# 12 Best Amazon Polly Alternatives (2026)

> 12 verified Amazon Polly alternatives in Text-to-speech APIs, led by ElevenLabs (from $6/mo). Compared on real production cost and per-use-case verdicts.

Amazon Polly is aws's pay-as-you-go text-to-speech service: cheap, reliable, and deeply integrated with the rest of amazon's cloud, with voices ranging from basic to lifelike generative.. Teams that switch usually cite price at production volume, language coverage, self-hosting and license control. The alternatives below are ranked by published head-to-head verdicts, not sponsorship.

## Where to switch, by reason

| Switching because of | See |
| --- | --- |
| price at production volume | [Cartesia](https://www.versusref.com/tts/best/developers/) |
| language coverage | [Inworld TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/best/dubbing-localization/) |
| self-hosting and license control | [Voxtral TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/best/self-hosted/) |
| audiobooks | [Azure Speech](https://www.versusref.com/tts/best/audiobooks/) |
| content creators | [ElevenLabs](https://www.versusref.com/tts/best/content-creators/) |

## The Amazon Polly alternatives, ranked

| # | Tool | Positioning | vs Amazon Polly | Best if you need | Price | Rating |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [ElevenLabs](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/elevenlabs/) | Premium AI voice platform for creators and developers | vs Amazon Polly: ~30× the stock voices, ~1150% pricier, adds instant voice cloning. | content creators, voice agents | From $6/mo |  |
| 2 | [Google Cloud TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/google-tts/) | Hyperscaler TTS with the broadest voice/language catalog | vs Amazon Polly: ~4× the stock voices, ~2× the languages, adds instant voice cloning. | audiobooks, developers, voice agents | See pricing |  |
| 3 | [Azure Speech](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/azure-speech/) | Enterprise hyperscaler TTS with custom-voice depth | vs Amazon Polly: ~275% pricier, ~2.5× the languages, adds instant voice cloning. | audiobooks, content creators, developers, dubbing, voice agents | From $960/mo |  |
| 4 | [CAMB.AI](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/camb-ai/) | Localization-first TTS: the MARS 8 family (flash/pro/instruct variants) plus dubbing and translated-TTS pipelines, credit-based plans from $5/mo, aimed at media, sports, and content going multilingual. | vs Amazon Polly: ~4× the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $5/mo |  |
| 5 | [Cartesia](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/cartesia/) | Lowest-latency TTS for real-time voice agents | vs Amazon Polly: adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $5/mo |  |
| 6 | [Chatterbox](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/chatterbox/) (OSS) | Production-minded open TTS from a commercial voice company - MIT license, built-in watermarking, and a fast Turbo variant, with Resemble's paid API as the scale-up path. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 7 | [ChatTTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/chattts/) (OSS) | Optimized for natural dialogue-style speech for LLM assistants; the licensing combination (AGPLv3+ code, CC BY-NC 4.0 weights, research/education only) rules out most commercial SaaS use without a separate deal. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages. |  | See pricing |  |
| 8 | [CosyVoice](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/cosyvoice/) (OSS) | Full-stack open TTS from Alibaba's speech team: 9 languages plus 18+ Chinese dialects, 150 ms streaming latency claim, instruction control of emotion/dialect/speed, and training + deployment scripts under Apache-2.0. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 9 | [Deepgram Aura-2](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/deepgram-aura/) | Enterprise real-time voice-agent TTS | vs Amazon Polly: ~275% pricier, about half the languages. |  | See pricing |  |
| 10 | [Dia / Dia2](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/dia/) (OSS) | Best-known open model for scripted two-speaker dialogue rather than narration - Apache-2.0, English-only, GPU-oriented. