Text-to-speech · Ranked 4 of 7 in Best text-to-speech tools

What is Amazon Polly?

Updated 27 Oct 2026 · Prices checked on vendor sites · Sources ↓

Short answer

Amazon Polly is a text-to-speech tool from Amazon Web Services, best for AWS-based pay-as-you-go speech API. It has a free plan (5M Standard characters/mo); paid plans start at $4 / 1M characters.

Fact	Amazon Polly	Text-to-speech median (3 tools)
Free plan	Yes, 5M Standard characters/mo	7 of 7 have one
Entry price	$4 / 1M characters	$4 / 1M characters
Top plan	$100 / 1M characters	$30 / 1M characters
Paid plans	4	3
Platforms	API	—

What does Amazon Polly do?

Amazon Polly covers these jobs, as listed on Amazon Web Services's pricing and feature pages.

Standard and Neural voices
Generative and Long-Form voices
Speech Marks metadata
Caching and replay at no extra cost

How much does Amazon Polly cost?

Free, then $4 / 1M characters to $100 / 1M characters.

Plan	Price	Billed monthly	Includes
Standard voices	$4 / 1M characters	—	Free tier 5M characters/mo
Neural voices	$16 / 1M characters	—	Free tier 1M characters/mo for first 12 months
Generative voices	$30 / 1M characters	—	Free tier 100K characters/mo for first 12 months
Long-Form voices	$100 / 1M characters	—	Free tier 500K characters/mo for first 12 months

Full Amazon Polly pricing →

What are the best Amazon Polly alternatives?

Closest on first-year cost: Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, Murf AI, Speechify.

Alternative	Free plan	From
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech	Yes	$4 / 1M characters
Murf AI	Yes	$0.01 / 1000 characters
Speechify	Yes	$29 / mo

All 6 alternatives →

Is Amazon Polly better than ElevenLabs?

Amazon Polly is best for AWS-based pay-as-you-go speech API; ElevenLabs for realistic AI voices and voice cloning. First year: Usage-based vs $60.

Amazon Polly vs ElevenLabs, side by side →

Sources

Vendor page	URL	Checked
Amazon Polly pricing	aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/	27 Oct 2026

Prices in USD as published by each vendor, billed yearly where offered. How we compare