Google TTS Free Tier Verified: 4M Standard, 1M WaveNet Characters Monthly

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A developer investigating Google Cloud Text-to-Speech pricing found conflicting information across third-party sites, with one claiming a generous free tier and another stating no free plan exists as of August 2026. To resolve the contradiction, they consulted their own Google Cloud billing console, which lists live SKU-level pricing used to generate actual invoices. The console revealed 21 separate SKUs, confirming free monthly allowances of 4 million characters for Standard voices and 1 million each for WaveNet, Chirp3-HD, and Studio voices, with each tier tracked independently. Notably, Neural2 — still referenced in many tutorials — was absent from the console, replaced by Gemini 2.5 and Gemini 3 Flash/Pro TTS SKUs billed by token count rather than characters. The author cautions that even Google's public pricing page returned incomplete content when fetched, making the billing console a more reliable source than any third-party aggregator or documentation.

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