Here is our selection of the best Text-to-Speech APIs to help you choose and access the right engine according to your data.
What is Text-to-Speech?
What does Text-to-Speech do?
Text-to-Speech or Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech computer or speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech. The reverse process is called speech recognition.
Synthesized speech can be created by concatenating pieces of recorded speech that are stored in a database. Systems differ in the size of the stored speech units; a system that stores phones or diphones provides the largest output range, but may lack clarity. For specific usage domains, the storage of entire words or sentences allows for high-quality output. Alternatively, a synthesizer can incorporate a model of the vocal tract and other human voice characteristics to create a completely "synthetic" voice output.
A brief history of Text-to-Speech methods
In 1779 the German-Danish scientist Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein won the first prize in a competition announced by the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts for models he built of the human vocal tract that could produce the five long vowel sounds. There followed the bellows-operated "acoustic-mechanical speech machine" of Wolfgang von Kempelen of Pressburg, Hungary. This machine added models of the tongue and lips, enabling it to produce consonants as well as vowels.
In the 1930s Bell Labs developed the vocoder, which automatically analyzed speech into its fundamental tones and resonances. From his work on the vocoder, Homer Dudley developed a keyboard-operated voice-synthesizer called The Voder (Voice Demonstrator), which he exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Dr. Franklin S. Cooper and his colleagues at Haskins Laboratories built the Pattern playback in the late 1940s and completed it in 1950. There were several different versions of this hardware device; only one currently survives. The machine converts pictures of the acoustic patterns of speech in the form of a spectrogram back into sound
Top 10 Text-to-Speech APIs
1. AWS - Available on Eden AI
Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Polly's Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize natural sounding human speech. With dozens of lifelike voices across a broad set of languages, you can build speech-enabled applications that work in many different countries.
2. Google - Available on Eden AI
Google Cloud TTS enables developers to synthesize natural-sounding speech with 100+ voices, available in multiple languages and variants. It applies DeepMind’s groundbreaking research in WaveNet and Google’s powerful neural networks to deliver the highest fidelity possible. As an easy-to-use API, you can create lifelike interactions with your users, across many applications and devices.
3. IBM Waston - Available on Eden AI
The IBM Watson Text to Speech service provides APIs that use IBM's text-to-speech capabilities to convert written text into natural language. The service delivers the synthesized audio back to the client with minimal delay. The audio uses the appropriate cadence and intonation for its language and dialect to provide voices that are smooth and natural.
4. Microsoft Azure - Available on Eden AI
Azure TTS allows to build apps and services that speak naturally. It providers realistic voice generator, and access voices with different speaking styles and emotional tones to fit any use case—from text readers and talkers to customer support chatbots.
5. Murf.ai
Murf can generate 100% natural sounding AI speech in various languages and voices, including those of different genders and accents. The resulting speech can be used for a variety of purposes, such as for virtual assistants, accessibility features, educational materials, and more.
6. Play.ht
Play.ht's TTS APIs can be used to generate voices with human intonations in multiple languages and accents, using machine learning technology. With support for 142 languages and accents worldwide, the API provides a flexible and comprehensive solution for adding speech capabilities to applications.
7. ReadSpeaker
ReadSpeaker is a global voice specialist that provides Text-to-Speech (TTS) services and APIs. The company offers a wide selection of languages and lifelike voices, making it possible to generate speech in various languages and accents. ReadSpeaker uses its own industry-leading technology, which incorporates next-generation Deep Neural Network (DNN) technology, to produce some of the most natural-sounding synthesized voices on the market.
8. ResponsiveVoice
ResponsiveVoice is a HTML5-based Text-To-Speech library designed to add voice features to WordPress across all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices. It supports 51 languages through 168 voices and has no dependencies.
9. Speechify
Speechify provides Text-to-Speech (TTS) tool that allows users to have text content read aloud. With Speechify, users can read web pages, documents, PDFs, emails, articles, ebooks, and more, either by dragging and dropping the content into the platform's interface or by taking photos of pages to be read. Speechify also offers a browser extension that enables users to read aloud any web page.
