Amazon Polly review

Amazon Polly is AWS's text to speech service, billed monthly by the characters you process. It offers four voice types at different prices: Standard at $4 per million characters, Neural at $16, Generative at $30 and Long-Form at $100, with Long-Form voices aimed at extended narration such as articles and books. Speech Marks return timing metadata, which helps sync highlighted text or captions with audio, and you can cache and replay generated speech at no additional cost. For the first 12 months, the free tier includes 5 million Standard characters, 1 million Neural characters and 500 thousand Long-Form characters a month. Polly is cheap for scripted, high-volume work, but it is a developer service: you need an AWS account and code or a third-party app, and it has no editor for creators. Its Long-Form price also makes book narration costlier than Google's Chirp 3 HD voices.

Who it is for

Developers who already use AWS and need cheap, scripted narration.

Price

Pay as you go: Standard $4, Neural $16, Generative $30 and Long-Form $100 per 1 million characters; 12-month free tier.

Amazon Polly’s Neural voices are priced at $16.00 per 1 million characters for speech or Speech Marks requested (when outside the free tier).
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 9, 2026.

Key features

• Standard, Neural, Long-Form and Generative voice types
• Long-Form voices for extended narration
• Speech Marks metadata for syncing text and audio
• Cache and replay generated speech at no extra cost
• Billed monthly by characters processed

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: Standard voices cost $4 per 1 million characters
• Strength: Generated audio can be reused at no additional cost
• Strength: Long-Form voices target narration
• Weakness: The free tier lasts only the first 12 months
• Weakness: Long-Form voices cost $100 per 1 million characters
• Weakness: Needs an AWS account and code or a third-party tool

Key facts

• Standard voices: $4 per 1 million characters
• Neural voices: $16 per 1 million characters
• Generative voices: $30 per 1 million characters
• Long-Form voices: $100 per 1 million characters
• Free tier: 5 million Standard and 1 million Neural characters a month for 12 months

Where it ranks

Amazon Polly is No. 9 in our Best AI Voice Generators verdict.