Last updated: 28 June 2026
Amazon Polly TTS Pricing
Amazon Polly provides two model types: Standard (older concatenative voices) and Generative (LLM-based, English only). Both use pure pay-as-you-go pricing with no subscription. Polly Standard is one of the cheapest TTS APIs available.
Models
2
Standard, Generative
From
$0.004
per 1K chars
Quality
4.1/5
Latency
200ms
time-to-first-audio
Languages
29
supported
Free Tier
AvailableAvailable Models & Pricing
Amazon Polly Standard
Lowest costPay-as-you-go. Older concatenative voices.
Quality
3/5
Latency
200ms
Languages
29
Amazon Polly Generative
Pay-as-you-go. LLM-based, English only.
Quality
4.1/5
Latency
250ms
Languages
29
Amazon Polly Standard: 5M chars free (first 12 months) — Standard voices only
Cost Examples
| Characters | Standard | Generative |
|---|---|---|
| 1K | $0.0040 | $0.030 |
| 10K | $0.040 | $0.300 |
| 100K | $0.400 | $3.00 |
| 1M | $4.00 | $30.00 |
When to Use Amazon Polly
Best for
High-volume, cost-sensitive applications already running on AWS.
Key strengths
- ✓Cheapest pay-as-you-go option
- ✓AWS ecosystem integration
- ✓Free tier (5M chars/mo for 12 months)
- ✓SSML support
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Amazon Polly cost?
Amazon Polly Standard costs $4 per million characters, making it one of the cheapest TTS APIs. The newer Generative engine costs $30 per million characters. AWS also includes 5M Standard characters/month free for your first 12 months.
Does Amazon Polly have a free tier?
Yes — Amazon Polly includes 5,000,000 Standard characters or 1,000,000 Neural characters per month free, but only for your first 12 months on AWS. After the trial period, you pay full pay-as-you-go rates starting at $4/1M chars.
What is the difference between Amazon Polly Standard and Generative?
Polly Standard uses older concatenative voices at $4/1M chars and supports 29 languages. Polly Generative uses LLM-based synthesis at $30/1M chars (7.5× more expensive) but currently only supports English. Generative voices sound more natural but cost significantly more.
Is Amazon Polly the cheapest TTS API?
Amazon Polly Standard is tied with Google Cloud Standard as the cheapest TTS API at $4 per million characters. At this price, a 10-minute narration (~7,500 chars) costs roughly $0.03. No other provider matches this rate on a pay-as-you-go basis.