A notable feature of Speechify is the ability to change the language and accent of the voiceover, as well as to slow down or increase the reading speed, making the tool highly flexible and customizable. The platform currently provides TTS voices in over 30 different languages, with a wide range of accents available.
10. Voice RSS
Voice RSS technology makes it easier for users, whether disabled or not, to receive information and frees up the visual sense for other tasks. Voice RSS provides a free online text-to-speech service Voice RSS Text-to-Speech (TTS) API without any software installation.
Some Text-to-Speech use cases
Text-to-Speech technology can be used in a variety of different fields to improve communication, accessibility, and automation. Here are some examples of how TTS can be used in different fields :
Healthcare: read medical notes and reports to doctors and nurses, enabling them to focus on the patient while still getting important information.
Education: help students with reading difficulties to access written materials, and also can be used to make audiobooks.
Telecommunications: provide automated voice assistants for customer service, enabling customers to get information or assistance without having to talk to a human.
Accessibility: provide audio descriptions for visual content, such as videos or images, making it accessible for people with visual impairments.
Advertising: create voiceovers for ads and commercials, making them more engaging and memorable.
Gaming: provide spoken dialogue and narration in video games, making the game more immersive.
Business: automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, customer service, and telemarketing.
Finance: read financial reports to analysts and traders, enabling them to quickly process large amounts of information.
Why choose Eden AI to manage your APIs
Companies and developers from a wide range of industries (Social Media, Retail, Health, Finances, Law, etc.) use Eden AI’s unique API to easily integrate Text-to-Speech tasks in their cloud-based applications, without having to build their own solutions.
Eden AI offers multiple AI APIs on its platform amongst several technologies: Text-to-Speech, Language Detection, Sentiment analysis API, Summarization, Question Answering, Data Anonymization, Speech recognition, and so forth.
We want our users to have access to multiple Text-to-Speech engines and manage them in one place so they can reach high performance, optimize cost and cover all their needs. There are many reasons for using multiple APIs:
Fallback provider is the ABCs
You need to set up a provider API that is requested if and only if the main Text-to-Speech API does not perform well (or is down). You can use confidence score returned or other methods to check provider accuracy.
Performance optimization.
After the testing phase, you will be able to build a mapping of providers performance based on the criteria you have chosen (languages, fields, etc.). Each data that you need to process will then be sent to the best Text-to-Speech API.
Cost - Performance ratio optimization.
You can choose the cheapest Text-to-Speech provider that performs well for your data.
Combine multiple AI APIs.
This approach is required if you look for extremely high accuracy. The combination leads to higher costs but allows your AI service to be safe and accurate because Text-to-Speech APIs will validate and invalidate each other for each piece of data.
How Eden AI can help you?
Eden AI has been made for multiple AI APIs use. Eden AI is the future of AI usage in companies. Eden AI allows you to call multiple AI APIs.
Centralized and fully monitored billing on Eden AI for all Text-to-Speech APIs
Unified API for all providers: simple and standard to use, quick switch between providers, access to the specific features of each provider
Standardized response format: the JSON output format is the same for all suppliers thanks to Eden AI's standardization work. The response elements are also standardized thanks to Eden AI's powerful matching algorithms.
The best Artificial Intelligence APIs in the market are available: big cloud providers (Google, AWS, Microsoft, and more specialized engines)
Data protection: Eden AI will not store or use any data. Possibility to filter to use only GDPR engines.
You can see Eden AI documentation here.
Next step in your project
The Eden AI team can help you with your Text-to-Speech integration project. This can be done by :
Organizing a product demo and a discussion to better understand your needs. You can book a time slot here: Contact
By testing the public version of Eden AI for free: however, not all providers are available on this version. Some are only available on the Enterprise version.
By benefiting from the support and advice of a team of experts to find the optimal combination of providers according to the specifics of your needs
Having the possibility to integrate on a third-party platform: we can quickly develop connectors