Cloud text-to-speech APIs vs HancVoice: an honest price comparison
Google Cloud, Amazon Polly and Microsoft Azure are cheaper per character, and we say so up front. HancVoice is for teams that need finished voice-overs: a studio, Austrian and Swiss voices, your own voice and one price in euros.
Pick by who does the work
Choose a cloud API if developers build speech into an app and the volume is millions of characters a month: the price per character is several times lower.
Choose HancVoice if people produce voice-overs: an editor for pace, pauses and stress, Austrian and Swiss German voices, your own voice from a short recording, and an API on top for automation.
Price per 1 million characters
| HancVoice | Cloud APIs (Google, Amazon, Microsoft) | |
|---|---|---|
| Basic voices | No separate tier | $4: Google Standard and WaveNet, Amazon Polly Standard |
| Neural voices | About €37.38 to €75, depending on the plan | $15–16: Google Neural2, Amazon Polly Neural, Azure Neural |
| Most natural voices | The same price for every voice | $22–30: Azure Neural HD, Amazon Polly Generative, Google Chirp 3 HD |
| Long-form and studio voices | The same price | $100–160: Amazon Polly Long-Form, Google Studio |
| Own voice | From a short recording, private to your account | Google Instant custom voice: $60; Azure custom voice: $24 plus training and hosting |
| Free tier | 10,000 characters, once at sign-up | Google: 1 to 4 million characters a month; Amazon: 1 million neural characters a month in the first year; Azure: 0.5 million a month |
| Billing | Euro, VAT included where it applies; plan or one-off pack | US dollar, pay per use on a cloud account |
| Without a developer | Yes: editor in the browser, WAV or MP3 export | No: a demo in the console, production use needs code |
| API | REST API from Starter | REST and SDKs |
Where HancVoice is stronger
- A studio for people who are not developers: write, listen, fix stress and pauses, export WAV or MP3.
- 11 Austrian and 9 Swiss German voices among 49 German voices.
- Your own voice from a short recording, private to your account.
- One price in euros with VAT included, no cloud account and no per-request bill to watch.
- The same voices through a REST API on paid plans, when you want to automate.
Where cloud APIs are stronger
- Price: $4 per million characters for basic voices and $15–16 for neural voices, several times lower than ours.
- Large free tiers, up to millions of characters a month.
- Built for applications with heavy, constant traffic.
- Many more languages and voices, SDKs for every major programming language and streaming.
Cloud prices from the public pricing pages of Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, Amazon Polly and Azure AI Speech in October 2026, in US dollars, without taxes. Prices change, please check before you decide. Source: cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/pricing
When a cloud API is the better choice
If your product speaks to its users, such as a navigation app, a screen reader or a phone system with millions of calls, characters add up fast, and $4 to $16 per million characters is hard to beat. Our prices are higher, and for that kind of volume we would not recommend switching.
When HancVoice is worth more
Most voice-overs are produced, not streamed: a course, a product video, an audiobook, a phone menu. There the work is in the details, a misplaced stress or a missing pause, and a person fixes them in an editor, not in code. HancVoice gives you that editor, voices from Austria and Switzerland, and an API for the parts you automate.
Our price per million characters goes down with the plan: about €75 on Starter, €58 on Pro, €49.50 on Business and €37.38 on Scale.
Listen to HancVoice voices
Real voices from our catalog. Press play on a portrait.
Questions and answers
No. Per million characters the cloud APIs are cheaper: $4 for basic voices, $15–16 for neural voices and $22–30 for their most natural voices (October 2026). HancVoice costs about €37.38 to €75 per million characters, depending on the plan.
Yes, a REST API on every paid plan, starting with Starter. The free plan has no API access.
Yes, through the REST API within your plan's limits. For very high, constant traffic a cloud API is usually the cheaper option.
WAV or MP3, and a streaming endpoint for audio that starts playing while it is generated.
Try the studio before you write code
10,000 characters free at sign-up. No card needed.