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 11 | [F5-TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/f5-tts/) (OSS) | The go-to research-grade voice-cloning model - actively maintained and broadly ported, with the classic code-vs-weights license split: commercial products must retrain or license around the CC-BY-NC checkpoints. | vs Amazon Polly: adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 12 | [Fish Audio](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/fish-audio/) | Developer-first hosted API from the team behind the open-source fish-speech models; simple prepaid pay-as-you-go billing, 80+ language coverage, and a free fair-use model tier (s2.1-pro-free). Facts here cover the hosted API, not the OSS model. | vs Amazon Polly: ~2× the languages, about half the price, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 13 | [Fish Speech](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/fish-speech/) (OSS) | Top-tier expressive multilingual open-weights TTS whose license moved from permissive to research/non-commercial; commercial use requires a license from Fish Audio or their hosted API. | vs Amazon Polly: ~2× the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 14 | [GPT-SoVITS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/gpt-sovits/) (OSS) | The de facto community standard for DIY voice cloning (60k GitHub stars), with a full WebUI covering dataset prep, ASR, training, and inference across five languages; MIT-licensed. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 15 | [Gradium](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/gradium/) | Real-time voice-agent infrastructure play: WebSocket-first streaming TTS in 5 European languages with instant cloning, on-device models (Phonon), and credit-based pricing. Active and well-funded (site announced funding extension to $100M, July 2026). | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, ~35% fewer stock voices, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $13/mo |  |
| 16 | [Grok TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/grok-tts/) | Usage-priced hosted TTS from xAI, part of the Grok Voice stack (TTS, STT, and a speech-to-speech Voice Agent API), aimed at developers who want low-latency voice output alongside Grok models. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the stock voices, about half the price, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 17 | [Higgs Audio](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/higgs-audio/) (OSS) | Strong emotional/expressive open TTS from a well-funded lab - but 'Apache-2.0' only covers the repo code; V2 weights carry a 100k-MAU community license and the newer V3 is research/non-commercial. | vs Amazon Polly: adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 18 | [Hume Octave TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/hume-octave/) | Expressiveness-first TTS (Octave understands the meaning of the text it speaks); subscription plans gate commercial use, with Octave 2 (preview) adding ~100ms latency and 11 languages for realtime use. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $3/mo |  |
| 19 | [IndexTTS-2](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/index-tts/) (OSS) | Emotion-controllable zero-shot voice cloning for production use, but under a custom Bilibili license (not OSI-approved) with scale caps and AI-training restrictions. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 20 | [Inworld TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/inworld-tts/) | Cost-leader realtime TTS for voice agents and games; hybrid pay-as-you-go plus monthly credit plans that lower the per-1M-character rate as commitment grows; SOC 2 Type II with zero-data-retention posture. | vs Amazon Polly: ~5× the languages, ~275% pricier, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $25/mo |  |
| 21 | [KittenTTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/kitten-tts/) (OSS) | The lightweight/edge option: ONNX inference, sub-100 MB downloads, 8 built-in voices - trades voice cloning and multilinguality for footprint. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, no streaming audio output. |  | See pricing |  |
| 22 | [Kokoro](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/kokoro/) (OSS) | The lightweight quality-per-parameter champion of open TTS: Apache-2.0, easy to run anywhere, no voice cloning by design. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, no streaming audio output. |  | See pricing |  |
| 23 | [Kyutai TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/kyutai-tts/) (OSS) | Research-lab open TTS optimized for real-time streaming (Delayed Streams Modeling); Pocket TTS targets on-device/CPU deployment while the larger DSM TTS targets production streaming servers (Rust backend). | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 24 | [LMNT](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/lmnt/) | Speed-and-affordability challenger: a single fast model (Blizzard 2) with streaming-first APIs, unlimited voice clones on every tier, and flat subscription pricing with per-1K overage. | vs Amazon Polly: ~25% fewer languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $10/mo |  |
| 25 | [Maya1](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/maya1/) (OSS) | Apache 2.0 expressive English TTS you can run on a single 16GB+ GPU; stands out for natural-language voice design and 20+ inline emotion tags rather than audio-sample cloning, with real-time streaming via vLLM. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages. |  | See pricing |  |
