Text-to-Speech (TTS) Cost Comparison
Compare TTS models by price per million characters.
With the default inputs, Text-to-speech models compared — 10,000,000 characters/month · ranked cheapest first. Enter your own numbers below to recompute instantly; the full step-by-step math is shown under the worked example.
Results update automatically as you type.
| GPT-4o mini TTS | OpenAI | $15/1M chars | $150.00 |
Compare text-to-speech models by their price per million characters and your monthly volume, ranked cheapest first.
How this is calculated
We rank TTS models by price per million characters × your monthly characters, cheapest first. TTS is usually billed per character of input text, sometimes per second of audio.
Is this a good result? What to do next
Voice quality is the real differentiator — premium voices sound more natural but cost more per character. Use price to shortlist, then compare voice samples for your use case.
Typical planning ranges
- Ranked by
- per-1M-char rate × volume
- ~1,000 chars
- ≈ 1 minute of speech
- Premium voices
- cost more
Ranges are typical planning figures to sanity-check your result, not authoritative benchmarks. Your numbers will vary with use case, volume, and vendor.
How to improve this number
- Use a cheaper voice tier where quality allows.
- Keep spoken text concise.
- Cache reusable audio.
Common mistakes
- Choosing on price without comparing voice quality.
- Estimating per word instead of per character.
When to use a different approach
For a single model's cost, use the text-to-speech cost calculator. For transcription, use the transcription cost comparison.
Worked example (defaults)
With the default inputs above, here is the result:
| GPT-4o mini TTS | OpenAI | $15/1M chars | $150.00 |
Sources & references
Frequently asked questions
How is TTS billed?+
Usually per character of input text (often quoted per 1M characters), sometimes per second of audio.
Does voice quality vary?+
Yes. Premium voices sound more natural but can cost more. Compare samples for your use case.
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