Last verified October 10, 2026.
Details about Amazon Polly come from its public pages as they were on October 10, 2026. Amazon Polly may have changed them since, and a page that was unclear to us may be clear to you. Corrections: support@readaloudai.org. We make ReadAloud, so read this page with that in mind and check anything important with Amazon Polly directly.
About Amazon Polly
How Amazon Polly positions itself: AWS's managed text-to-speech service offering Standard, Neural, Long-Form and Generative voice engines with SSML, lexicons and speech marks.
Price per 1 million characters
USD per one million characters, by tier. Other units are shown as the vendor writes them, not converted.
| Option | Listed price | What it covers | Against ReadAloud Live |
|---|---|---|---|
| ReadAloud Live | $4 per 1M characters | the low-latency tier, built for live calls and voice agents | Reference point |
| ReadAloud Studio | $10 per 1M characters | the higher-priced tier for read-aloud and narration, with several English voices | $6 above ReadAloud Live |
| Amazon Polly: Standard | $4 per 1M characters (source: aws.amazon.com) | Free tier 5 million characters per month. Confirmed by AWS price list (us-east-1) at $0.000004 per character. | Same as ReadAloud Live |
| Amazon Polly: Neural | $16 per 1M characters (source: aws.amazon.com) | Free tier 1 million characters per month for the first 12 months. AWS price list confirms $0.000016 per character. | $12 higher than ReadAloud Live |
| Amazon Polly: Generative | $30 per 1M characters (source: aws.amazon.com) | Applies to speech requests. Free tier 100 thousand characters per month for the first 12 months. AWS price list confirms $0.00003 per character. | $26 higher than ReadAloud Live |
| Amazon Polly: Long-Form | $100 per 1M characters (source: aws.amazon.com) | Free tier 500 thousand characters per month for the first 12 months. AWS price list confirms $0.0001 per character. | $96 higher than ReadAloud Live |
Amazon Polly's Standard at $4 matches ReadAloud Live at $4 per 1M characters.
Amazon Polly's Neural at $16, Generative at $30 and Long-Form at $100 are higher than ReadAloud Live.
Amazon Polly's Standard at $4 is lower than ReadAloud Studio at $10 per 1M characters, so on list price per character Amazon Polly costs less there.
Amazon Polly's Neural at $16, Generative at $30 and Long-Form at $100 are higher than ReadAloud Studio.
Amazon Polly's own headline, as of October 10, 2026: Standard $4 per 1M characters; Neural $16; Generative $30; Long-Form $100.
Free tier at Amazon Polly: Standard: 5M characters per month; Neural: 1M per month for 12 months; Long-Form: 500K per month for 12 months; Generative: 100K per month for 12 months. New AWS customers (from July 15, 2025) also receive up to $200 in Free Tier credits (free plan for 6 months, credits usable within 12 months). ReadAloud: A one-time grant of free credits worth $0.10 (about 10,000 characters of speech), shared by all keys on the account.
Tiers cover different things, so compare on your own monthly volume, and check Amazon Polly's pricing page before you decide. Current ReadAloud prices: /developers.
Side by side
"Not stated on the pages we reviewed" marks what Amazon Polly's pages did not say. We print no head-to-head latency number.
