Who charges whom
- StepForward Solutions / Kaizen Apps charges you for the Speech Studio license (one-time or yearly).
- Microsoft Azure charges you for API usage (TTS minutes, transcription minutes, video dubbing, storage).
Free tier (F0)
Azure Speech Service F0 tier gives everyone 9 hours of TTS per month at zero cost. On Free Speech Studio, you share our F0 quota. On Pro with your own key, you get your own F0 quota.
Paid tier (S0) — pay-as-you-go
Once you exceed F0, Azure charges per unit. Approximate pricing (check Microsoft for current rates):
- Text-to-Speech: ~$16 per million characters for Neural voices
- Speech-to-Text: ~$1 per hour
- Video Translation: varies, check Video Translation pricing
- Blob Storage: ~$0.018 per GB/month + transaction costs (typically cents per month)
How to monitor spend
- Azure Portal → your subscription → Cost Management + Billing.
- Set a monthly budget alert (e.g. $10).
- Check weekly for the first month to calibrate.
Tips to stay cheap
- Use the shared Free key (Free Speech Studio) for experimentation.
- Switch to your own key once workload justifies it.
- For long-form audio, generate once and save. Don't re-run the same chapter unless the content changed.
- HD voices (Dragon) cost the same as Neural — no penalty for better quality.
- Video translation is the most expensive feature per minute. Test on short clips first.
Speech Studio's cost estimates
The History panel shows an estimated cost per run based on Azure's published prices. Treat it as a guideline; actual Azure billing is authoritative.