m characters / tokens. Voice as a feature of the OpenAI platform, dead-simple endpoint, ubiquitous SDKs, but thin dedicated voice tooling (no custom voices, no SLA on free tier). Best suited to: tts bundled into the openai api.
What to watch for on the bill
- No guaranteed uptime/latency SLA on the default Standard tier, 99.9% SLA only on Scale/Priority tiers
The pricing page we read
Source: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/text-to-speech. Prices change, so confirm there before you commit.
Compare OpenAI TTS with alternatives
- ElevenLabs vs OpenAI TTS pricing
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs OpenAI TTS pricing
- Amazon Polly vs OpenAI TTS pricing
Other text-to-speech apis: ElevenLabs, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, Amazon Polly, Azure AI Speech, Cartesia.
Looking at quality rather than price? See the OpenAI TTS score on APIbenchmarks. Full entry: OpenAI TTS pricing.