AI voice price comparison: what a minute of voice-over really costs
Prices checked on 12 October 2026, excluding promotions, subject to change. Updated whenever we notice a change.
AI voice vendors do not sell the same unit. One bills “credits”, another words, a third characters per million, a fourth hours per year. To compare them you have to bring everything back to a single measure: the minute of audio produced. This comparison does that for ten tools, adds a calculator for your own volume, and explains what each price actually buys.
The method: everything per minute
A voice-over read at a normal pace uses about 1,000 characters per minute, spaces and punctuation included. That is what we measure on our own generations and what most vendors use when they advertise “minutes”. One million characters, the API unit, is therefore roughly 1,000 minutes, a little under 17 hours. For a tool sold by the word we count six characters per word. How Aievalu counts is explained in the FAQ entry on character counting.
Three pricing families coexist. A monthly subscription gives you a quota that vanishes at month end. A credit pack is paid once and used at your own pace. An API bills per use with no minimum but assumes a developer to wire it up. An honest comparison sets these families against each other, not a subscription against an API.
The table: price per minute for ten tools
| Tool | Plan observed | Price per minute (about) | Commercial use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aievalu | 100,000-character pack, €9, valid 12 months; subscriptions from €4.99 to €49.99 | €0.09 (pack); €0.062 to €0.083 (subscriptions) | Included with paid credits |
| ElevenLabs | Starter $6/mo (≈ 30 min), Creator $22 (≈ 121 min), Pro $99 (≈ 600 min) | $0.20 to $0.17 | From Starter |
| Murf AI | Creator $29/mo ($19 billed yearly), 24 hours per year | $0.16 to $0.24 | Included (Creator) |
| Play.ht | Personal $19/mo (yearly), Professional $39/mo | ≈ $0.13 (Professional, word quota) | Professional |
| Speechify Studio | Starter $19/user/mo, Creator $49 | From $19/mo (minutes not published consistently) | Depends on plan |
| OpenAI TTS | API: tts-1 $15, tts-1-hd $30 per million characters | $0.015 to $0.03 | Yes (API terms) |
| Google Cloud TTS | API: Standard $4, Neural2 $16, Chirp 3 HD $30 per million | $0.004 to $0.03 | Yes (API terms) |
| Amazon Polly | API: Standard $4, Neural $16, Generative $30, Long-form $100 per million | $0.004 to $0.10 | Yes (API terms) |
| Microsoft Azure Speech | API: Neural $16, Neural HD $22 per million | $0.016 to $0.022 | Yes (API terms) |
| Mistral Voxtral TTS | API: $0.016 per 1,000 characters ($16 per million) | $0.016 | Yes via the API (open weights: non-commercial) |
Quick read: raw APIs cost ten times less than consumer apps, but they deliver only an audio stream. No interface, no player, no invoice in your name, no history. Apps sell that comfort, and that is where the gaps open up: from €0.06 to $0.24 per minute depending on the tool and the plan.
Calculate for your own volume
Enter your monthly minutes. The calculator applies each subscription's floor, then the overage, and for Aievalu keeps the cheaper of the pack and the matching subscription.
| Tool | Estimated monthly cost | What the estimate assumes |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI TTS (tts-1) | $0.90 | API, $15 per million characters |
| Google Cloud TTS (Neural2) | $0.96 | API, $16 per million (Standard $4, Chirp 3 HD $30) |
| Amazon Polly (Neural) | $0.96 | API, $16 per million (Standard $4, Generative $30) |
| Azure Speech (Neural) | $0.96 | API, $16 per million (Neural HD $22) |
| Mistral Voxtral TTS (API) | $0.96 | API, $16 per million — the engine behind Aievalu |
| OpenAI TTS (tts-1-hd) | $1.80 | API, $30 per million |
| Aievalu | €4.99 | €9 pack / 100 min (12 months) or Starter, Medium, Pro subscription — whichever is cheaper |
| ElevenLabs | $12.00 | Starter 30 min, Creator 121 min, Pro 600 min + per-minute overage |
| Play.ht | $19.00 | Personal $19 (yearly, standard voices), Professional $39 — word quotas converted at ≈ 6 characters/word |
| Murf AI | $29.00 | Creator $29 (≈ 120 min/month, $19 billed yearly), Business $99 (≈ 480 min/month) |
Estimate: 1,000 characters ≈ 1 minute. Amounts in each vendor's currency, not converted; the sort therefore mixes euros and dollars. API tools assume you have a developer to wire them up. Speechify Studio is not included: its minute quotas are not published consistently.
What each price buys
ElevenLabs sells its library and cloning first: thirty-plus languages, thousands of voices, instant cloning from Starter and professional cloning from Creator, automatic dubbing, a rich API. You pay for that breadth. Our Aievalu versus ElevenLabs head-to-head details when that price is worth it. Murf and Play.ht add a video editor or a multi-track studio around the voice. Speechify comes from screen reading and keeps that focus. The APIs from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI and Mistral sell synthesis alone, by volume, for people building their own product.
Aievalu sells one simple thing: English and French voices built on Voxtral, a player, an MP3 or WAV file, a 90-day history and an invoice, for €9 per 100 minutes. No cloning, three tones per voice, 1,500 characters per generation. The full price list fits on one page.
Comparing quality like for like
Price says nothing about the voice. To judge, take the same 150-character text with a date, an amount and a question, generate it with each vendor, and listen to the numbers, the pauses and the punctuation. Every sample on our voices page reads the same text for that reason. Then test your own script: the free trial takes two sentences with no account. To understand what happens under the hood, the AI voice generator guide covers presets, prosody and limits.
Hidden costs
The first is expiry: with most subscription vendors, unused minutes disappear the following month. A creator who publishes irregularly pays for minutes never heard. The second is overage, billed per minute above the subscription rate. The third is time: an API at $0.016 per minute assumes a key, code, storage and error handling. The fourth is usage rights, sometimes reserved for higher tiers; check before monetising, and read our answer on usage rights for Aievalu.
Going further
If you are looking for a free option first, the free AI voice page lists what each trial really allows. For an overview by use rather than by price, read the best AI voice tools. And for a concrete case, the YouTube voice-over guide prices an eight-minute video.
Sources (consulted on 12 October 2026)
- ElevenLabs — elevenlabs.io/pricing
- Murf AI — murf.ai/pricing
- Play.ht — play.ht/pricing
- Speechify Studio — speechify.com/studio
- OpenAI — openai.com/api/pricing
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech — cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing
- Amazon Polly — aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing
- Microsoft Azure Speech — azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/cognitive-services/speech-services
- Mistral AI (tarifs) — mistral.ai/pricing
- Mistral AI (Voxtral TTS) — mistral.ai/news/voxtral-tts
Brands mentioned belong to their respective owners. Aievalu is not affiliated with any of the vendors compared. Comparison based on public price lists, without promotions or annual discounts unless stated.