Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech. Amazon Polly includes dozens of lifelike voices and support for a variety of languages, so you can select the ideal voice and distribute your speech-enabled applications in many countries. With Amazon Polly, you just send the text you want converted into speech to the Amazon Polly API, and Amazon Polly immediately returns the audio stream to your application so you can play it directly or store it in a standard audio file format, such as MP3.
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The Amazon Polly free tier includes 5 million characters per month, for the first 12 months, starting from the first request for speech.
Amazon Polly provides an API that enables you to quickly integrate speech synthesis into your application. You simply send the text you want converted into speech to the Amazon Polly API, and Amazon Polly immediately returns the audio stream to your application so your application can begin streaming it directly or store it in a standard audio file format, such as MP3.
| Sampling rate | Sample Code |
| "Hi. My name is Joanna." | from boto3 import client polly = client("polly", region_name="us-east-1") response = polly.synthesize_speech( Text="Hi. My name is Joanna.", OutputFormat="mp3", VoiceId="Joanna") |
Amazon Polly includes dozens of lifelike voices and support for a variety of languages, so you can select the ideal voice and distribute your speech-enabled applications in many countries.
| Language | Female |
Male |
| Australian English | Nicole | Russell |
| Brazilian Portuguese | Vitória | Ricardo |
| Canadian French | Chantal | |
| Danish | Naja | Mads |
| Dutch | Lotte | Ruben |
| French | Céline | Mathieu |
| German | Vicki | Hans |
| Marlene | ||
| Icelandic | Dóra | Karl |
| Indian English | Raveena | |
| Italian | Carla | Giorgio |
| Japanese | Mizuki | |
| Norwegian | Liv | |
| Polish | Ewa | Jacek |
| Maja | Jan | |
| Portuguese - Iberic | Inês | Cristiano |
| Romanian | Carmen | |
| Russian | Tatyana | Maxim |
| Spanish - Castilian | Conchita | Enrique |
| Swedish | Astrid | |
| Turkish | Filiz | |
| UK English | Amy | Brian |
| Emma | ||
| US English | Joanna | Joey |
| Salli | Justin | |
| Kendra | ||
| Kimberly | ||
| Ivy | ||
| US Spanish | Penélope | Miguel |
| Welsh | Gwyneth | |
| Welsh English | Geraint |
Amazon Polly makes it easy to request an additional stream of metadata that provides information about when particular sentences, words and sounds are being pronounced. Using this metadata stream alongside the synthesized speech audio stream, you can now build your applications with an enhanced visual experience, such as speech-synchronized facial animation or karaoke-style word highlighting.
Please visit the documentation to learn more about how to use Speech Marks.
With Amazon Polly, you can stream all kinds of information through your application to users in near real time. You can also choose from various sampling rates to optimize bandwidth and audio quality for your application. Amazon Polly supports MP3, Vorbis, and raw PCM audio stream formats.
Amazon Polly supports Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), a W3C standard, XML-based markup language for speech synthesis applications, and supports common SSML tags for phrasing, emphasis, and intonation. This flexibility helps you create lifelike speech that will attract and hold the attention of your audience.
To learn more, visit the Amazon Polly documentation on SSML tags.
| Sample | SSML |
| This is how I speak normally. | (none) |
| I can speak in a higher pitched voice, or I can speak in a lower pitched voice. | <speak>I can speak in a <prosody pitch="high">higher pitched voice</prosody>, or I can speak <prosody pitch="low">in a lower pitched voice</prosody></speak> |
| I can speak really slowly, or I can speak really fast. | <speak>I can speak <prosody rate="x-slow">really slowly</prosody>, or I can speak <prosody rate="x-fast">really fast</prosody></speak> |
| I can also speak very loudly, or I can speak very quietly. | <speak>I can also speak <prosody volume="x-loud">very loudly</prosody>, or I can speak <prosody volume="x-soft">very quietly</prosody>. </speak> |
| I can whisper. | <speak>I have a secret to tell you, I will whisper it to you.<amazon:effect name="whispered">'<prosody rate="x-slow"> <prosody volume="loud">I am not human.</prosody></prosody></amazon:effect>Can you believe it?</speak> |
Amazon Polly supports all the programming languages included in the AWS SDK (Java, Node.js, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, and C++) and AWS Mobile SDK (iOS/Android). Polly also supports an HTTP API so you can implement your own access layer.
Amazon Polly can be accessed via the Polly API (and various language-specific SDKs), AWS Management Console, and the AWS command-line interface (CLI). You have full control over all the capabilities of Amazon Polly, whether you use the service through the console, the API, or the CLI.
With Amazon Polly’s custom lexicons, or vocabularies, you can modify the pronunciation of particular words, such as company names, acronyms, foreign words and neologisms (e.g., “ROTFL”, “C’est la vie” when spoken in a non-French voice). To customize these pronunciations, you upload an XML file with lexical entries. For example, you can customize the pronunciation of Nguyen by providing a phoneme using this XML:
<lexeme>
<grapheme>Nguyen</grapheme>
<grapheme>nguyen</grapheme>
<grapheme>NGUYEN</grapheme>
<phoneme>"nu.jEn'</phoneme>
</lexeme>