| 26 | [MegaTTS3](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/megatts3/) (OSS) | Research-grade Apache-2.0 TTS whose practical cloning is gated: the WaveVAE encoder is not released, so users must submit audio to ByteDance channels to obtain pre-extracted speaker latents (.npy) for cloning. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 27 | [MiniMax Speech](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/minimax-speech/) | Multilingual cloning-first TTS with aggressive pricing | vs Amazon Polly: ~1400% pricier, ~235% pricier, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $5/mo |  |
| 28 | [Murf API](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/murf/) | API arm of the Murf studio platform: 150+ voices in 35 languages, SSML support, word timestamps, and Falcon 2 aimed at high-concurrency voice agents at $0.01/1K characters. Note: Murf Studio subscription plans (murf.ai/pricing) are a separate product from API pay-as-you-go pricing and API characters are purchased separately. | vs Amazon Polly: ~150% pricier, ~50% more stock voices. |  | See pricing |  |
| 29 | [Narakeet](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/narakeet/) | Indie batch-content workhorse: aggregates a very broad voice/language catalog for voiceovers, audiobooks and video narration, priced per output minute (prepaid packs, no subscription) rather than per character; not aimed at real-time agent use. | vs Amazon Polly: ~9× the stock voices, ~2.5× the languages. |  | See pricing |  |
| 30 | [Neuphonic](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/neuphonic/) | Hybrid hosted + open-weights play: SSE/WebSocket streaming TTS API at app.neuphonic.com, and tiny CPU-only on-device models (NeuTTS-Air ~360M Apache-2.0, NeuTTS-Nano ~120M) in GGUF for phones/Raspberry Pi - privacy/edge-deployment angle. NOTE: the site's pricing page returned 404 at verification time; hosted-plan pricing treated as not published. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 31 | [NVIDIA Magpie TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/nvidia-magpie/) (OSS) | A small, GPU-efficient 9-language TTS checkpoint for teams already in the NVIDIA NeMo/Riva ecosystem; commercially usable open weights, but zero-shot voice cloning was removed from the open release and it caps generations at about 20 seconds. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, no streaming audio output. |  | See pricing |  |
| 32 | [OpenAI TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/openai-tts/) | Simple usage-based TTS inside a general AI platform | vs Amazon Polly: ~275% pricier, about half the stock voices. |  | See pricing |  |
| 33 | [Orpheus TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/orpheus/) (OSS) | The 'LLM-as-TTS' approach under Apache-2.0 - expressive and clonable, but repo activity has slowed since mid-2025. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 34 | [OuteTTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/outetts/) (OSS) | The llama.cpp-native option: runs via GGUF on CUDA/ROCm/Vulkan/Metal and even in the browser (Transformers.js). License splits by model: the 0.6B (Qwen3-based) is Apache-2.0, the 1B Llama-based flagship is CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 (non-commercial). | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 35 | [Piper](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/piper/) (OSS) | The pragmatic embedded/self-hosted choice: no cloning or frills, just quick offline speech in many languages - note the license change from MIT (archived rhasspy/piper) to GPL-3.0 in the successor repo. | vs Amazon Polly: no streaming audio output. |  | See pricing |  |
| 36 | [Qwen3-TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/qwen3-tts/) (OSS) | Genuinely open weights (confirmed - not API-only since the Jan 2026 release): Apache-2.0 checkpoints on Hugging Face with an Alibaba Cloud DashScope API for hosted use. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 37 | [Resemble AI](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/resemble/) | Security-first enterprise play: generation plus detection/verification in one platform, pay-as-you-go Flex credits, on-prem option, and the MIT-licensed open-source Chatterbox model family. | vs Amazon Polly: adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 38 | [Rime](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/rime/) | Enterprise conversational TTS (IVR, contact centers, voice agents) emphasizing ultra-low latency models (Coda, Mist, Arcana) and self-hosted deployment; usage-based pricing with a single published rate. | vs Amazon Polly: ~1150% pricier, ~6× the stock voices. |  | See pricing |  |
