The median cheapest cost of 1,000 characters of AI speech across the 10 indexed voice models is $0.04 (per 1,000 characters), stamped September 7, 2026. Every cell below is normalized to the same unit and labeled with how it was obtained.
AI voice generation cost index
Every indexed TTS model × every provider that sells it, in USD per 1,000 characters (≈850 characters per minute of audio). Credit and tier billing converted — math on each model page.
| fal.ai | OpenAI | MiniMax | ElevenLabs | Cartesia | PlayAI (PlayHT) | Alibaba Cloud (DashScope) | Deepgram | Hume | Fish Audio | Self-hosted (rented GPU) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cartesia Sonic 3Cartesia | $0.05 | — | — | — | — | $0.05estimated | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Deepgram Aura-2Deepgram | $0.03 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | $0.03estimated | — | — | — |
| ElevenLabs Flash v2.5ElevenLabs | $0.083 | — | — | — | $0.083derived | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| ElevenLabs Multilingual v2ElevenLabs | $0.167 | — | — | — | $0.167derived | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Fish AudioFish Audio | $0.015 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | $0.015derived | — |
| Hume OctaveHume | $0.10 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | $0.10estimated | — | — |
| MiniMax Speech-02MiniMax | $0.06 | $0.10derived | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-ttsOpenAI | $0.015 | — | $0.018derived | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| PlayAI DialogPlayAI (PlayHT) | $0.03 | $0.03estimated | — | — | — | — | $0.05estimated | — | — | — | — | — |
| Qwen3-TTSAlibaba (open weights) | $0.0060 | $0.09derived | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | $0.0060estimated |
Sortable by model name or cheapest price (click the headers). Full dataset:CC-BY CSV download. Labels:methodology.
Voice cost calculator
What do 10,000 characters cost on each model?
Price-change log
Every change to every number on this page, dated and diffed.