AWS Polly Pricing Depends on Which Tier You Pick
Polly charges $4/1M for Standard, $16/1M for Neural, and $30/1M for Generative — and you need an AWS account to call it. SpeakEasy is $2.50/1M flat, natural voices, no AWS.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Three voice tiers, three prices, and an AWS tax on all of them.
| Feature | SpeakEasy | AWS Polly |
|---|---|---|
| TTS Price per 1M chars (standard) | $2.50 | $4.00 |
| TTS Price per 1M chars (neural) | $2.50 | $16.00 |
| TTS Price per 1M chars (generative) | N/A | $30.00 |
| Monthly Plan | $10/mo (~3.3M chars) | Pay-as-you-go |
| Free Tier | $1 first month | 5M chars/month (Standard) for 12 mo |
| Languages | 9 | 40+ |
| Voices | 35+ | 100+ (across tiers) |
| Word-level Timestamps | Yes | Yes (speech marks) |
| Streaming | Yes | Yes |
| OpenAI SDK Compatible | Yes | No (boto3) |
| Setup required | API key only | AWS account + IAM + region |
| Includes STT | Yes | No (separate: Transcribe) |
Pricing breakdown
Tiered AWS pricing or one flat rate.
SpeakEasy
- ✓~3.3M characters included
- ✓$2.50/1M additional — cheaper than Polly Standard
- ✓6x cheaper than Polly Neural ($16/1M)
- ✓OpenAI SDK — no boto3 plumbing
- ✓Includes 50 hrs of STT in the same plan
AWS Polly
- ✕$16/1M for Neural, $30/1M for Generative
- ✕AWS account + IAM role required
- ✕boto3 SDK, not OpenAI SDK
- ✕STT is separate service (Transcribe)
- ✓5M chars/month free for 12 months (Standard tier only)
Save 38% vs Standard — 84% vs Neural
10M chars/month on Polly Neural: $160. Same volume on SpeakEasy: $10 plan + ~$17 overage ≈ $27.
boto3 + IAM, or a single OpenAI SDK call
AWS Polly requires boto3 with AWS credentials configured. SpeakEasy just needs an API key.
# AWS Polly — boto3 SDK, IAM creds, per-voice-tier pricing
import boto3
polly = boto3.client("polly", region_name="us-east-1")
response = polly.synthesize_speech(
Text="Hello, welcome to SpeakEasy!",
OutputFormat="mp3",
VoiceId="Joanna",
Engine="neural",
)
with open("speech.mp3", "wb") as f:
f.write(response["AudioStream"].read())# SpeakEasy — standard OpenAI SDK, single flat rate
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
api_key="YOUR_SPEAKEASY_KEY",
base_url="https://www.tryspeakeasy.io/api/v1"
)
response = client.audio.speech.create(
model="tts-1",
voice="alloy",
input="Hello, welcome to SpeakEasy!"
)
response.stream_to_file("speech.mp3")The verdict
AWS Polly is a voice catalog with AWS-scale pricing tiers. The Standard tier at $4/1M is reasonable; Neural at $16/1M is not; Generative at $30/1M is boutique-voice-cloning territory.
If your stack is already AWS-native and your compliance team wants everything in one billing account, Polly is fine. For everyone else, you are paying the AWS tax on a commodity.
SpeakEasy charges $2.50/1M flat for natural voices across 9 languages, via the OpenAI SDK. No boto3. No IAM. No "which voice tier am I on this month?" surprises on the invoice.
$1 for your first month. Full 50 hours included.
Also compare SpeakEasy with:
$1. 50 hours. Both STT and TTS.
Your current speech API provider is charging you too much. Switch in one line of code.