Google Cloud Text-to-Speech in our research
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech price and terms
Terms
- Free plan
- YesYesA standing monthly free allowance per voice family: 4 million characters for Standard voices
The terms in full
1 million for Chirp 3 HD, Neural2, Polyglot and Studio. No free allowance for the Gemini voice models or instant custom voice. Billing must be enabled. New customers separately get up to $300 in Google Cloud credits.
- Sign up without sales
- YesYes
For AI agents
- API
- Yes
Pricing page, captured
All plans and limits
| Plan | Price | Main limits |
|---|---|---|
| Chat | $0.50 per session | None stated |
| Voice | $0.50 per session | None stated |
What we checked on Google Cloud Text-to-Speech
Cost for 2 hours a month
$0 a month on Standard voices (pay as you go) for 2 hours of 60 minutes. credits counted per character or per word are converted at the standard hour: 52,000 characters, 9,300 words
With Google Cloud's pay-as-you-go pricing, you only pay for the services you use.
Cost for 10 hours a month (heavy use)
$0 a month on Standard voices (pay as you go) for 10 hours of 60 minutes. credits counted per character or per word are converted at the standard hour: 52,000 characters, 9,300 words
On the page: Request a custom quote section
Promotion and regular price
promotion: the first rows of the pricing table show the Gemini 3.8 Flash preview voice model at $0.50 per million text tokens and $9.00 per million audio tokens through December 31, 2026, doubling to $1.00 and $18.00 from January 1, 2027. The character-priced voices show no promotion.
Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS (Preview)** through December 31, 2026
What the price counts
Most voices are billed by the character of input text, counting spaces, newlines and markup tags. Gemini voice models are billed by text and audio tokens instead, at 25 audio tokens per second of audio.
Text-to-Speech is priced based on the number of characters sent to the service to be synthesized into audio each month.
Voices that use more
Each voice family has its own per-character price, so better voices cost more: Standard voices are $4 per million characters, Neural2 $16, Chirp 3 HD $30, instant custom voice $60 and Studio $160.
Chirp 3: HD voices (sku:F977-2280-6F1B) 0 to 1 million characters US$0.00003 per character (US$30 per 1 million characters)
Past your allowance
Usage beyond the free monthly character allowance is automatically charged at the published model rate.
You must enable billing to use Text-to-Speech, and will be automatically charged if your usage exceeds the number of free characters allowed per…
Commercial use
Google permits created audio in applications or media subject to its cloud terms and applicable law.
You can use the audio data files you create using Cloud Text-to-Speech in your applications or media in compliance with the Google Cloud Platform…
Stock voices
The product page claims more than 380 ready-made voices across over 75 languages and variants. Chirp 3 HD and Gemini-TTS each offer the same 30 named voices.
Choose from a set of 380+ voices across 75+ languages and variants, including Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and more.
Languages
Over 75 languages and variants, including regional accents such as Australian, Indian, British and US English. The Gemini voice models list 24 languages as generally available and many more in Preview.
On the page: Benefits section, Widest voice selection
Re-voice your recording
Custom voice accepts a supplied voice recording, but documented synthesis takes text as input and returns audio.
Input: Text Output: Audio
Emotion, pace and emphasis
Speaking rate, pitch and volume can be set per request. The Gemini voice models also steer style, accent, pace, tone and emotion through natural-language prompts. Chirp 3 HD supports pause tags and pace control.
Precisely dictate style, accent, pace, tone, and emotional expression—all steerable through simple natural-language prompts in 75+ locales.
Pronunciation fixes
Custom pronunciations can be set for a phrase using IPA or X-SAMPA in Chirp 3 HD requests, and markup tags handle other pronunciation. These are set per request; the docs describe no saved project-wide dictionary.
You can specify custom pronunciations using IPA or X-SAMPA phonetic representations for words within the input text.
Long scripts and chapters
Long audio synthesis takes up to about 1 million bytes of text in one asynchronous job, written to a Cloud Storage bucket, and is in Preview. Ordinary requests are capped at 5,000 bytes. No chapter-based project or single-line regeneration is described.
Long Audio Synthesis asynchronously synthesizes up to 1 million bytes on input.
Several speakers
The Gemini voice models generate single-speaker or multi-speaker dialogue audio in one request, from short snippets to long narratives. The docs describe no multi-speaker option for the other voice families.
