# Google Text-to-Speech API pricing: what an hour of speech costs Updated 2026-11-05 Google Cloud Text-to-Speech bills by the character, and the price depends on the voice type: from $4 to $160 per million characters. This guide lists the prices from Google’s pricing page as of November 2026, turns them into the cost of an hour of audio and compares them with a plan billed by time. ## Prices per million characters Standard and WaveNet voices cost $4 per million characters, Neural2 and Polyglot voices $16, Chirp 3: HD voices $30, Instant custom voices $60 and Studio voices $160. Google counts every character of the input, spaces and line breaks included, and SSML tags except the mark tag. The Gemini-TTS models on Google Cloud are billed by tokens instead and have no free usage. ## The free tier Every month the first 4 million characters of Standard and WaveNet voices are free, and the first million of Neural2, Polyglot, Chirp 3: HD and Studio voices. Instant custom voices have no free tier. At about 1,000 characters a minute, the rule ElevenLabs uses on its pricing page, 4 million characters are roughly 66 hours of speech and a million about 16 hours. ## What an hour costs An hour of speech is about 60,000 characters. At list prices it costs about $0.24 with Standard or WaveNet voices, $0.96 with Neural2, $1.80 with Chirp 3: HD, $3.60 with an Instant custom voice and $9.60 with Studio voices. The 216 hours that the $5 SuperClonica Starter plan voices at most in a month would cost about $52 with Standard voices, or about $36 after the free tier, and about $390 with Chirp 3: HD. ## The same hours on SuperClonica The SuperClonica speech API bills by time, not characters: a plan gives minutes of audio in every 10-minute window. Used without a break, the $5 Starter plan voices up to 216 hours a month, the $10 plan up to 576, $20 up to 1,440 and $50 up to 4,680. A free key gives 3 minutes a day. Every catalog voice and your own trained voices work on any plan, and audio streams back from 300 ms in our measurements. Supertonic 3 speaks 31 languages; Chinese is not among them yet. ## When Google is the better choice If you voice less than the free tier, Google Standard and WaveNet voices may cost you nothing at all. Google also offers many more languages and regional variants, including Chinese, SSML, word timings, regional hosting and the guarantees of a large cloud. SuperClonica pays off when you voice many hours a month, want character or custom voices from the catalog, or need a fixed bill. ## Try it in one request Get a free key on the site and post text to https://superclonica.com/api/v1/speech with the header Authorization: Bearer and your key, and the body ``` {"text": "...", "voice": "F1", "language": "en"} ``` Add "format": "mp3" for MP3, or "stream": true to play the audio as it arrives. ## More guides - [Gemini TTS API pricing: what an hour of Gemini speech costs](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/gemini-tts-api-pricing) - [OpenAI TTS API pricing: tts-1, tts-1-hd and gpt-4o-mini-tts](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/openai-tts-api-pricing) - [Cheapest text to speech API: what an hour of audio really costs](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/text-to-speech-api-pricing) - [An Inworld and MiniMax TTS API alternative priced by the hour](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/inworld-minimax-tts-alternative) - [An offline alternative to Google Cloud Text-to-Speech](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/google-text-to-speech-alternative) - [An Amazon Polly alternative for apps that talk a lot](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/amazon-polly-alternative) - [An Azure text to speech alternative billed by time, not characters](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/azure-text-to-speech-alternative) - [Gemini TTS alternative: an offline voice engine you run yourself](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/gemini-tts-alternative) - [A Deepgram Aura alternative for apps that voice hours of text](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/deepgram-aura-alternative) - [A cheaper ElevenLabs API alternative for long and frequent speech](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/elevenlabs-api-alternative) - [AI voice cues for workouts and fitness apps](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/workout-voice-cues) - [A streaming text to speech API: the first sound from 300 ms](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/streaming-text-to-speech-api) ## Text to speech and comparisons - [Text-to-speech that runs on your own computer](https://superclonica.com/en/text-to-speech) - [Supertonic vs SuperClonica: same model, faster and cleaner](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/supertonic) - [Fish Audio and Fish Speech vs SuperClonica](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/fish-audio) - [OmniVoice vs SuperClonica: more languages or more speed](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/omnivoice) - [Qwen3-TTS vs SuperClonica for local text-to-speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/qwen3-tts) - [VoxCPM 2 vs SuperClonica: studio sound or CPU speed](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/voxcpm) - [F5-TTS vs SuperClonica: zero-shot cloning or fast CPU speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/f5-tts) - [An offline alternative to ElevenLabs](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/elevenlabs) - [Kokoro TTS vs SuperClonica: two small models for local speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/kokoro) - [Piper TTS vs SuperClonica: tiny devices or custom voices](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/piper) - [Coqui XTTS-v2 vs SuperClonica: a Coqui TTS alternative](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/xtts) - [Chatterbox TTS vs SuperClonica: instant cloning or a trained voice file](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/chatterbox) ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does the Google Text-to-Speech API cost? From $4 per million characters for Standard and WaveNet voices to $160 for Studio voices, with $16 for Neural2 and $30 for Chirp 3: HD, after a monthly free tier. ### Is the Google TTS API free? Up to a point: each month the first 4 million characters of Standard and WaveNet voices and the first million of Neural2, Polyglot, Chirp 3: HD and Studio voices are free. ### Do spaces count as characters? Yes. Google counts all characters of the input, spaces and line breaks included, and SSML tags except the mark tag. ### Is there a free TTS API key? Yes. A free SuperClonica key gives 3 minutes of audio a day with every catalog voice, without a card. - [Get a free API key](https://superclonica.com/en/speech-api) - [Hear the catalog voices free](https://superclonica.com/en/explore) - [Or run the engine yourself](https://superclonica.com/en/superclonica) ## Sources - [Google Cloud: Text-to-Speech pricing](https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing) - [ElevenLabs: API pricing (1,000 characters ≈ 1 minute)](https://elevenlabs.io/pricing/api) - [SuperClonica](https://superclonica.com/en/) - [AI voice catalog for text to speech](https://superclonica.com/en/explore) - [Text to Speech API: free key, plans from $5](https://superclonica.com/en/speech-api) - [Custom voice commissions for Supertonic 3](https://superclonica.com/en/requests) - [How it works: voices, local speech, training](https://superclonica.com/en/guide) - [Install the faster Supertonic 3 engine](https://superclonica.com/en/superclonica) - [About us: speech synthesis enthusiasts](https://superclonica.com/en/about) - [Contacts, support and voice complaints](https://superclonica.com/en/contacts) - [Privacy policy: what data we keep](https://superclonica.com/en/privacy) - [Terms of use: rules for buyers and authors](https://superclonica.com/en/terms) - [Text to speech](https://superclonica.com/en/text-to-speech)