Last updated: 28 June 2026
OpenAI vs Amazon Polly: TTS Pricing Comparison
Amazon Polly is 73% cheaper starting at $0.004/1k chars. Here's the full breakdown of pricing, quality, latency, and language support.
Price Comparison
| Characters | OpenAI tts-1 | OpenAI tts-1-hd | OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-tts | Amazon Polly Standard | Amazon Polly Generative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | $0.15 | $0.30 | $0.15 | $0.04 | $0.30 |
| 100,000 | $1.50 | $3.00 | $1.50 | $0.40 | $3.00 |
| 1,000,000 | $15.00 | $30.00 | $15.00 | $4.00 | $30.00 |
Feature Comparison
OpenAI
Best for: Developers already using the OpenAI ecosystem who want straightforward TTS at scale.
Strengths
- ✓ Simple API integration
- ✓ Multiple quality tiers
- ✓ Good language support
- ✓ Steerable prosody (gpt-4o-mini-tts)
Amazon Polly
Best for: High-volume, cost-sensitive applications already running on AWS.
Strengths
- ✓ Cheapest pay-as-you-go option
- ✓ AWS ecosystem integration
- ✓ Free tier (5M chars/mo for 12 months)
- ✓ SSML support
Frequently Asked Questions
Is OpenAI or Amazon Polly cheaper for text-to-speech?
Amazon Polly is cheaper, starting at $0.004 per 1,000 characters with Amazon Polly Standard. That’s 73% less than OpenAI tts-1 at $0.015 per 1,000 characters.
How much does OpenAI TTS cost compared to Amazon Polly?
OpenAI pricing starts at $0.015 per 1k chars (OpenAI tts-1), while Amazon Polly starts at $0.004 per 1k chars (Amazon Polly Standard). For 1 million characters, that’s $15.00 vs $4.00.
Which has better voice quality, OpenAI or Amazon Polly?
Based on TTS Arena benchmarks, Amazon Polly scores higher on voice quality. OpenAI’s best model scores 4.1/5 while Amazon Polly’s best scores 4.1/5.
OpenAI vs Amazon Polly: which is faster?
Amazon Polly has lower latency. OpenAI’s fastest model has 250ms time-to-first-audio, while Amazon Polly’s fastest is 200ms.