Google Cloud vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) pricing
STT: Google Cloud from $0.003 vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) from $0.006; TTS: Google Cloud from $4.00 vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) from $4.00.
Last updated · prices checked daily
Speech-to-text: Google Cloud vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly)
Google Cloud has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (V2 Dynamic Batch) vs $0.006 for Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) (Transcribe batch (us-east-1)), about 50% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Visit site ↗ | V2 Dynamic Batch | $0.003 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Transcribe batch (us-east-1) Taken from AWS's own worked pricing example for US East (N. Virginia). | $0.006 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Transcribe streaming (us-east-1) Taken from AWS's own worked pricing example for US East (N. Virginia). | $0.01 |
| Google Cloud Visit site ↗ | Speech-to-Text V2 Standard (first 500K min) | $0.016 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | Google Cloud | Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $3.00 | $6.00 |
| 10,000 min | $30.00 | $60.00 |
| 100,000 min | $300.00 | $600.00 |
Text-to-speech: Google Cloud vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly)
Both list the same lowest TTS price: $4.00 per 1M characters.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/1M chars |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Visit site ↗ | Standard voices | $4.00 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Polly Standard | $4.00 |
| Google Cloud Visit site ↗ | Neural2 voices | $16.00 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Polly Neural | $16.00 |
| Google Cloud Visit site ↗ | Chirp 3: HD voices | $30.00 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Polly Generative | $30.00 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Characters | Google Cloud | Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) |
|---|---|---|
| 1M chars | $4.00 | $4.00 |
| 10M chars | $40.00 | $40.00 |
| 100M chars | $400.00 | $400.00 |
Cost-per-call calculator
Estimate what one call really costs. Prices come from today's table; LLM and telephony presets are per-minute rates published by Retell and Vapi. Everything is editable.
Cartesia's pricing page puts one minute of speech at 750–800 characters; Rime says about 1,000. The talk share is your own guess at how much of each call the agent is speaking.
FAQ
Is Google Cloud or Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) cheaper for speech-to-text?
Google Cloud has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (V2 Dynamic Batch) vs $0.006 for Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) (Transcribe batch (us-east-1)), about 50% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
Is Google Cloud or Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) cheaper for text-to-speech?
Both list the same lowest TTS price: $4.00 per 1M characters. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
How often are these prices updated?
Every day. A script reads each vendor's public pricing page, extracts the listed rates and keeps a dated copy, so price changes show up in the history.
All Google Cloud prices · All Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) prices