OpenAI TTS pricing: tts-1, tts-1-hd and gpt-4o-mini-tts
Quick answer
OpenAI's API pricing page lists tts-1 at $15.00 per 1 million characters and tts-1-hd at $30.00 per 1 million characters. gpt-4o-mini-tts is billed per token: $0.60 per 1 million text input tokens and $12 per 1 million audio output tokens. The page gives no audio tokens per second for gpt-4o-mini-tts, so its cost per minute is left blank. Checked November 9, 2026 against OpenAI's API pricing page.
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Key takeaways
- tts-1 and tts-1-hd bill per character, so they compare directly with Polly, Google and ElevenLabs per 1 million characters.
- gpt-4o-mini-tts bills per token, in the page's "Prices per 1M tokens unless noted" table.
- Observation: on November 9, 2026, all three speech models sat in the table's list of models hidden from the default view. They are still priced in the page data.
- Speech to text is priced per minute (estimated cost): gpt-4o-transcribe $0.006, gpt-4o-mini-transcribe $0.003.
Text to speech
| Model | Price | Per 1M characters |
|---|---|---|
| tts-1 | $15.00 / 1M characters | $15.00 |
| tts-1-hd | $30.00 / 1M characters | $30.00 |
| gpt-4o-mini-tts | $0.60 text in, $12 audio out, per 1M tokens | not published (no tokens per second on the page) |
Source: platform.openai.com/docs/pricing. Checked November 9, 2026.
Speech to text
| Model | Estimated cost |
|---|---|
| gpt-4o-transcribe | $0.006 / minute |
| gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | $0.003 / minute |
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FAQ
How much does OpenAI text to speech cost?
tts-1 is $15.00 per 1 million characters and tts-1-hd is $30.00. gpt-4o-mini-tts is $12 per 1 million audio output tokens plus $0.60 per 1 million text input tokens.
How much is gpt-4o-mini-tts per minute?
Not published on the pricing page, because the page doesn't state how many audio tokens a second of speech uses.
Is OpenAI TTS cheaper than ElevenLabs?
Per 1 million characters at list price, tts-1 is $15.00 and ElevenLabs' v2 Multilingual API is $80 (worked out from $0.08 per 1,000). Voice quality is not compared on this site.
Next steps
References
- https://platform.openai.com/docs/pricing
- OpenAI's terms pages returned 403 to this read, so the operator and governing law are not captured here (see FLAGS).