Using Gemini-TTS, you can synthesize single or multi-speaker speech from short snippets to long-form narratives
Audio you get
Output includes MP3, LINEAR16 (the encoding used in WAV files) and OGG Opus, plus telephony formats. Audio comes back as base64 text that must be decoded, and the sample rate can be set per request.
Convert text to MP3, Linear16, OGG Opus, and a number of other audio formats.
Instant cloning
Chirp 3 instant custom voice clones a voice from about 10 seconds of audio, but access is limited to allow-listed users who request it from sales. It costs $60 per million characters with no free allowance.
Important: Access to Instant Custom Voice is restricted to allow-listed users. To request access, contact a member of the sales team.
Consent of the voice’s owner
Instant custom voice requires a recorded consent statement from the voice owner in the matching language. A custom consent script cannot replace Google's fixed wording.
To comply with legal and ethical guidelines for Instant Custom Voice, record the required consent statement as a single-channel audio file in the…
Your voice trains their models
The Google Cloud Service Specific Terms say customer data is not used to train or fine-tune models without the customer's permission, and the data logging page says no text or audio is logged.
Google will not use Customer Data to train or fine-tune any AI/ML models without Customer's prior permission or instruction.
API
A public API is the core product surface for creating speech from submitted text.
Easily integrate with any application or device that can send a REST or gRPC request including phones, PCs, tablets, and IoT devices (for example…
API price
Per million characters: Standard $4, Neural2 and Polyglot $16, Chirp 3 HD $30, instant custom voice $60, Studio $160. The Gemini voice models are priced per million text and audio tokens instead.
Standard voices (sku:9D01-5995-B545) 0 to 4 million characters US$0.000004 per character (US$4 per 1 million characters)
Platforms
The interfaces can integrate with applications and devices that send requests, including phones, PCs, tablets, and Internet-connected devices.
Head to Media Studio or check out our documentation to learn more.
Works inside
The service integrates with applications and devices that can send REST or gRPC requests.
Easily integrate with any application or device that can send a REST or gRPC request including phones, PCs, tablets, and IoT devices
Who owns the audio
The Service Specific Terms treat generated output as customer data and say Google asserts no ownership over it. Nothing read says the right to use audio already made ends when you stop paying.
Generated Output is Customer Data. As between Customer and Google, Google does not assert any ownership rights in any new intellectual property…
Free plan or trial
A demo box on the product page speaks typed text, and each month includes free characters (1 to 4 million depending on the voice family). Billing must still be enabled, and new Google Cloud customers get up to $300 in credits.
The first 1 million characters for WaveNet voices are free each month. For Standard (non-WaveNet) voices, the first 4 million characters are free…
Still sold
The service has a current public pricing page and a public self-service trial entry point.
New customers get up to $300 in free credits to try Text-to-Speech and other Google Cloud products.
Sign up without a sales call
Visitors can start a free Cloud trial from the public product page before contacting sales.
On the page: Request a custom quote section at the bottom of the pricing page
Contract and cancelling
There is no subscription term: usage is billed as it happens. You stop it by disabling billing on the project in the console, which also disables the project's resources.
To change or disable billing on a project, go to the Billing page in the Google Cloud console.
Support
Free help is community-based (Stack Overflow, a Google group and Slack). Phone support, 24/7 coverage and a technical manager come only with a paid Google Cloud support package. Billing questions have a support form.
Google Cloud Platform offers different support packages to meet different needs, such as 24/7 coverage, phone support, and access to a technical…
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech alternatives
All 9 alternatives6 more alternatives
All 9 publish a price.
- NaturalReaderFrom $29 a monthBrowser voice-over studio with Gemini, OpenAI, Azure and ElevenLabs voices under one commercial license.
- TopMediaiFrom $35.99 a monthAI studio for text to speech, voice cloning and video dubbing on one shared credit balance.
- VoicemakerFree, then $5 a monthBrowser voice-over maker billed per character, with 100+ voice effects and multi-voice projects.
- ElevenLabs PublishingFree, then $6 a monthElevenLabs' audiobook toolkit that narrates a manuscript and publishes it straight to ElevenReader and Spotify.
Sources and changes
Last changed
Sources11
- cloud.google.com/text-to-speech
- cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/gemini-tts
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/chirp3-instant-custom-voice
- cloud.google.com/terms/service-terms
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/basics
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/billing-questions
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/chirp3-hd
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/create-audio-text-long-audio-synthesis
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/getting-support
- docs.cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/quotas
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