Amazon Polly
Audio Available Full comparison ↗ amazon/polly · by Amazon
· neural-tts
Pricing — 1 offering(s)
About this offering: Amazon Polly text-to-speech. Three tiers: Standard voices ($4/1M), Neural TTS (NTTS) voices ($16/1M), and Long-form voices ($100/1M — designed for audiobooks and long-form content). Free tier: 5M characters/month for 12 months (new AWS accounts). Supports SSML including prosody, emphasis, breaks, and speaking styles. 60+ voices across 30+ languages. Streaming synthesis supported. Deeply integrated with AWS services (Lambda, Polly API calls from S3 triggers, etc.). Billed via AWS account; no monthly minimum.
Standard voices
- $4.00 / 1M characters Current 2016-11-01 → present
Neural voices (NTTS)
- $16.00 / 1M characters Current 2019-11-01 → present
Long-form voices
- $100.00 / 1M characters
Current
2023-11-01 → present
AWS also offers Generative voices at $30 per 1M characters (checked 2026-09-20), which isn't listed as a…
AWS also offers Generative voices at $30 per 1M characters (checked 2026-09-20), which isn't listed as a separate tier on this page.
Showing the active price and any recorded history. Full pricing history is available via the paid API — see API docs.
See how Amazon Polly fits into a cost-aware routing setup
See how →Capability profile
How Amazon Polly rates across core capability dimensions, with the task-level evidence behind each rating.
Neural voices are natural and pleasant and solid for most app use cases, but not best-in-class next to ElevenLabs or Azure Neural. In the Artificial Analysis Text to Speech Arena (checked 2026-08-19), Amazon Polly Neural ranks #94 of 98 voices (Elo 887) and Polly Standard ranks last (#98, Elo 817).
30+ languages, 60+ voices across Standard and Neural tiers. Coverage is narrower than Azure (140+) or Google (40+) but sufficient for major world languages.
60+ voices — fewer than Azure or Google but covers major languages. No voice cloning.
Real-time streaming synthesis supported via the SynthesizeSpeech Streaming API. First-byte latency is competitive for AWS workloads.
No voice cloning or custom voice creation. Preset voices only.
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Score | Config | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| MOS (naturalness) | — | No independently published MOS for Polly Neural. Community comparisons generally rate it below Azure and Google Neural for naturalness, but suitable for most production use cases. | — |
Operator guidance
Best for teams running AWS-native infrastructure. Neural voices cost $16 per 1M characters, the same as Google Neural2 and $1 more than Azure Neural ($15), and new AWS accounts get 5M free characters a month for 12 months. Long-form voices ($100 per 1M) are a niche premium for audiobook production. For voice cloning, choose ElevenLabs or Fish Audio; for real-time conversational latency, choose Cartesia Sonic.
Use cases
- App TTS within AWS-native architectures (Lambda, EC2, Step Functions)
- Audiobook and podcast narration using Long-form voices
- Cost-optimised TTS at scale with the 12-month free tier
- Multi-language applications in the major world languages covered
Limitations
- Narrower language coverage than Azure (140+) and Google (40+)
- Neural voice quality is competitive but not best-in-class
- No voice cloning or custom voice training