Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Amazon Polly pricing
Both are in text-to-speech apis. Google Cloud Text-to-Speech is billed per 1m characters; Amazon Polly is billed per 1m characters. Numbers below are copied from each vendor's pricing page.
Google Cloud Text-to-SpeechFree tier or trial
- Free tier
- 1M (WaveNet) / 4M (Standard) chars/mo
- Billed
- Per 1M characters
- Best for
- Enterprise TTS on Google Cloud
- Verified
- Jun 27, 2026
Amazon PollyFree tier or trial
- Free tier
- 5M chars/mo, 12 months (Neural 1M)
- Billed
- Per 1M characters
- Best for
- TTS embedded in the AWS stack
- Verified
- Jun 27, 2026
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech plans
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Standard voices | $4 / 1M characters | First 4M characters per month free; basic concatenative voices. |
| WaveNet voices | $16 / 1M characters | First 1M characters/month free; DeepMind WaveNet neural voices. |
| Neural2 voices | $16 / 1M characters | First 1M characters/month free; higher-quality neural voices. |
| Studio voices | $160 / 1M characters | Premium narration-grade voices (priced per byte/character). |
| Chirp 3: HD voices | $30 / 1M characters | Generative high-fidelity voices; free monthly allotment, 8 voices across 31 languages. |
| Free tier | $0 | Recurring monthly free character allotment per voice class (e.g. 4M Standard, 1M WaveNet/Neural2). |
- Chirp 3 HD ($30/1M) and Studio ($160/1M) are far costlier than the $4 Standard tier
- Voice-type tiering and per-character pricing causes recurring billing confusion for users
Amazon Polly plans
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Standard voices | $4.00 / 1M characters | Concatenative TTS engine; free tier 5M characters/month. |
| Neural voices (NTTS) | $16.00 / 1M characters | Higher-quality neural engine with Newscaster style; free tier 1M chars/month for first 12 months. |
| Generative voices | $30.00 / 1M characters | Most human-like conversational engine; free tier 100K chars/month for first 12 months. |
| Long-Form voices | $100.00 / 1M characters | Optimized for long content like articles/training; free tier 500K chars/month for first 12 months. |
- Premium engines are expensive (Long-Form $100/M, Generative $30/M), making costs unpredictable at scale