| 39 | [Sarvam AI Bulbul](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/sarvam-bulbul/) | The go-to hosted TTS for Indian-language products (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and more) with REST, HTTP streaming and WebSocket APIs and prepaid INR pricing; not aimed at global multilingual coverage. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, about half the stock voices. |  | See pricing |  |
| 40 | [Smallest.ai Waves](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/smallest-ai/) | Speed- and price-led challenger from an India-focused voice AI startup; Waves is the speech-model API layer (Lightning TTS, Pulse STT), sold pay-as-you-go with $10 free credits, with HIPAA/SOC2/on-prem reserved for the Enterprise plan. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 41 | [Speechify API](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/speechify-api/) | Developer platform spun out of the Speechify brand: transparent tiered pricing ($10-$499/mo plus per-1M overage), streaming-native Simba 3.2, and a bundled voice-agents product with flat per-minute rates. | vs Amazon Polly: ~65% cheaper, ~25% fewer languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $10/mo |  |
| 42 | [Speechmatics TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/speechmatics-tts/) | Budget low-latency English TTS for voice agents; priced at a fraction of premium voice APIs, but currently English-only with a small voice set and no SSML or voice cloning. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, about half the stock voices. |  | See pricing |  |
| 43 | [Step-Audio](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/step-audio/) (OSS) | Differentiates on iterative audio *editing* (emotion, style, breathing, laughter, sighs, polyphone pinyin control) rather than plain synthesis; Apache-2.0 with training code (SFT/DPO/GRPO) and vLLM support. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 44 | [Supertone API](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/supertone/) | Expressive character voices (games, content, Korean/Japanese/English markets first, now 31 languages via Supertonic 3) on cheap credit-based subscriptions from $2.99/month; uniquely pairs the hosted API with the open OpenRAIL-M Supertonic model for on-device synthesis. | vs Amazon Polly: ~2× the stock voices, ~25% fewer languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $2.99/mo |  |
| 45 | [Typecast](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/typecast/) | Expressiveness play from a Korean AI-actor studio: strongest on emotion prompts/presets and character voices for content and conversational AI; separate consumer studio subscription ($8.99+) and developer API plans (Free/Lite/Plus). | vs Amazon Polly: ~5× the stock voices, ~135% pricier, adds instant voice cloning. |  | From $15/mo |  |
| 46 | [Unreal Speech](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/unreal-speech/) | Pure price play: markets itself as up to 11x cheaper than ElevenLabs with a simple 3-endpoint API (stream/speech/synthesisTasks); smaller voice/language catalog and no voice cloning documented. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, about half the stock voices. |  | From $49/mo |  |
| 47 | [VibeVoice](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/vibevoice/) (OSS) | The open long-form/multi-speaker specialist - MIT weights, but Microsoft pulled the TTS code from the repo in Sept 2025 and frames the models as research-only. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages. |  | See pricing |  |
| 48 | [Voxtral (open weights)](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/voxtral-open/) (OSS) | A frontier-lab open-weight TTS you can run on a single 16GB GPU; the CC BY-NC license makes it evaluation/research-only, with Mistral's paid API as the commercial route. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 49 | [Voxtral TTS](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/voxtral-tts/) | Open-weights-friendly voice cloning TTS from a frontier AI lab | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, about half the price, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |
| 50 | [WellSaid](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/wellsaid/) | Enterprise voiceover specialist: polished Studio product for L&D/marketing narration with an API on the side; API pricing is contact-sales, and compliance (SOC 2 Type II, GDPR) and ethical voice sourcing are the pitch. |  |  | From $10/mo |  |
| 51 | [XTTS v2 (Coqui)](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/xtts/) (OSS) | The legacy standard for open voice cloning: dormant upstream since Coqui's Jan 2024 shutdown (community fork idiap/coqui-ai-TTS carries maintenance), and CPML weights bar commercial use. | vs Amazon Polly: about half the languages, adds instant voice cloning. |  | See pricing |  |

