Azure text to speech pricing
Azure Speech charges per character for text to speech. Neural and Neural HD Flash voices cost $15 per 1 million characters. The free F0 tier covers 0.5 million characters a month. Figures come from the Azure Speech in Foundry Tools pricing page on October 27, 2026. We do not track Azure on SaaS Price Watch yet.
Text to speech prices
| Voice | Price | Free F0 each month |
|---|---|---|
| Neural and Neural HD Flash (real-time and batch) | $15 per 1M characters | 0.5 million characters |
| Professional custom voice | $24 per 1M characters | none listed |
| Professional custom voice, neural HD | $48 per 1M characters | none listed |
| Standard avatar, real-time | $0.50 per minute | none listed |
Custom voice training costs $52 per compute hour. Azure bills speech synthesis per character and avatar per second.
Commitment tiers for Neural TTS
| Monthly commitment | Overage |
|---|---|
| $960 for 80M characters | $12 per 1M characters |
The page lists two larger tiers (400M and 2,000M characters). The tiers cover prebuilt neural voices in real-time and batch. HD voices, custom voices, and Personal Voice are not included.
Speech to text prices
| Item | Price | Free F0 each month |
|---|---|---|
| Standard real-time | $1 per hour | 5 audio hours (shared with Custom) |
| Custom real-time | $1.20 per hour | 5 audio hours (shared) |
The raw read conflict
Our raw read of the page showed dash placeholders where prices go. The prices sit in page code, set by region. Our rendered read in a browser showed the prices in this guide. We list the figures we could match in both reads.
What we withhold
The page has a region menu. Our read does not show which region the prices are for, so we do not name one. The page lists Neural HD, MAI-Voice, and Personal Voice synthesis as N/A in our read. We do not list a price for them. We hold the batch speech to text rates, the training cap, the endpoint hosting rate, and the two larger commitment tier prices. Our rendered read shows them, but we could not match them in the page text as served.
Compare and track
See the Amazon Polly pricing guide, the Google text to speech pricing guide, the ElevenLabs pricing per minute guide, the Deepgram pricing guide, and all AI tools.
FAQ
How much does Azure text to speech cost? Neural voices cost $15 per 1 million characters. Professional custom voices cost $24.
Is Azure text to speech free? The F0 tier gives 0.5 million Neural characters free each month.
How much does Azure speech to text cost? Standard real-time costs $1 per hour. Custom real-time costs $1.20 per hour.
Does Azure offer volume discounts for TTS? Yes. Commitment tiers start at $960 for 80M characters a month.
How much is Azure custom neural voice training? $52 per compute hour. We hold the training cap and the hosting rate (see What we withhold).
How we check
We read the Azure Speech pricing page on October 27, 2026, in a raw read and a rendered read. Get an alert when an AI voice price changes.
Checked 2026-10-27. Prices and policies change. Confirm on the source before you buy.
Sources
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