# Amazon Polly vs Google Cloud Text-to-Speech

> Amazon Polly scores 75.4 (BB) to Google Cloud Text-to-Speech's 66.9 (B) for text-to-speech. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Amazon Polly scores 75.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Google Cloud Text-to-Speech's 66.9 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Google Cloud Text-to-Speech leads on reliability and transparency & trust. Both do text-to-speech.

- Amazon Polly: grade BB, 75.4/100, rank #61 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-polly.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-polly.json
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech: grade B, 66.9/100, rank #350 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-cloud-tts.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-cloud-tts.json
- Best text-to-speech APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/text-to-speech/index.md
- All 148 tts comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/text-to-speech/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Amazon Polly (BB)

Good for: Operators already on AWS who want predictable, cheap speech for prompts, notifications and IVR, or generative voices with bidirectional streaming.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 90 against 80
- Agent ergonomics, 82 against 65
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 70 against 25

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: AWS may store and use text to improve the service, possibly outside the Region, unless the organisation sets an AI services opt-out policy

### Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (B)

Good for: Teams already on Google Cloud wanting many languages, SSML and an SLA.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 85 against 80
- Transparency & trust, 87 against 80

Watch for: No release note since 30 December 2025, though a Gemini 3.1 TTS preview model is listed


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Amazon Polly +45

- Amazon Polly (70): Read as a model, from the Polly service model and the document history. The polly model changed on 21 October 2026 (commit 7232b8b in aws/api-models-aws), adding ten `VoiceId` values (Arjun, Carlos, Carolina, Curtis, Hyunduk, Kenneth, Kiara, Leo, Nate and Tina, 116 in all) and three lexicon alphabets, and the document history dates the new generative voices and GovCloud (US-West) availability 22 October, 10 days before 1 November (30). Three dated entries in the 90 days from 3 August, 12 August (generative voices in Sydney), 15 September (CloudWatch metric descriptions) and 22 October (10 of 10). No deprecation policy or dated notices for voices or engines found. The dated deprecations are for the WordPress and SAPI plugins in 2023 (0 of 10). Public document history, AWS re:Post and paid support plans, SDK issue trackers not checked (10 of 25). Official SDKs current in Python, JavaScript, Java, Go and others (15). SDK package health not checked (5 of 10). 30 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 15 + 5 = 70.
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (25): Read as a model. The newest release note is still 30 December 2025 (Chirp 3 HD in yue-HK), 311 days ago, and `gemini-3.1-flash-tts-preview` appears on the Gemini-TTS page with no dated note (0). In the 90 days from 8 August the Python client shipped 2.38.0 on 1 October, whose only change declares Python 3.15 support, which counts half and can't set the recency line (0). Release notes, a public issue tracker and paid support (10 of 15). Official client libraries, Python at 2.38.0 and Node at 7.2.0 (10 of 15). Package CI not checked (5 of 10). Total 25.

### Agent ergonomics: Amazon Polly +17

- Amazon Polly (82): API reading of the checklist. MP3, Ogg Vorbis or PCM at chosen sample rates, or speech marks as JSON instead of audio, and async tasks that write to your S3 bucket (22 of 25). `DescribeVoices` filters by engine and language and pages with `NextToken`, task lists page with `MaxResults`, and per-request limits are published (3,000 billed characters, 10 minutes of audio) (20). Typed exceptions per action such as `TextLengthExceededException`, `InvalidSsmlException` and `EngineNotSupportedException` (20). Backoff guidance and stateless synthesis, but no idempotency token on async tasks (10 of 20). Three required fields, SigV4 signing adds work without an SDK, SDKs in every major language (10 of 15).
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (65): API reading of the checklist. Audio returns Base64 in JSON or streams over gRPC, with encoding, sample rate and timepoints selectable (15 of 25). `voices.list` filters by language code with no paging, and operations list with page tokens (15 of 20). Standard gRPC status codes with messages, generic rather than TTS-specific (15 of 20). Synthesis is stateless and long audio runs as an operation, with no idempotency key (10 of 20). A first call needs a project, billing, OAuth credentials and a voice, and Cloud Storage for long audio. Official client libraries in many languages, of which Python and Node were checked (10 of 15). Total 65.

### Schema & documentation: Amazon Polly +10

- Amazon Polly (90): The service model is public in the AWS SDKs (botocore and the JavaScript v3 clients), a machine-readable contract in the role OpenAPI plays (25). llms.txt for the developer guide (10). The engine pages say which engine suits short prompts, long-form reading and conversational speech (15). Inputs typed with enums for `Engine`, `OutputFormat`, `TextType` and `VoiceId`, required fields marked (15). Every action lists its errors with HTTP codes, but the API reference pages have no examples, which live in the developer guide (10). API version 2016-06-10 and a dated document history (15).
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (80): Discovery document revision 20260827 with typed methods and 26 schemas, and protocol buffers for gRPC (25). No llms.txt found (0). The Chirp 3 HD and Gemini-TTS pages say which voices suit which use and list formats and limits, but the reference doesn't say when to choose streaming or long audio (15 of 20). Typed messages with enums for encoding and gender and required fields (15). Samples in several languages, standard status codes with little method-specific error detail (10 of 15). Versioned v1 and v1beta1 with dated release notes (15). Total 80.

