Text-to-speech API pricing compared
Text-to-speech APIs bill per character (sometimes as credits that equal characters), and a few sell monthly character bundles. This page puts every published rate on the same scale, dollars per 1 million characters, for the 7 TTS APIs we track.
Rates come from each vendor's pricing page, re-checked on Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET. We list latency only where the vendor states it, and quote the vendor's own words; we haven't measured it.
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Prices last updated · 7 tools · sorted by data, not paid placement
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TTS API prices per 1M characters
Lowest pay-as-you-go rate: Murf AI Falcon at $10.00 per 1M characters ($0.010 per 1K). Speechify's API Starter bundle works out lower, $5.26 per 1M, but only if you use all 1.9M characters each month.
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Sorted by the lowest listed rate. "From" means the vendor lists a starting price. Resemble AI and WellSaid don't publish a per-character API rate on their pricing pages.
Per-minute cost
Of these vendors, only Cartesia's pricing page states how many characters a minute of audio uses (750–800 credits, 1 credit per character). At its overage rates that's Pro $0.049–$0.052, Startup $0.034–$0.036, and Scale $0.029–$0.030 per minute. The other vendors price per character only, so we don't convert their rates to minutes.
Sources: cartesia.ai, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing)
Free API credit
ElevenLabs has a Free plan (10k credits a month, shared across its products), but its API pricing page doesn't list a separate free API credit.
- Deepgram: $200 of free credit, no credit card required.
- Murf AI: $10 free for API calls, no credit card required.
- Speechify: 500K characters a month, with commercial use.
- Cartesia: the Free plan's 20K credits a month (no commercial license).
Sources: deepgram.com, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing); murf.ai, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing); speechify.ai, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing); cartesia.ai, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing)
Latency
Vendors describe latency in their own terms, and we haven't tested it. Murf AI describes Falcon as "time-to-first-audio under 100ms". ElevenLabs describes v4 Turbo as "Ultra-low latency (~100ms)". The other vendors here don't state a latency figure on their pricing pages.
Speech-to-text API prices
Several of these vendors also sell speech to text. ElevenLabs Scribe v2 is $0.22 per hour. Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual is $0.0048 per minute pay-as-you-go, or $0.288 per hour. Cartesia Ink uses 3 credits per second of audio (10,800 credits an hour).
All speech-to-text tools are on speech APIs.
Sources: elevenlabs.io, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing/api); deepgram.com, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing); cartesia.ai, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET (page /pricing)
Picking a TTS API by price
- Lowest pay-as-you-go rate: Murf AI Falcon ($10.00/1M).
- Monthly bundle: Speechify API Starter, $10 for 1.9M characters ($5.26 per 1M).
- Most free credit to start: Deepgram ($200 of credit).
- Need speech to text too: Deepgram, ElevenLabs and Cartesia list both TTS and speech-to-text prices.
Related
Studio plans are compared on AI voice generator pricing, and free tiers on free AI voice generators.
FAQ
What is the cheapest text-to-speech API?
By pay-as-you-go rate, Murf AI Falcon at $0.010 per 1,000 characters ($10.00 per 1M). Speechify's API Starter plan is $10 a month for 1.9M characters, which is less per character if you use them all.
How much does the ElevenLabs API cost?
ElevenLabs lists $0.04 per 1K characters on v4 Turbo and $0.08 per 1K characters on v4.
Which TTS APIs have a free tier?
Deepgram ($200 of credit), Murf AI ($10 of API credit), Speechify (500K API characters a month), and Cartesia (Free plan, 20K credits a month).
Which TTS API has the lowest latency?
We haven't measured latency. Murf AI describes Falcon as "time-to-first-audio under 100ms"; ElevenLabs describes v4 Turbo as "Ultra-low latency (~100ms)".
How many characters is a minute of speech?
Cartesia puts it at 750–800 characters (credits) per minute for its Sonic model. It varies with voice, language and speaking rate.
Sources
Every price and plan fact above comes from these vendor pages, captured and checked at the times shown (ET). Read how we verify prices.
- murf.ai/pricing, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET
- deepgram.com/pricing, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET
- elevenlabs.io/pricing/api, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET
- speechify.ai/pricing, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET
- cartesia.ai/pricing, checked Oct 20, 2026, 10 PM ET