Azure AI Speech
Microsoft's speech service with hundreds of neural and HD voices, EU regions, a free F0 tier and monthly commitment tiers.
At $15 per million characters for standard neural voices on S0, the base rate sits close to Polly's Neural and OpenAI's tts-1, with Neural HD at $22 and custom neural voice at $24 plus training and hosting. High-volume users can buy monthly commitment tiers that bring the rate down to $6 per million at 4,000M characters. A recurring 0.5M character F0 allowance and EU regions on standard plans make it a straightforward option for teams already on Azure.
- Headquarters
- 🇺🇸 United States
- Parent jurisdiction
- 🇺🇸 United States (parent: Microsoft)
- EU self-serve plan
- Available; check eligible plans and regions
- GDPR DPA
- Yes
- Billing
- payg
- Free tier
- F0 tier: 0.5M neural characters/month (separate free resource).
- Open source
- No
- Website
- azure.microsoft.com
- Source last checked
- 2026-10-06
- Pricing evidence
- Published rates
Pricing
Calculated from the listed vendor rates; exclusions still apply. How to read these estimates.
| Plan | Base fee / month | 1M additional characters |
|---|---|---|
| Free (F0) | $0 | $0 |
| Standard (S0) pay-as-you-go | $0 | $15 |
| Commitment 80M | $960 | $12 |
| Commitment 400M | $3,900 | $9.75 |
| Commitment 2000M | $15,000 | $7.5 |
| Commitment 4000M | $24,000 | $6 |
Allowances, plan limits & calculation details
Rates are shown at their recorded precision. A zero means no charge in this calculation; the vendor may charge for things we leave out. See the notes for usage assumptions and currency conversions.
Free (F0)
- Base fee / month
- $0
- Included characters / month (millions)
- 0.5
- 1M additional characters
- $0
- Modeled plan limits
- ≤ 0.5 characters / month (millions)
Standard (S0) pay-as-you-go
- Base fee / month
- $0
- Included characters / month (millions)
- 0
- 1M additional characters
- $15
Commitment 80M
- Base fee / month
- $960
- Included characters / month (millions)
- 80
- 1M additional characters
- $12
Commitment 400M
- Base fee / month
- $3,900
- Included characters / month (millions)
- 400
- 1M additional characters
- $9.75
Commitment 2000M
- Base fee / month
- $15,000
- Included characters / month (millions)
- 2,000
- 1M additional characters
- $7.5
Commitment 4000M
- Base fee / month
- $24,000
- Included characters / month (millions)
- 4,000
- 1M additional characters
- $6
Standard neural voices $15 per 1M characters (real-time and batch) on S0. Neural HD voices $22/M; custom neural voice $24/M plus training ($52/compute hour) and hosting (~$4.03/hour); long-audio synthesis $100/M. Free F0 tier gives 0.5M neural characters/month on a separate resource. Monthly commitment tiers (bought per resource in the portal, neural standard voices only) with overage: 80M $960 ($12/M), 400M $3,900 ($9.75/M), 2,000M $15,000 ($7.50/M), 4,000M $24,000 ($6/M); connected-container tiers are ~5% cheaper. Prices from the Azure retail prices API (East US). EU regions (e.g. West Europe, Sweden Central) are available on standard plans; covered by Microsoft's Products and Services DPA.
Managed alternatives
At 10M characters / month. Adjust usage and requirements.
Azure AI Speech: $1,800/yr estimated.
- Kokoro-82M on DeepInfra: $74/yr estimated · $1,726/yr bill differencePublished rates
- Speechify API: $1,092/yr estimated · $708/yr bill differencePublished rates
- Murf API: $1,200/yr estimated · $600/yr bill differencePublished rates
No cheaper managed estimate matches your filters. Adjust your usage or compare with your actual contract bill.
The price difference leaves out migration costs, operating costs and any features you’d need to replace.
Self-hosted options
Operating cost is not estimated. These options are not counted as savings against managed services.
Other text-to-speech comparisons
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