Azure Speech Service setup — Kaizen Speech Studio Help

Before you start: You'll need a Microsoft account. Azure asks for a credit card even for free use. Choose the F0 (Free) pricing tier in Step 3 and Microsoft charges nothing — F0 simply stops serving requests once the month's 9 hours (500,000 characters) are used up. Only the S0 (Standard) tier bills your card. Your key stays encrypted on your machine — we never see it.

Step 1: Search for “Speech Service”

Click the search bar at the top of the Azure portal. Type Speech Service and pick Speech Service from the dropdown.

Azure portal with Speech Service highlighted in the search dropdown

Step 2: Click Create

Speech Service marketplace page with Create button

Step 3: Fill in resource details

Subscription: your Azure subscription
Resource group: pick existing or create new (e.g. kaizen-speech)
Region: East US is required — currently the only supported region for Speech Studio
Name: anything meaningful, e.g. kaizen-speech-01
Pricing tier: choose Free F0 — 500,000 standard Neural characters (≈9 hrs) per month at $0, renewing monthly. Only pick Standard S0 if you want pay-as-you-go: S0 has no free allowance and bills every character from the first one.

This is the step that decides whether you pay. The 9 free hours belong to the F0 tier, not to your Azure account. A resource created on S0 is billed in full — even though your first invoices may show the charges wiped out by Azure's one-time $200 sign-up credit. Once that 30-day credit ends, S0 charges hit your card. Azure allows one F0 Speech resource per subscription; if F0 is greyed out you already have one, so reuse its key instead of creating an S0 resource. The free allowance covers standard Neural voices only; HD, MAI-Voice and OpenAI voices are billed separately.

Click Review + create.

Speech Service create form with region set to East US

Step 4: Create

Review the summary, click Create. Wait for Azure to provision the resource (usually <60 seconds).

Review and create page with Create button

Step 5: Go to resource

Deployment complete screen with Go to resource button

Step 6: Open your resource

If the deployment panel took you to a summary list, click through to your resource.

Resources list with the new Speech Service highlighted

Step 7: Copy key and endpoint

In the left sidebar, click Keys and Endpoint. Copy KEY 1 (or KEY 2 — either works) and note the Location/Region (should be eastus).

Keep the key private. Anyone with it can spend your Azure credits. Don't paste it into chat, public repos, or screenshots.

Keys and Endpoint panel with KEY 1 and Endpoint fields

Step 8: Paste into Speech Studio

In Speech Studio, open the Get 9 Hrs FREE / Azure tab. Under Azure Speech Services:

Paste KEY 1 into Secret Key.
Region should already be set to eastus.
Tick Enable — use this key.
Click Save Details. (Requires Pro license to persist the key.)

Speech Studio Azure tab with Secret Key field and Enable checkbox

You're set. Test by generating a short TTS clip. If it works, you're using your own Azure resource. Open the resource in the Azure Portal and confirm its Overview page says Pricing tier: F0, and check Azure Portal → your subscription → Cost Management to monitor spend.

Already created an S0 resource? Fix it in 2 minutes

If you're being billed for TTS, your Speech resource is almost certainly on S0. Azure doesn't let you downgrade a Speech resource from S0 to F0, so:

Repeat Steps 1–4 and pick Free F0 this time (same region, East US).
Copy the new resource's KEY 1 (Step 7) and paste it into Speech Studio (Step 8), replacing the old key.
Delete the S0 resource (Azure Portal → the resource → Delete) so nothing can bill against it.

Charges already billed on S0 are between you and Microsoft. If you want to dispute them, use the billing-support link printed on your Azure invoice. Our license fee does not include or cover Azure usage.

Next: Blob Storage (only if you want dubbing)

For AI Video Dubbing, you also need Azure Blob Storage. See the Blob Storage guide.