{"rid":"compute/amazon-polly","card":{"rid":"compute/amazon-polly","eid":"amazon","topic":"compute","slug":"amazon-polly","provider":"Amazon Polly","url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","domain":"amazon.com","category":"inference API","tier":null,"verdict":"qualifies-with-caveat","vorder":1,"grp":"usable","confidence":"documented","binding":"volume-quota","identity_kind":"card","identity_basis":"stated","needs_card":1,"needs_phone":0,"needs_id":0,"needs_institution":0,"country":null,"crypto":null,"interfaces":"rest","egress_metered":null,"per_object_bytes":null,"retention_days":null,"verified_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z","verified_basis":"live","checked_on":"2026-10-22","stale_on":"2026-11-21","n_evidence":4,"usd_month":null,"usd_per_tb_month":null,"summary":"'For Amazon Polly's Standard voices, the free tier includes 5 million characters per month for speech or Speech Marks requests.' The Neural allowance is '1 m...","duplicate_of":null,"n_unknown":9},"record":{"topic":"compute","slug":"amazon-polly","provider":"Amazon Polly","url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","category":"inference API","free_tier":{"stated":"'For Amazon Polly's Standard voices, the free tier includes 5 million characters per month for speech or Speech Marks requests.' The Neural allowance is '1 million characters per month ... for the first 12 months', Long-Form '500 thousand characters per month ... for the first 12 months' and Generative '100 thousand characters per month for speech requests, for the first 12 months'. The vendor's own conversion is '1 million characters ... ~23 hours, 8 min', so 5 million Standard characters a month is about 115 hours of speech.","unit":"hours","metered_on":"wall-clock","source_url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","read_on":"2026-10-22","notes":"recurring-monthly-allowance"},"per_object_cap":{"stated":"not applicable","bytes":null,"source_url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","notes":null},"retention":{"stated":"not applicable","days":null,"source_url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","notes":null},"egress":{"terms":"not stated","metered":false,"free_allowance":null,"price_per_tb":null,"source_url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/"},"interface":["rest"],"interface_detail":"inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed","tooling":"not stated","chaining":"115 hours of speech a month from Standard voices is enough to narrate a book a month, and it composes with any free object store for the audio. What breaks: the good voices are on the 12-month clock, so after a year the same pipeline drops to Standard quality or starts billing at USD 16 per million characters for Neural.","limits":[{"kind":"volume-quota","value":"the Standard allowance is monthly and perpetual but the account is an AWS account with a payment instrument, and the free plan that new customers get lasts '6 months after account creation' for credits, so the stable figure is the 5 million characters, not any credit.","source":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/"}],"limits_note":"the Standard allowance is monthly and perpetual but the account is an AWS account with a payment instrument, and the free plan that new customers get lasts '6 months after account creation' for credits, so the stable figure is the 5 million characters, not any credit.","binding":"volume-quota","binding_note":"the Standard allowance is monthly and perpetual but the account is an AWS account with a payment instrument, and the free plan that new customers get lasts '6 months after account creation' for credits, so the stable figure is the 5 million characters, not any credit.","identity_cost":{"kind":"card","detail":null,"country":null},"reliability_note":"no reliability event recorded","confidence":"documented","evidence":[{"url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"'For Amazon Polly's Standard voices, the free tier includes 5 million characters per month for speech or Speech Marks requests', quoted; the 12-month qualifier applies to Neural, Long-Form and Generative and not to Standard"},{"url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"'1,000 requests, 1,000 characters per request | 1 million characters | ~23 hours, 8 min', quoted from the vendor's own character-to-hours table"},{"url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"'Amazon Polly's Standard voices are priced at $4.00 per 1 million characters ... Neural voices ... $16.00 ... Long-Form ... $100.00 ... Generative ... $30 per 1 million', quoted"},{"url":"https://aws.amazon.com/polly/pricing/","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"'the free tier includes 1 million characters per month for Neural voices ... for the first 12 months', quoted, which dates the better voices to the first year"}],"verdict":"qualifies-with-caveat","verified_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z","notes":"These are inference credits, not general compute. The distinction that matters is Standard versus the rest: Standard is permanent, everything better is a first-year allowance. AWS also replaced the old free tier with 'up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits' for new customers from 2025-07-15, whose free plan 'will be available for 6 months', which is a separate and smaller lane. The 115-hour figure is the vendor's own conversion, not ours.","extras":{"wave2":{"class":"perpetual-free-allowance","free_tier_kind":"recurring-monthly-allowance","shape":{"vcpu":null,"ram_gib":null,"gpu_class":null,"gpu_count":0}}}},"claims":[{"path":"$.free_tier.stated","kind":"free-quota","num":23,"unit":"hours","per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"},{"path":"$.limits[0].value","kind":"limit:volume-quota","num":null,"unit":null,"per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"unparsed"}],"unknown":[["$.egress.metered","egress-unknown"],["$.egress.terms","not-stated"],["$.identity_cost.detail","process"],["$.per_object_cap.notes","process"],["$.per_object_cap.stated","not-applicable"],["$.reliability_note","none-observed"],["$.retention.notes","process"],["$.retention.stated","not-applicable"],["$.tooling","not-stated"]],"history":[],"drift":[]}