# OpenAI TTS API pricing: tts-1, tts-1-hd and gpt-4o-mini-tts

Updated 2026-11-05

OpenAI’s speech endpoint turns text into audio with three models, each priced in its own way. This guide lists their prices from OpenAI’s pricing page as of November 2026, what an hour of audio costs, and what changes when these models are switched off in January 2027.

## Prices of the three models

tts-1 costs $15 per million characters of input and tts-1-hd $30. gpt-4o-mini-tts is billed by tokens: $0.60 per million text tokens in and $12 per million audio tokens out. OpenAI’s pricing page does not say how many audio tokens make a minute, so the cost of an hour with gpt-4o-mini-tts depends on your audio and is best measured on a real sample.

## What an hour costs

At about 1,000 characters a minute, the rule ElevenLabs uses on its pricing page, an hour of speech is about 60,000 characters: about $0.90 with tts-1 and $1.80 with tts-1-hd. The 216 hours that the $5 SuperClonica Starter plan voices at most in a month would cost about $194 with tts-1 and $389 with tts-1-hd.

## The January 2027 shutdown

OpenAI’s deprecations page lists tts-1, tts-1-hd and gpt-4o-mini-tts as deprecated: they will be removed from the API on January 6, 2027, and the suggested replacement is gpt-realtime-2.1-mini, priced at $0.60 per million text tokens in and $20 per million audio tokens out. An app built on the speech endpoint needs changes either way, which makes it a good moment to compare prices.

## 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 OpenAI is the better choice

OpenAI covers more languages, including Chinese, and its realtime models suit voice agents that also listen and answer in one session. If your app says only a few sentences a day, paying per character may cost less than any monthly plan. 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

- [An offline alternative to OpenAI text to speech](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/openai-tts-alternative)
- [Gemini TTS API pricing: what an hour of Gemini speech costs](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/gemini-tts-api-pricing)
- [Google Text-to-Speech API pricing: what an hour of speech costs](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/google-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 Amazon Polly alternative for apps that talk a lot](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/amazon-polly-alternative)
- [A Play.ht alternative that runs offline](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/playht-alternative)
- [A cheaper ElevenLabs API alternative for long and frequent speech](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/elevenlabs-api-alternative)
- [A Deepgram Aura alternative for apps that voice hours of text](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/deepgram-aura-alternative)
- [An offline alternative to Google Cloud Text-to-Speech](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/google-text-to-speech-alternative)
- [A streaming text to speech API: the first sound from 300 ms](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/streaming-text-to-speech-api)
- [AI voice cues for workouts and fitness apps](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/workout-voice-cues)

## 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 OpenAI TTS API cost?

$15 per million characters for tts-1, $30 for tts-1-hd, and for gpt-4o-mini-tts $0.60 per million text tokens in and $12 per million audio tokens out.

### Is OpenAI TTS being shut down?

According to OpenAI’s deprecations page, tts-1, tts-1-hd and gpt-4o-mini-tts will be removed from the API on January 6, 2027; the suggested replacement is gpt-realtime-2.1-mini.

### How much is an hour of OpenAI TTS?

About $0.90 with tts-1 and $1.80 with tts-1-hd, counting 1,000 characters a minute.

### 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

- [OpenAI API pricing](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing)
- [OpenAI API deprecations](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/deprecations)
- [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)