## How the top Amazon Polly alternatives compare

The top 6 in depth: where each alternative ranks across the Text-to-speech APIs field we track, which use cases it takes from Amazon Polly, and what switching gives up.

### 1. ElevenLabs

Among the 15 text-to-speech tools we track, ElevenLabs has the 1st-largest voice library and the 2nd-fastest time-to-first-byte - a fit for content and character work and real-time, conversational apps.
In our published verdicts, ElevenLabs beats Amazon Polly for content creators and voice agents and matches it for self-hosted.
The reverse angle matters too - Amazon Polly vs ElevenLabs: about half the stock voices, ~90% cheaper, no instant voice cloning.
Published pricing starts at $100 per 1M characters, verified July 2026.

**Why teams switch (Content Creators):** For content creators, voice quality and style range are primary. ElevenLabs offers 3,000 voices versus Polly's 100 (facts 27eafdf8, 4b900ed5), giving far greater creative range. ElevenLabs also supports instant voice cloning (a4f3e934) while Polly does not (6a807d23), enabling creators to use their own voice. ElevenLabs has a predictable subscription starting at $6/mo (ccc5d6e9). Polly's pure usage pricing (ec6d4f4c) can be less predictable. The cost premium of ElevenLabs is justified for creators prioritizing voice expressiveness over volume API efficiency. [Content Creators verdict](https://www.versusref.com/tts/amazon-polly-vs-elevenlabs/)

**Overall verdict:** ElevenLabs and Polly each win 2 use cases, but ElevenLabs covers more modern requirements: 3,000 voices versus 100, instant voice cloning, a real-time WebSocket API, and 40,000 characters per request versus 3,000. These capabilities address the fastest-growing TTS demand segments. Polly leads on price (30 vs 100 per 1M chars for flagship) and language breadth (40 vs 32 languages), making it the safer pick for high-volume commodity workloads. However, ElevenLabs is the safer default for most buyers who need flexibility, voice quality, and real-time interaction, giving it a narrow overall edge.

ElevenLabs cost: Usage-priced at $100 per 1M characters (≈ $0.095 per audio-minute), verified Jul 20, 2026.

| Monthly volume | $ / 1M chars | $ / audio-min | Monthly bill |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 200K chars/mo | $100 | $0.095 | $20 |
| 2M chars/mo | $100 | $0.095 | $200 |
| 20M chars/mo | $100 | $0.095 | $2,000 |
[Full ElevenLabs vs Amazon Polly comparison](https://www.versusref.com/tts/amazon-polly-vs-elevenlabs/) · [ElevenLabs review](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/elevenlabs/)

### 2. Google Cloud TTS

Among the 10 text-to-speech tools we track, Google Cloud TTS has the 1st-cheapest fast-model rate and the 7th-widest language coverage - a fit for multilingual and localization projects.
Head-to-head, Google Cloud TTS takes audiobooks, developers and voice agents from Amazon Polly and matches it for self-hosted.
Before switching, weigh what stays behind - Amazon Polly vs Google Cloud TTS: about half the stock voices, about half the languages, no instant voice cloning.
Its published rate is $30 per 1M characters, verified July 2026.

**Why teams switch (Audiobooks):** For audiobooks, long-input handling matters: Google supports 5000 chars per request versus Amazon Polly's 3000, reducing chunking overhead for book-length text. Google also offers 380 voices across 75 languages versus Amazon Polly's 100 voices across 40 languages, giving more narrator options. Flagship pricing is identical at 30 dollars per 1M chars for both. Amazon Polly has pronunciation dictionaries, which help with audiobooks, but Google's larger per-request limit and vastly bigger voice library tip the balance. [Audiobooks verdict](https://www.versusref.com/tts/amazon-polly-vs-google-tts/)

**Overall verdict:** Google Cloud TTS wins 3 of 4 use case verdicts and leads on every core differentiator in the facts. It offers 380 voices vs 100 for Polly, 75 languages vs 40, instant voice cloning vs none, a 5000 char request limit vs 3000, and 1000 requests per minute default concurrency vs 80 concurrent for Polly. Pricing is identical at both tiers. These advantages make Google Cloud TTS the safer default for virtually all buyer types.

