TTS Pricing Calculator

Estimate exactly how many characters you need for any project

Text-to-Speech Cost

Estimated Characters 20
Estimated Cost $0.36 (Starter plan)

Transcription Cost

Estimated Characters 60
Estimated Cost $1.08 (Starter plan)

Plan Pricing

PlanCharactersPer 1K Chars
Free15,000-
$5 Pack100,000$0.050
$15 Pack400,000$0.038
$40 Pack1,200,000$0.033
Starter $9/mo500,000$0.018
Pro $29/mo2,000,000$0.015
Business $99/mo10,000,000$0.010
Scale $249/mo30,000,000$0.008
Enterprise $4,999/mo1,000,000,000$0.005
Annual billing saves 20%

Character Usage

  • Free Models: 0 characters
  • Standard Models: 2,000 characters / 1K input chars
  • Premium Models: 4,000 characters / 1K input chars
  • Transcription: 1,000 characters / minute
  • Voice Cloning: Free (uses model characters)

Frequently Asked Questions

TTS.ai uses a character-based system. Each model tier uses a different multiplier: Free models (Kokoro, Piper, VITS, MeloTTS) cost 0 characters, Standard models use 2x characters, and Premium models use 4x characters. You get 15,000 free characters on signup.

It depends on the model and speaking speed. On average, 1 hour of audio equals roughly 9,000 words or 54,000 characters. With a Standard model (2x), that uses about 108,000 characters. With Free models like Kokoro, it costs zero characters.

Use our free-tier models: Kokoro, Piper, VITS, or MeloTTS. These cost zero characters and produce high-quality speech. Kokoro in particular delivers near-premium quality at no cost. Free models have no daily limit for logged-in users.

Voice cloning itself is free — you upload a reference audio clip and clone the voice. The cost comes when you generate speech with the cloned voice, which follows the standard pricing for the model used (e.g., 2x characters for CosyVoice 2, 4x for Chatterbox).

Speech-to-text transcription costs about 1,000 characters per minute of audio. For a 60-minute recording, that is about 60,000 characters. The Starter plan ($9/month, 500,000 characters) covers about 8 hours of transcription.

Yes. Higher-tier plans offer better per-character pricing. The Starter plan is $0.018 per 1,000 characters, while the Enterprise plan is $0.005 per 1,000 characters — a 72% savings. Annual billing adds another 20% discount.

Characters from one-time character packs do not expire. Subscription characters refresh monthly — unused subscription characters do not carry over to the next billing cycle.

Yes. All new accounts receive 15,000 free characters. Additionally, four models (Kokoro, Piper, VITS, MeloTTS) are permanently free and cost zero characters, with no daily generation limit for logged-in users.

Multiply the total character count across all texts by the multiplier for your chosen model. For example, 100 texts averaging 500 characters with a Standard model (2x): 100 x 500 x 2 = 100,000 characters.

We accept Stripe (all major credit/debit cards), PayPal, Square, and Coinbase (cryptocurrency). You can purchase one-time character packs or subscribe to a monthly/annual plan.

Yes. Auto top-up lets you set a character threshold — when your balance drops below it, a character pack is automatically purchased. You control which pack and when it triggers. There is no way to accidentally overspend.

This page serves as both the web and API cost calculator. API pricing uses the same character system as the web interface. The OpenAI-compatible endpoint at /v1/audio/speech uses the same per-model character costs.
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