# Fish Audio Review

> Fish Audio review: Developer-first hosted API from the team behind the open-source fish-speech models; simple prepaid pay-as-you-go billing, 80+ language.

![Fish Audio logo](https://www.versusref.com/logos/fish-audio.png)

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.

Among the 46 text-to-speech tools we track, Fish Audio has the 5th-widest language coverage and the 3rd-cheapest flagship rate - a fit for multilingual and localization projects and cost-sensitive, high-volume work.

See pricing · facts verified Jul 20, 2026

## What we know about Fish Audio

Fish Audio is a text-to-speech apis platform: 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. This profile tracks every Fish Audio fact we have verified, each linked to a primary source and dated.

Fish Audio does not publish a public per-minute rate we have been able to verify, so the price figure here stays blank until we can confirm one. We would rather show nothing than a guessed number; if you have a current Fish Audio quote, it is the fastest way for us to close that gap.

On capabilities, Fish Audio covers streaming audio output, realtime websocket api, instant voice cloning, emotion / style controls, and self-host / on-prem option. Each of those is verified against Fish Audio's own docs or dashboard, not marketing copy.

Among the 46 text-to-speech tools in our matrix, Fish Audio leads with the 5th-widest language coverage and lags at the 4th-fastest time-to-first-byte; the fact sheet below has the raw numbers behind that placement.

In total we track 14 verified facts for Fish Audio today, each linking the primary source it came from so you can check our work - and vendor claims we have not measured ourselves are labeled as such on the Fish Audio fact sheet below.

## Fish Audio pricing

Usage-priced at $15 per 1M characters (≈ $0.0143 per audio-minute), verified Jul 20, 2026 ([source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/pricing-and-rate-limits)).

| Monthly volume | $ / 1M chars | $ / audio-min | Monthly bill |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 200K chars/mo | $15 | $0.0143 | $3 |
| 2M chars/mo | $15 | $0.0143 | $30 |
| 20M chars/mo | $15 | $0.0142 | $300 |

Effective rates from published pricing; subscription plans resolve to plan fee plus overage. ~950 characters ≈ 1 audio minute.

## Fact sheet

### Pricing

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Price per 1M characters (flagship model) | 15 $/1M UTF-8 bytes | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/pricing-and-rate-limits) |
| Pricing model | usage | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/pricing-and-rate-limits) |
| Free tier quota | s2.1-pro-free model | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/pricing-and-rate-limits) |

### Capabilities

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| TTFB latency (vendor-claimed) | ~100 ms | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/models-overview) |
| Streaming audio output | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/features/realtime-streaming) |
| Realtime websocket API | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/features/realtime-streaming) |
| Instant voice cloning | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/features/voice-cloning) |
| Minimum audio for voice cloning | 10 | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/features/voice-cloning) |
| Languages supported | ~83 languages (s2.1-pro, auto-detected) | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/models-overview) |
| Emotion / style controls | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/models-overview) |

### Compliance & trust

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Self-host / on-prem option | ✓  Yes | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/models-overview) |

### Build experience

| Fact | Value | Verified | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Official SDKs | Python SDK (official); TypeScript SDK; REST + WebSocket API | Jul 20 | [source](https://fish.audio/developers/) |
| Concurrency on base plan | 5 | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/developer-guide/models-pricing/pricing-and-rate-limits) |
| Output formats | mp3 (default), wav, pcm, opus | Jul 20 | [source](https://docs.fish.audio/features/text-to-speech) |

## Fish Audio head-to-head

| Comparison | Record | Per use case |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [Fish Audio vs ElevenLabs](https://www.versusref.com/tts/elevenlabs-vs-fish-audio/) | won 1 · lost 4 · tied 0 | Audiobooks: won; Content Creators: lost; Developers: lost; Dubbing: lost; Voice Agents: lost |
| [Fish Audio vs MiniMax Speech](https://www.versusref.com/tts/fish-audio-vs-minimax-speech/) | won 4 · lost 2 · tied 0 | Audiobooks: won; Content Creators: lost; Developers: lost; Dubbing: won; Self-Hosted: won; Voice Agents: won |

Source: https://www.versusref.com/tts/tools/fish-audio/