Google Cloud TTS cost: Usage-priced at $30 per 1M characters (≈ $0.0285 per audio-minute), verified Jul 20, 2026.

| Monthly volume | $ / 1M chars | $ / audio-min | Monthly bill |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 200K chars/mo | $30 | $0.0285 | $6 |
| 2M chars/mo | $30 | $0.0285 | $60 |
| 20M chars/mo | $30 | $0.0285 | $600 |
[Full Google Cloud TTS vs Amazon Polly comparison](https://www.versusref.com/tts/amazon-polly-vs-google-tts/) · [Google Cloud TTS review](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/google-tts/)

### 3. Azure Speech

Among the 46 text-to-speech tools we track, Azure Speech has the 3rd-widest language coverage and the 6th-cheapest flagship rate - a fit for multilingual and localization projects and cost-sensitive, high-volume work.
Our use-case verdicts have Azure Speech ahead of Amazon Polly for audiobooks, content creators, developers, dubbing and voice agents.
Seen from the other side, Amazon Polly vs Azure Speech: ~75% cheaper, about half the languages, no instant voice cloning.
Azure Speech lists $22 per 1M characters, verified July 2026.

**Why teams switch (Dubbing):** For dubbing and localization, language coverage and voice cloning flexibility are decisive. Azure Speech supports 100 languages versus Amazon Polly's 40 languages and variants, giving Azure far broader localization reach. Azure also offers instant voice cloning, allowing a source speaker's voice to be quickly replicated across all 100 languages, while Polly lacks instant voice cloning entirely. Both offer professional voice cloning, but the combination of 2.5x more languages and instant cloning makes Azure clearly superior for this use case. [Dubbing verdict](https://www.versusref.com/tts/amazon-polly-vs-azure-speech/)

**Overall verdict:** Azure Speech wins all 5 decided use cases and leads on core capability dimensions. It supports 100 languages vs Polly's 40 (fact 6cacba54 vs 2ab8423a), offers instant voice cloning where Polly does not (fact 98aa02d9 vs 6a807d23), provides a realtime WebSocket API that Polly lacks (fact a8e1ab3f vs 2397e96e), and supports self-hosting while Polly does not (fact 206022bf vs c04b5b85). Flagship pricing favors Azure at 22 vs 30 per 1M chars (facts 23463870 vs 4a2b177a). The only area Polly leads is fast-model pricing and free-tier quota, not enough to offset Azure's breadth advantage.

Azure Speech cost: Usage-priced at $22 per 1M characters (≈ $0.0209 per audio-minute), verified Jul 20, 2026.

| Monthly volume | $ / 1M chars | $ / audio-min | Monthly bill |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 200K chars/mo | $22 | $0.0209 | $4.40 |
| 2M chars/mo | $22 | $0.0209 | $44 |
| 20M chars/mo | $22 | $0.0209 | $440 |
[Full Azure Speech vs Amazon Polly comparison](https://www.versusref.com/tts/amazon-polly-vs-azure-speech/) · [Azure Speech review](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/azure-speech/)

### 4. CAMB.AI

Among the 46 text-to-speech tools we track, CAMB.AI has the 2nd-widest language coverage - a fit for multilingual and localization projects.
Seen from the other side, Amazon Polly vs CAMB.AI: about half the languages, no instant voice cloning.
[CAMB.AI review](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/camb-ai/)

### 5. Cartesia

Among the 46 text-to-speech tools we track, Cartesia has the 9th-widest language coverage and the 3rd-fastest time-to-first-byte - a fit for multilingual and localization projects and real-time, conversational apps.
The reverse angle matters too - Amazon Polly vs Cartesia: no instant voice cloning.
[Cartesia review](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/cartesia/)

### 6. Chatterbox

Among the 46 text-to-speech tools we track, Chatterbox has the 18th-widest language coverage.
Before switching, weigh what stays behind - Amazon Polly vs Chatterbox: ~2× the languages, adds streaming audio output.
[Chatterbox review](https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/chatterbox/)

Source: https://www.versusref.com/tts/alternatives/amazon-polly/