### Payments & pricing: Amazon Polly +10

- Amazon Polly (30): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-1M-character prices for each engine published without a login, re-read on 1 November (20). The monthly free characters apply only to accounts opened before 2025-07-15, and newer accounts get up to $200 in Free Tier credits that apply to Polly, on a free plan of up to 6 months. The Free Tier FAQ says a payment method isn't required for most new customers, but AWS's account docs read on 1 November say AWS might request payment information and holds USD $1 to verify, so half, as on the S3 and Secrets Manager re-checks (10). A person signs up in a browser. IAM can mint keys by API, but only after a human has an account (0). 0 + 20 + 10 + 0 = 30.
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (20): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-character and per-token prices for every voice family published without a login (20). Monthly free characters (1 million for Chirp 3 HD, 4 million for Standard and WaveNet) need billing enabled, which needs a card (0). A person creates a project and billing account in a browser (0). Total 20.

### Transparency & trust: Google Cloud Text-to-Speech +7

- Amazon Polly (80): Closed service under the AWS Service Terms, last updated 30 October 2026, with section 50.3 on Polly unchanged (15). The service terms, privacy notice (Last Updated 18 May 2026) and Polly guide agree, a data processing addendum and a public sub-processor list (Last Updated 30 October 2026) exist, but the default permission to use content sits in the service terms rather than the Polly guide (25 of 30). Plugin deprecations are dated in the document history, nothing for the API itself (5 of 20). Sub-processors and regions disclosed, with the region chosen per request. Section 50.3 of the service terms discloses that text kept for service improvement may be stored outside that Region unless the organisation opts out (20).
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (87): Closed service under the Google Cloud terms, with Apache-2.0 clients (15). The data logging page, the terms and the privacy notice agree that TTS text and audio aren't logged, and a DPA and sub-processor list exist, as read for google-speech-to-text (25 of 30). Release notes mark preview and GA, and the Cloud terms carry notice before a GA capability is discontinued, but Gemini-TTS is moving to the Agent Platform API with no dated notice for the Cloud TTS models (15 of 20). Regional endpoints (global, us, eu and others) and a public sub-processor list (20). Total 75.

### Reliability: Google Cloud Text-to-Speech +5

- Amazon Polly (80): AWS Health Dashboard with per-service, per-region history and RSS feeds (20). The Polly us-east-1 feed carried no events on 1 November 2026 (built 00:39 PDT), and the dashboard history file read that day has no event naming Polly other than the Middle East (Bahrain) me-south-1 multi-service event open since 2 March 2026, where Amazon Polly sits at the same disruption status S3 carries in the UAE event. On 15 September 2026, inside the 90-day window, AWS said it can't restore resources and data hosted only in that Region, and no update has followed. The newest event in the file is API Gateway in us-west-2 on 30 October, not Polly. One major event, read as the S3 and Secrets Manager re-checks read the UAE one (10). The 15 September update leaves the window after 14 December. Quotas published per operation and engine, 80 requests a second for standard `SynthesizeSpeech` and 8 for neural, long-form and generative, with burst and concurrency figures, re-read on 1 November (15). Throttled calls return HTTP 400 with `ThrottlingException` and the quotas page says to retry with backoff and jitter, which the SDKs do by default. Synthesis has no side effects, so a retry is safe (15). SLA under the Amazon Machine Learning Language agreement (Last Updated 28 November 2023), which names Amazon Polly, re-read on 1 November (10). GA (10). 20 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 = 80.
- Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (85): Google Cloud status page with a per-product history (20). None of the four Google Cloud incidents since 8 August (20 August, 1 September, 8 and 9 October, and the europe-west2 incident of 20 October, which listed Speech-to-Text among 38 products) names Text-to-Speech. The public page shows only broad incidents, so clean is read with that limit (30). Quotas published with numbers, 1,000 requests a minute for most voices, 200 for Chirp 3, 500 for Studio, 100 concurrent streams and 100 long-audio requests a minute (15). The quotas page (last updated 26 October 2026) says nothing about the error a breach returns or how to back off, read as google-speech-to-text was (0). A 99.9 per cent monthly SLA with credits of 10, 25 and 50 per cent, read on 6 November (10). Chirp 3 HD and Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro TTS are GA, with Gemini 3.1 Flash TTS and Flash-Lite in preview (10). 20 + 30 + 15 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon Polly | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 85 | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 90 | 80 | Amazon Polly +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 65 | Amazon Polly +17 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 83 | 80 | Amazon Polly +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 20 | Amazon Polly +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 25 | Amazon Polly +45 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 87 | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **75.4 · BB** | **66.9 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon Polly | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Google Cloud |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://polly.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/v1` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for text-to-speech | not published | $10 per 1M tokens |
| x402 | no | no |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-22 | 2025-12-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-02 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 743k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (8) | none |

## What the same task costs

| Task | Amazon Polly | Google Cloud Text-to-Speech |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Narrate a 9,000-character script | $0.04 to $0.90 | $0.04 to $1.44 |

## How the scores have moved

### Amazon Polly

- +1.8 on 1 November 2026: product
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- -2.1 on 17 October 2026: pricing, security, new evidence, correction

### Google Cloud Text-to-Speech

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Amazon Polly.** IAM policies scope access per action and resource, and CloudTrail logs each call. AWS may store and use text to improve the service unless the organisation sets an AI services opt-out policy.

