OpenAI TTS

cheap, steerable, and one client if you're already on openai

$15 per 1M chars (tts-1)#teams-already-building-o#steerable-narration

the best ergonomics if you're already on the openai sdk: one client, same auth, and gpt-4o-mini-tts is steerable by natural-language instructions. no voice cloning, and token pricing makes forecasting fuzzy.

openai offers tts-1 and tts-1-hd at flat per-character rates and gpt-4o-mini-tts, a token-priced model you can steer with natural-language 'instructions' for tone and emotion — something tts-1 can't do. it ships around eleven voices with streaming, and the killer feature is integration: if you're already on the openai sdk it's one client and one auth.

the limits are clear: no voice cloning, fewer voices than the specialists, english-centric though multilingual works, and token-priced audio makes cost forecasting imprecise. for existing openai builders who want cheap, steerable speech, it's an easy add.

the description above is ours, condensed from the ranking. pricing moves — check it on the vendor's own page before you rely on it.

category: ai text-to-speech models
pricing: $15 per 1M chars (tts-1)
website: platform.openai.com

our verdict

we researched this category against vendors' own pricing pages and licence files. that is where this line comes from — not from the vendor, and not from anything they paid for.