OpenAI TTS pricing per 1,000 characters, and a 5,000-character script

OpenAI lists tts-1 at $15 and tts-1-hd at $30 per 1M characters, which is $0.015 and $0.03 per 1,000 characters. A 5,000-character script is $0.075 on tts-1 and $0.15 on tts-1-hd. Sume TTS 1.0 is $0.0475 per 1,000 characters, or $0.2375 for the same script.

OpenAI's prices are from its pricing page, read 2026-09-30; Sume's from the rate card. The conversion is dividing by 1,000.

How do the prices compare per 1,000 and per script?

Same unit, same script length.

Why is gpt-4o-mini-tts not in the table?

OpenAI lists it at $12 per 1M audio output tokens and $0.60 per 1M text input tokens. Those are tokens, not characters, so a per-character price needs a tokens-per-second figure that the page does not give. Do not convert it by guesswork; run a sample and read the usage.

How does Sume count characters?

Sume TTS 1.0 counts the characters of the transcript, including spaces and punctuation, up to 20,000 per request, and prices them after the Sume margin. The TTS Router in the OpenAPI document is Sonic only, so OpenAI voices are not selectable.

What does a Sume TTS job look like?

It is an async job with polling or a signed webhook; the OpenAPI text says phase 1 is async job plus poll/webhook (non-streaming). See TTS API pricing for how reservation works and the API reference for jobs.