The short answer
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech is billed per 1m characters. It has a free tier: 1M (WaveNet) / 4M (Standard) chars/mo. The paid plans we list start at $4 / 1M characters (Standard voices).
Plans and prices
| 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). |
How Google Cloud Text-to-Speech bills you
The pricing model is per 1m characters. Enterprise-grade TTS with a 99.9% SLA, generous standing free tier, and Chirp/WaveNet/Studio voice families across 30+ regions. Best suited to: enterprise tts on google cloud.
What to watch for on the bill
- 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
The pricing page we read
Source: https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing. Prices change, so confirm there before you commit.
Compare Google Cloud Text-to-Speech with alternatives
- ElevenLabs vs Google Cloud Text-to-Speech pricing
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Amazon Polly pricing
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs OpenAI TTS pricing
Other text-to-speech apis: ElevenLabs, Amazon Polly, OpenAI TTS, Azure AI Speech, Cartesia.
Looking at quality rather than price? See the Google Cloud Text-to-Speech score on APIbenchmarks. Full entry: Google Cloud Text-to-Speech pricing.