Compare the cost of generating speech across ElevenLabs, OpenAI TTS, Google Cloud TTS, Amazon Polly, Microsoft Azure TTS, and Cartesia.
Monthly Cost
$0
Cost Per 1K Characters$0
Cost Per Hour (~54K chars)$0
Cheapest Alternative-
Budget Status-
Pricing Comparison Per Provider
💡 Savings Tip:-
How to Use This Calculator
Select your TTS provider from the dropdown — options include ElevenLabs, OpenAI TTS, Google Cloud TTS, Amazon Polly, Microsoft Azure TTS, and Cartesia. Choose the voice quality tier that matches your use case: Standard for basic needs, Premium/Natural for higher quality neural voices, or Ultra/HD for the highest fidelity output. Enter your estimated monthly character volume — for example, 100,000 characters is roughly equivalent to an hour of spoken content, while 1 million characters is about 10 hours of audio. Select your preferred output format (MP3, WAV, or PCM) and optionally enter a monthly budget. Click Calculate to see your total monthly cost, per-character pricing, and a full comparison across all providers at your selected quality level.
About AI Text-to-Speech Cost Calculator
AI text-to-speech costs vary widely across providers and quality tiers. ElevenLabs charges $0.30 per million characters for standard voices, while OpenAI TTS costs $15 per million characters for its tts-1 model. Google Cloud TTS, Amazon Polly, and Microsoft Azure TTS offer standard tiers at $4 per million characters, with premium neural voices at $16 and ultra HD options at $32. Cartesia provides a budget-friendly option at $0.50 per million characters for standard quality. This calculator helps you compare total monthly costs across all six major TTS providers side by side. Whether you are a developer building voice applications, a content creator producing audiobooks, or a business automating customer service voice responses, understanding per-character and hourly costs is essential for choosing the most cost-effective TTS solution for your volume.
When to Use This Calculator
Use this calculator when evaluating which TTS provider offers the best value for your specific speech generation volume and quality requirements. Developers building voice-enabled applications use it to compare API pricing and estimate costs at scale. Content creators producing audiobooks or narrated videos use it to determine whether ElevenLabs at $0.30 per million characters or Cartesia at $0.50 per million is more cost-effective for their monthly output. Enterprise teams deploying customer service voice bots use it to compare Google Cloud TTS and Amazon Polly neural tiers for natural-sounding responses. A business generating 10 million characters per month on Azure Neural HD at $32 per million would pay $320 monthly, while switching to ElevenLabs Premium at $1.00 per million would cost just $10 — a potential saving of $310 per month.
How to Interpret Your Results
The monthly cost shows what you would pay at your selected character volume and quality tier. For example, generating 1 million characters per month on ElevenLabs Standard costs just $0.30, while the same volume on Google Cloud TTS WaveNet costs $16.00. The cost per 1K characters shows the unit price — OpenAI TTS Standard at $0.015 per 1K characters equals $15.00 per million. The cost per hour is based on approximately 54,000 characters per hour of speech at average narration pace. So an audiobook of 540,000 characters (10 hours) on ElevenLabs Premium costs $0.54; the same audiobook on Azure Neural HD costs $17.28. The comparison table shows all six providers side by side with their effective monthly costs, so you can see the full pricing landscape at a glance.
Which AI TTS provider is the cheapest per character?
ElevenLabs Standard is the cheapest at $0.30 per million characters, followed closely by Cartesia Standard at $0.50 per million. OpenAI TTS Standard at $15 per million characters is significantly more expensive but offers high-quality output. For neural quality tiers, ElevenLabs Premium at $1.00 per million is the most affordable option, while Google Cloud WaveNet, Amazon Polly Neural, and Microsoft Azure Neural all cost $16 per million. When comparing standard tiers, ElevenLabs and Cartesia are 13-50x cheaper than the cloud giants, making them ideal for high-volume applications where cost is the primary concern.
How much does it cost to produce an audiobook with AI TTS?
A typical audiobook contains about 400,000 to 600,000 characters for a 7-10 hour listening experience. At ElevenLabs Standard pricing ($0.30 per million characters), a 500,000-character audiobook costs just $0.15. Even at premium tiers, ElevenLabs Premium costs $0.50 per audiobook. Using Google Cloud WaveNet at $16 per million, the same audiobook costs $8.00. For a full library of 50 audiobooks, ElevenLabs Standard would cost $7.50 total, while Azure Neural HD would cost $800. This dramatic difference makes budget-friendly providers like ElevenLabs and Cartesia much more attractive for large-scale audiobook production.
What is the difference between Standard, Neural, and Ultra TTS voices?
Standard voices use concatenative or parametric synthesis that sounds robotic and less natural but costs the least. Neural (Premium) voices use deep learning models to produce natural human-like speech with proper intonation and emphasis, typically costing 3-5x more than standard. Ultra/HD voices represent the highest quality tier with studio-grade fidelity, emotional range, and voice consistency, often costing 8-10x more than standard. ElevenLabs Ultra at $3.00 per million characters produces voices virtually indistinguishable from human speech, while Azure Neural HD at $32 per million offers comparable quality for enterprise use cases.
Does output format affect TTS pricing?
Most major TTS providers charge based on character count regardless of output format, so MP3, WAV, and PCM all cost the same per character. However, the format can impact your overall costs in other ways: larger formats like WAV and PCM increase bandwidth and storage costs, especially at high volumes. MP3 compression reduces file size by 80-90% compared to WAV, making it more economical for storage and delivery. For real-time streaming applications, PCM offers the lowest latency but highest bandwidth consumption. Always check each provider's specific output format support, as some may charge additional fees for high-fidelity formats like 24-bit WAV or FLAC.
How many characters per hour of speech does an AI TTS service use?
At an average narration pace of 150 words per minute and approximately 6 characters per word (including spaces), one hour of speech consumes roughly 54,000 characters. This varies by language (German text is longer, Japanese shorter), speaking speed (conversational is faster than narration), and the specific voice. To estimate your usage, a 10-minute podcast episode is about 9,000 characters, a 30-minute training video is about 27,000 characters, and a full-day (8 hour) voice bot conversation is about 432,000 characters. Using these benchmarks, you can predict monthly costs: at ElevenLabs Standard pricing, 432,000 characters per day costs just $0.13 per day or $3.94 per month.
Embed This Calculator
Copy the code below and paste it into your website's HTML.