The short answer
Amazon Polly is billed per 1m characters. It has a free tier: 5M chars/mo, 12 months (Neural 1M). The paid plans we list start at $4.00 / 1M characters (Standard voices).
Plans and prices
| 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. |
How Amazon Polly bills you
The pricing model is per 1m characters. Battle-tested AWS-native TTS with Standard, Neural, Generative and Long-Form engines, SDKs across every AWS language, and deep IAM/infra integration. Best suited to: tts embedded in the aws stack.
What to watch for on the bill
- Premium engines are expensive (Long-Form $100/M, Generative $30/M), making costs unpredictable at scale
The pricing page we read
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/. Prices change, so confirm there before you commit.
Compare Amazon Polly with alternatives
- ElevenLabs vs Amazon Polly pricing
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Amazon Polly pricing
- Amazon Polly vs OpenAI TTS pricing
Other text-to-speech apis: ElevenLabs, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, OpenAI TTS, Azure AI Speech, Cartesia.
Looking at quality rather than price? See the Amazon Polly score on APIbenchmarks. Full entry: Amazon Polly pricing.