Unreal Speech
Budget TTS with a /stream endpoint that returns audio in about 0.3 s for up to 1,000 characters. No WebSocket input streaming.
Overview
Best for: Cheap English narration and simple bots that can tolerate per-sentence HTTP requests.
At a glance
Price is the Basic plan list rate ($49 for 3M chars); promo $4.99/month for the first 6 months; Enterprise about $8/1M. /stream returns audio in ~0.3 s (vendor), 1,000 chars per request. Word timestamps on /speech only. Free 250K chars/month.
Text
MP3 (bitrate 16k-320k, default 192k); other formats not verified
English plus Chinese, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian voices (V8 voice list)
Catalog voices by language/gender; no cloning documented
Vendor: /stream returns audio in ~0.3 s.
Not specified
Not verified.
Features
- streaming HTTP output
- word timestamps on /speech
- async long-form up to 500K chars
Pricing
| What | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | monthly |
| Basic | $49/month ($4.99 first 6 months) | monthly |
| Plus | $499/month | monthly |
| Pro | $1,499/month | monthly |
| Enterprise | $4,999/month | monthly |
900 chars/min at plan-included rates: Enterprise $8/1M to Basic $16.3/1M (list price). Vendor itself assumes 750 chars/min.
Free tier: 250K characters/month
Source: unrealspeech.com
Setup
- Get an API key from unrealspeech.com.
- POST JSON {Text, VoiceId, Bitrate} to https://api.v8.unrealspeech.com/stream.
- Write the returned audio bytes as they arrive.
Endpoint
https://api.v8.unrealspeech.com/streamAuthentication
Authorization: Bearer <UNREAL_SPEECH_API_KEY>
Quick start python
# pip install requests
import os, requests
r = requests.post(
"https://api.v8.unrealspeech.com/stream",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['UNREAL_SPEECH_API_KEY']}"},
json={"Text": "Hello from Unreal Speech.", "VoiceId": "Hannah", "Bitrate": "192k"},
stream=True, timeout=30)
r.raise_for_status()
with open("out.mp3", "wb") as f:
for chunk in r.iter_content(4096):
f.write(chunk)Written from the current docs. Check the vendor's SDK version before you ship.
Warnings
1,000-character cap on /stream
Long LLM replies need splitting into several /stream calls.
Promotional first-month pricing
Basic shows $4.99/month for the first 6 months, then $49/month.
Host version confusion
Docs reference both api.v7 and api.v8 hosts; voice lists differ between versions. Use the host matching your docs version.
No overage price published
The pricing page does not list per-1M overage rates or concurrency limits.
Plus 12 warnings that apply to all text-to-speech, streaming APIs. See category warnings.
Limits
- /stream 1,000 chars per request
- /speech 3,000 chars
- /synthesisTasks 500,000 chars
Models and products
| Name | Status |
|---|---|
| API v8 (/stream, /speech, /synthesisTasks) | GA |
Docs and sources
Docs
Sources used
- unrealspeech.com/pricing
- unrealspeech.readme.io/llms.txt
- docs.v8.unrealspeech.com/view/metadata/2sAYXCmKEh
Auth header format, voice names on v8, output formats other than MP3, concurrency.