| Topic | ReadAloud | Amazon Polly |
|---|---|---|
| Voices | Live: one American English voice. Studio: several English voices. | Not stated on the pages we reviewed (source: aws.amazon.com) |
| Languages | English today | 42 language and language-variant rows in the available-voices table (source: aws.amazon.com) |
| Custom voices or cloning | API, with a consent step and a payment method | Brand Voice: custom voice built with AWS on request via an AWS account manager or contact form; cost and timeline scoped per engagement. No self-serve cloning stated on pages read. (source: aws.amazon.com) |
| Streaming | WebSocket and HTTP streaming | WebSocket: not stated; HTTP streaming: yes (source: docs.aws.amazon.com) |
| Time to first audio | ReadAloud Live: about 250 ms (our measurement, median to first audio byte, warm connection, San Jose; October 10, 2026; /developers#vs-elevenlabs) | Vendor-stated: No figure is given; the features page says 'consistently fast response times'. (source: docs.aws.amazon.com) |
| Output formats | mp3, opus, wav, pcm; 8 kHz mu-law and A-law over WebSocket | mp3, ogg_vorbis, ogg_opus, pcm (16-bit mono little-endian), mulaw, alaw, json (speech marks) |
| SSML | No SSML and no audio tags. | Yes |
| OpenAI-compatible speech endpoint | Yes, /v1/audio/speech | No. Native API is SynthesizeSpeech with Engine, VoiceId, OutputFormat, Text and TextType (SSML or text), signed with AWS credentials (SigV4); a bidirectional StartSpeechSynthesisStream over HTTP/2 exists. No OpenAI-compatible mode found in pages read. |
| Limit per request | 5,000 characters | SynthesizeSpeech: up to 3,000 billed characters (6,000 total; SSML tags not billed); output stream limited to 10 minutes. Longer text uses asynchronous speech synthesis tasks. (source: docs.aws.amazon.com) |
| Concurrency | Up to 12 Live streams per server; more start under load | SynthesizeSpeech: Standard 80 tps (80 concurrent), Neural 8 tps (18 concurrent), Long-Form 8 tps (26 concurrent), Generative 8 tps (26 concurrent). (source: docs.aws.amazon.com) |
| SDKs and plugins | Python and JavaScript libraries (readaloud), Pipecat and LiveKit plugins, any OpenAI SDK | Not stated on the pages we reviewed |
| HIPAA | Not claimed | Mentioned on their pages; see the note below the table for what it covers (source: aws.amazon.com) |
| SOC 2 | Not claimed | Not stated on the pages we reviewed (source: aws.amazon.com) |
| GDPR | Not claimed | Not stated on the pages we reviewed (source: aws.amazon.com) |
About Amazon Polly's compliance wording: Self-attested: Polly FAQ states it is a HIPAA Eligible Service covered under the AWS Business Associate Addendum. SOC 2 and GDPR not found on pages read.
What Amazon Polly lists as strengths
- Entry price: Standard voices at $4 per 1M characters with 5M free characters per month. (source: aws.amazon.com)
- Four voice engines (Standard, Neural, Long-Form, Generative) so cost and voice type can be matched per use case. (source: aws.amazon.com)
- Speech Marks metadata (sentence, word, viseme, SSML) for synchronized highlighting and lip-sync, plus lexicons for pronunciation. (source: aws.amazon.com)
- HIPAA Eligible Service under the AWS BAA. (source: aws.amazon.com)
- Generated speech can be cached and replayed at no additional cost. (source: aws.amazon.com)
Conditions to check with Amazon Polly
Limits or conditions from the pages we reviewed.
- SynthesizeSpeech input is capped at 3,000 billed characters (6,000 total) and 10 minutes of audio per call. (source: docs.aws.amazon.com)
- The limits page lists the bidirectional StartSpeechSynthesisStream operation under Generative voice. (source: docs.aws.amazon.com)
- Brand Voice is offered through an engagement with AWS rather than self-serve. (source: aws.amazon.com)
Amazon Polly usage terms
From the vendor pages we reviewed; not legal advice.
- Commercial use: Features page lists the ability to securely store and redistribute speech in standard formats; pricing page states generated speech can be cached and replayed at no additional cost. (source: aws.amazon.com)
Where ReadAloud is different
- Voices: we could not read a voice count on Amazon Polly's pages, so we make no comparison of choice.
- SSML: Amazon Polly lists SSML support; ReadAloud does not accept it, so markup in your text would have to be removed or rewritten.
- Custom voices, as Amazon Polly's pages describe them: Brand Voice: custom voice built with AWS on request via an AWS account manager or contact form; cost and timeline scoped per engagement. No self-serve cloning stated on pages read. (source: aws.amazon.com)
- Compliance: Amazon Polly's pages mention HIPAA; ReadAloud claims none. (source: aws.amazon.com)
Which one fits
Amazon Polly may suit you if this describes you: teams on AWS who need high-volume speech for IVR, notifications or accessibility, plus speech marks metadata and HIPAA-eligible handling.
ReadAloud may suit you for streaming English speech at a low price per character.
What we could not confirm about Amazon Polly
- Total voice count (table lists voices per language; not summed)
- SDK languages (AWS SDK list not read)
- WebSocket support (bidirectional streaming described over HTTP/2)
- Quantified latency
- SOC 2 and GDPR statements
- Whether quotas are adjustable
- OpenAI-compatible mode (none found)
Sources
- Amazon Polly pricing (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- AWS Price List: Amazon Polly (us-east-1, published 2026-09-11) (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Amazon Polly FAQs (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Amazon Polly features (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Limits in Amazon Polly (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- SynthesizeSpeech API reference (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- StartSpeechSynthesisStream API reference (retrieved October 10, 2026)
- Available voices (retrieved October 10, 2026)