**Google Cloud Text-to-Speech.** Cloud TTS has a typed discovery document, a 99.9 per cent SLA, no logging of text or audio, and voices from $4 to $160 per million characters. Its release notes stop at 30 December 2025, the newest Gemini TTS models ship only on the Agent Platform API, and tokens can travel in the URL.

## Before you call either

### Amazon Polly

1. Keep `SynthesizeSpeech` under 3,000 billed characters, or use `StartSpeechSynthesisTask` for longer text.
2. Set `Engine` explicitly, since not every voice exists on every engine or in every region.
3. Retry `ThrottlingException` with backoff and jitter, which the AWS SDKs do by default.
4. Check the generative SSML tag list before porting neural SSML.
5. Ask for `OutputFormat` `json` with speech marks when you need word timings.

### Google Cloud Text-to-Speech

1. Send OAuth tokens in the Authorization header, never as `access_token` or `key` in the URL
2. Use `synthesizeLongAudio` with a Cloud Storage bucket for long text, and `text:synthesize` for short replies
3. Pick Chirp 3 HD for natural voices with SSML, and Gemini-TTS when the delivery needs prompt steering
4. Check whether the Gemini TTS model you want is on the Cloud TTS API or only on the Agent Platform API
5. Stay within 200 requests a minute on Chirp 3 voices, which have their own quota

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Amazon Polly or Google Cloud Text-to-Speech?

Amazon Polly scores 75.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Google Cloud Text-to-Speech's 66.9 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Google Cloud Text-to-Speech leads on reliability and transparency & trust.

### Do Amazon Polly and Google Cloud Text-to-Speech need an API key?

Amazon Polly needs an API key. Google Cloud Text-to-Speech uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Amazon Polly and Google Cloud Text-to-Speech without installing anything?

Amazon Polly has a hosted endpoint at https://polly.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/v1. No hosted endpoint is listed for Google Cloud Text-to-Speech.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-google-cloud-tts.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-google-cloud-tts.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "amazon-polly", "b": "google-cloud-tts"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare amazon-polly google-cloud-tts`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-polly.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-cloud-tts.json

## Other comparisons with Amazon Polly or Google Cloud Text-to-Speech

- [Amazon Polly vs Azure AI Speech text-to-speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-azure-text-to-speech.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Cartesia Sonic TTS API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-cartesia-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Deepgram Text-to-Speech (Aura-2, Flux TTS)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-deepgram-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs ElevenLabs Text to Speech API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-elevenlabs-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Fish Audio TTS API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-fish-audio-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs HeyGen Voice](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-heygen-voice.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Inworld Realtime TTS-2](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-inworld-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs MiniMax Speech (T2A)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-minimax-speech.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Murf TTS API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-murf-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs PlayHT Text-to-Speech API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-playht-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Resemble AI Text-to-Speech API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-resemble-ai-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Rime TTS API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-rime-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Smallest.ai Lightning TTS](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-smallest-lightning-tts.md)
- [Amazon Polly vs Soniox Text-to-Speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-polly-vs-soniox-tts.md)
- [Azure AI Speech text-to-speech vs Google Cloud Text-to-Speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/azure-text-to-speech-vs-google-cloud-tts.md)
- [Cartesia Sonic TTS API + MCP vs Google Cloud Text-to-Speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cartesia-tts-vs-google-cloud-tts.md)
- [Deepgram Text-to-Speech (Aura-2, Flux TTS) vs Google Cloud Text-to-Speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/deepgram-tts-vs-google-cloud-tts.md)
- [ElevenLabs Text to Speech API + MCP vs Google Cloud Text-to-Speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/elevenlabs-tts-vs-google-cloud-tts.md)
- [Fish Audio TTS API vs Google Cloud Text-to-Speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fish-audio-tts-vs-google-cloud-tts.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs HeyGen Voice](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-heygen-voice.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Inworld Realtime TTS-2](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-inworld-tts.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs MiniMax Speech (T2A)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-minimax-speech.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Murf TTS API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-murf-tts.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs PlayHT Text-to-Speech API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-playht-tts.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Resemble AI Text-to-Speech API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-resemble-ai-tts.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Rime TTS API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-rime-tts.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Smallest.ai Lightning TTS](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-smallest-lightning-tts.md)
- [Google Cloud Text-to-Speech vs Soniox Text-to-Speech](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-cloud-tts-vs-soniox-tts.md)

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