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Speech Services pricing

Unified speech services for speech-to-text, text-to-speech and speech translation

The unified Speech services provide a wide range of speech recognition and generation capabilities including speech transcription, text-to-speech and speech translation. The Speech service provides a wide range of speech recognition and generation capabilities including speech transcription, text-to-speech, speech translation, and speaker recognition.

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Prices are estimates only and are not intended as actual price quotes. Actual pricing may vary depending on the type of agreement entered with Microsoft, date of purchase, and the currency exchange rate. Prices are calculated based on US dollars and converted using Thomson Reuters benchmark rates refreshed on the first day of each calendar month. Sign in to the Azure pricing calculator to see pricing based on your current program/offer with Microsoft. Contact an Azure sales specialist for more information on pricing or to request a price quote. For more information on Azure pricing see frequently asked questions.

Free (F0)

Category Features Price
Speech to Text
(per second billing)
Standard 5 audio hours free per month
Custom 5 audio hours free per month
Endpoint hosting: 1 model free per month1
Conversation Transcription Multichannel Audio PREVIEW 5 audio hours free per month
Text to Speech
(per character billing)
Neural 0.5 million characters free per month
Speech Translation
(per second billing)
Standard 5 audio hours free per month
Speaker Recognition
(per transaction billing)
Speaker Verification2 10,000 transactions free per month
Speaker Identification2 10,000 transactions free per month
Voice Profile Storage 10,000 transactions free per month

See the documentation for information on quotas, limits and instructions on how to increase concurrent requests.

1Unused models will be automatically decommissioned after 7 days.

2Speaker Recognition is a limited access feature with a need to apply for access.

Pay as You Go: pay only for what you use.

Category Features Price
Speech to Text
(per second billing)
Standard $- per audio hour
Custom $- per audio hour
Endpoint hosting: $- per model per hour
Enhanced add-on features:
  • Language identification
  • Batch diarization for 3+ speakers
$- per audio hour per feature
Conversation Transcription Multichannel Audio PREVIEW $- per audio hour1
Text to Speech
(per character billing)
Neural Real-time & batch synthesis: $- per 1M characters
Long audio creation: $- per 1M characters
Custom Neural2 Training: $- per compute hour, up to $- per training
Real-time & batch synthesis: $- per 1M characters
Endpoint hosting: $- per model per hour
Long audio creation: $- per 1M characters
Speech Translation
(per second billing)
Standard $- per audio hour
Speaker Recognition
(per transaction billing)
Speaker Verification3 $- per 1,000 transactions
Speaker Identification3 $- per 1,000 transactions
Voice Profile Storage $- per 1,000 voice profiles (10,000 free voice profiles per month)

See the documentation for information on quotas, limits and instructions on how to increase concurrent requests.

1 This reflects public preview pricing. GA price will be announced later at GA.

2 Custom Neural Voice (CNV) is a limited access capability featuring Pro and Lite versions. With CNV Lite (public preview), customers can record their own voice and create a model for demonstration/evaluation, before applying for access to Pro. Check out where CNV is available.

3 Speaker Recognition is a limited access feature with a need to apply for access.

Commitment Tiers

Instance Category Features Price (per month) Overage
Azure - Standard Speech to Text Standard $- for 2,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 10,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 50,000 hours $- per hour
Custom $- for 2,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 10,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 50,000 hours $- per hour
Text to Speech Neural1 $- for 80M characters $- per 1M characters
$- for 400M characters $- per 1M characters
$- for 2,000M characters $- per 1M characters
Connected container - Standard Speech to Text Standard $- for 2,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 10,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 50,000 hours $- per hour
Custom $- for 2,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 10,000 hours $- per hour
$- for 50,000 hours $- per hour
Text to Speech Neural1 $- for 80M characters $- per 1M characters
$- for 400M characters $- per 1M characters
$- for 2,000M characters $- per 1M characters
Disconnected container Speech to Text Standard Sign up to get access
Learn more
Custom Sign up to get access
Learn more
Text to Speech Neural1 Sign up to get access
Learn more
1 Real-time synthesis only, this does not include long audio creation.

These features are being deprecated and only available for existing customers to use. Check details and learn how to migrate to new features.

Instance Category Features Price
Free - Web/Container
1 concurrent request
Text to Speech Standard 5 million characters free per month
Custom 5 million characters free per month
Endpoint hosting: 1 model free per month
Standard - Web/Container
100 concurrent requests for Base model
20 concurrent requests for Custom model
Text to Speech Standard $- per 1M characters
Custom $- per 1M characters
Endpoint hosting: $- per model per hour

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Additional resources

Speech Services

Learn more about Speech Services features and capabilities.

Pricing calculator

Estimate your expected monthly costs for using any combination of Azure products.

Documentation

Review technical tutorials, videos, and more Speech Services resources.

    • For Speech to Text and Speech Translation, usage is billed in one-second increments.
    • For Text to Speech: usage is billed per character. Check the definition of character in the pricing note.
    • For Speech to Text and Text to Speech, endpoint hosting for custom models is billed per second per model.
    • For Custom Commands: billing is tracked as consumption of Speech to Text, Text to Speech, and Language Understanding. Custom Commands does not introduce new billing meters.
    • There is no charge for training Speech to Text models. The only costs are endpoint hosting per model once deployed, and then the cost per audio hour of Custom Speech to Text.
  • The Speech service enables users to adapt baseline models based on their own acoustic and language data, leading to custom speech models that can be used against both Speech to Text and Speech Translation.

  • The language model is a probability distribution over sequences of words. The language model helps the system decide among sequences of words that sound similar, based on the likelihood of the word sequences themselves. For example, “recognize speech” and “wreck a nice beach” sound alike but the first hypothesis is far more likely to occur, and therefore will be assigned a higher score by the language model. If you expect voice queries to your application to contain particular vocabulary items, such as product names or jargon that rarely occur in typical speech, it is likely that you can obtain improved performance by customizing the language model. For example, if you were building an app to search MSDN by voice, it’s likely that terms like “object-oriented” or “namespace” or “dot net” will appear more frequently than in typical voice applications. Customizing the language model will enable the system to learn this.

  • The acoustic model is a classifier that labels short fragments of audio into one of several phonemes, or sound units, in each language. These phonemes can then be stitched together to form words. For example, the word “speech” is comprised of four phonemes “s p iy ch”. These classifications are made on the order of 100 times per second. Customizing the acoustic model can enable the system to learn to do a better job recognizing speech in atypical environments. For example, if you have an app designed to be used by workers in a warehouse or factory, a customized acoustic model can more accurately recognize speech in the presence of the noises found in these environments.

  • Speech service offers a wide range of text-to-speech (TTS) voice fonts, however custom neural voice allows you to build your own custom voice that suits your needs and your brand. Read the blog for more information.

  • Language identification allows you to identify a switch in spoken language and transcribe speech accordingly. This can be applied in scenarios where the audio language is unknown, or when speaker(s) may speak multiple languages. Single Language Identification is available at no additional cost. Continuous Language Identification is an enhanced add-on feature. Visit docs to learn more.

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