ElevenLabs vs Amazon Polly
Comparing ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly Voice Models. Discover the differences in features, pricing, and performance.
VS
Comparing ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly Voice Models
Eleven Labs offers more natural and expressive voices with better emotional range, while Amazon Polly provides reliable, clear speech with extensive language support and AWS integration, though less emotional variation.
Updated at:
Feb 14, 2025
Features
ElevenLabs
Typically around 300 ms + network time
Natural and realistic, widely used by all types of content creators
Limited to 40k characters per request
Requires 30 seconds of audio
IPA Support, isolated pronunciation
Stability, similarity, and style exaggeration controls
8kHz audio, telephony optimized voices
32
Up to 15 on highest self serve tier, custom for enterprise
Amazon Polly
100ms – 500ms + network time
More robotic voices
Limited character count for longer texts
Not supported
Not supported
IPA Support, isolated pronunciation
Stability, similarity, and style exaggeration controls
8kHz audio
29
Voice Quality Comparison
When evaluating voice quality between ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly, ElevenLabs stands out with a high pronunciation accuracy of 81.97%.
In comparison, Amazon Polly achieved a slightly lower pronunciation accuracy of 84.72%. However, ElevenLabs has a lower WER of 2.83%, indicating better overall accuracy in speech generation.
Amazon Polly, while slightly behind in WER at 3.18%, maintains a high level of context awareness and prosody accuracy. This evaluation underscores the importance of both pronunciation and overall voice quality in text-to-speech applications.
Latency Analysis
In our latency evaluation, we measured the Time to First Audio (TTFA) for both ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly.
We conducted 100 TTFA measurements for each provider and calculated the 90th percentile score. ElevenLabs demonstrated a TTFA of 135ms, showcasing its efficiency in generating audio quickly. Amazon Polly, while slightly slower, still performed well with a TTFA of 150ms.
This analysis highlights the importance of low latency in real-time applications, where quick audio generation is crucial for user experience.
Hallucination Rate Check
The hallucination rate evaluation between ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly reveals interesting insights.
ElevenLabs, with its advanced algorithms, achieved a lower hallucination rate, indicating that it generates more accurate and contextually relevant speech outputs. In contrast, Amazon Polly, while effective, showed a slightly higher rate of hallucination in certain contexts.
This evaluation emphasizes the need for continuous improvement in AI models to minimize inaccuracies and enhance user trust in voice applications.
Voice Design Control
In assessing voice design controllability, ElevenLabs offers a robust set of features that allow users to fine-tune voice characteristics effectively.
With a high context awareness score of 63.37%, ElevenLabs enables nuanced adjustments in tone and emphasis. Amazon Polly, while also effective, scored slightly lower in context awareness at 55.30%.
This evaluation highlights the importance of controllability in voice design, allowing developers to create tailored experiences that resonate with users.
Look for a ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly Alternatives?
Cartesia AI offers the fastest voice model with hallucination-free, ultra-realistic voice generation and cloning.
The Fastest Voice Model
Cartesia's Sonic model achieves a latency of just 90ms, ensuring rapid voice responses.
Voice Clone with 5s of Audio
Instantly clone voices with just 5 seconds of audio, delivering high-fidelity results.
Ultra-Realistic Voices
Cartesia provides lifelike voices that are nearly indistinguishable from human speech.
Pricing Comparison for ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly
ElevenLabs
Free - $0/mo. with 10k characters
Starter - $5/mo. with 30k characters
Creator - $11/mo. with 100k characters
Pro - $99/mo. per month with 500k characters
Scale - $330/mo. per month with 2M characters
Amazon Polly
Standard voices priced at $4.00 per 1 million characters
Neural voices priced at $16.00 per 1 million characters
Long-Form voices priced at $100.00 per 1 million characters
Generative voices priced at $30 per 1 million characters
Custom pricing based on usage and requirements
What Cartesia customers say
Join the growing list of companies opting for Sonic.

"This partnership represents a transformative moment in enterprise AI adoption," said Melissa Gordon, CEO of Rasa. "By combining Rasa’s strengths in enterprise conversational AI with Cartesia's innovative voice technology, we're fundamentally changing how enterprises can deploy and scale AI assistants across their organizations."
"We're thrilled to partner with Cartesia - their technology has dramatically improved the accuracy and reliability of our call center agents. Beyond just providing best-in-class voice AI, the Cartesia team has been a true partner in helping us transform 24/7 patient support for over 215,000 patients. Their support has been instrumental in making exceptional care accessible anytime, anywhere."
Jeffrey Liu, Founder and co-CEO, Assort Health

"Together AI's mission has always been to provide developers with the most powerful and efficient tools for building AI applications," says Vipul Ved Prakash, Together AI's CEO. "Cartesia is leading the charge of building efficient, multimodal models from first principles, starting with their Sonic TTS model. By integrating Sonic into our platform, we're enabling developers to create sophisticated multi-modal applications that leverage the most advanced and lowest latency voice model available today, all while maintaining the simplicity and reliability our users expect."