AWS cloud TTS with multiple engine options
Amazon Polly is AWS's text-to-speech service offering multiple synthesis engines from standard to cutting-edge generative AI. With tight AWS integration, SSML support, and voices optimized for different use cases, Polly is ideal for enterprise applications requiring scalability and reliability.
What makes Amazon Polly stand out.
Amazon Polly excels for teams already invested in the AWS ecosystem who need reliable, scalable TTS.
Organizations running on AWS who need TTS that integrates natively with Lambda, S3, and other AWS services. Polly handles millions of requests with enterprise-grade SLAs.
Companies building phone systems that need SSML control over pronunciation, pauses, and emphasis. Speech marks enable precise lip-sync for video avatars.
Teams processing high volumes of text where cost matters. Standard engine starts at just $4.80 per million characters with a generous free tier.
Amazon Polly is unique in offering four distinct synthesis engines, each with different quality and cost trade-offs.
Concatenative synthesis. The most cost-effective option, best for high-volume applications where natural quality isn't critical.
Deep learning-based synthesis. Significant quality improvement over Standard, ideal for customer-facing applications.
Optimized for articles and books. Maintains consistent quality across paragraphs with improved prosody for extended content.
Latest AI technology. The most expressive and natural-sounding engine, approaching ElevenLabs quality at a competitive price.
See how Amazon Polly stacks up against other TTS services.
Amazon Polly offers Standard (concatenative, $4.80/1M chars), Neural (deep learning, $19.20/1M chars), Long-form (optimized for articles, $100/1M chars), and Generative (latest AI, $30/1M chars). Each engine targets different quality and cost trade-offs.
Yes. AWS offers 5 million Standard characters and 1 million Neural characters per month free for the first 12 months. After that, you pay per character with no minimum commitment.
Yes. Amazon Polly has full SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) support for controlling pronunciation, pauses, emphasis, speed, pitch, and volume. This level of control is unique among TTS services.
Amazon Polly offers 60+ voices across 33 languages. Not all voices are available on every engine — Neural and Generative engines have a smaller selection of higher-quality voices.
Speech Marks provide metadata about the generated audio, including word timing, sentence boundaries, and viseme data for lip-sync. This is essential for video avatars, karaoke-style highlighting, and subtitle generation.
Yes. Amazon Polly is an AWS service and requires an AWS account. It integrates natively with other AWS services like Lambda, S3, and CloudFront for scalable audio pipelines.
Amazon Polly offers more voices, SSML support, and lower pricing at the Standard tier. OpenAI TTS provides more natural-sounding voices with a simpler API but no SSML support. Polly is better for enterprise AWS workflows.
Amazon Polly offers Brand Voices as a custom engagement for enterprise customers. This requires working directly with AWS to train a unique voice on your brand's audio data.
Pay per character