How is AI text-to-speech priced?

Creator tools meter by credits (about 1 credit per character) sold in monthly plans; cloud APIs bill pay-as-you-go per 1 million characters.

AI Text-to-Speech Cost Calculator

Compare the real monthly cost of AI text-to-speech at your volume across AltSpeak, ElevenLabs, Google Cloud, and Amazon Polly. Free, no sign-up.

How AI text-to-speech is priced

Creator tools like AltSpeak and ElevenLabs sell monthly plans metered in credits (about 1 credit per character). Cloud APIs like Google Cloud and Amazon Polly bill pay-as-you-go per 1 million characters, with no studio interface or curated voices.

Example monthly cost at 100,000 characters

AltSpeak Creator: $11/month (100,000 credits), commercial rights included.
ElevenLabs Creator: $22/month (100,000 credits).
Google Cloud Chirp3-HD: about $3 at $30 per 1M characters (pay-as-you-go API, needs setup).
Amazon Polly Neural: about $1.60 at $16 per 1M characters (pay-as-you-go API, needs setup).

For most creators (35,000 to 700,000 characters a month), AltSpeak is the cheapest creator tool, around half the price of ElevenLabs. Raw cloud APIs cost less per character but require a developer to set up a cloud account and write code, with no studio or managed commercial-rights layer. AltSpeak starts free with 10,000 credits.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest text-to-speech tool?

For most creators, AltSpeak: Creator is $11/month for 100,000 credits versus ElevenLabs Creator at $22/month. Raw cloud APIs cost less per character but require developer setup.

How many characters is my script?

Roughly 1 word is 6 characters including spaces, so 1,000 words is about 6,000 characters. A 10-minute voiceover is around 9,000 to 12,000 characters.