OpenAI TTS alternative
with real language range.
OpenAI's TTS is English-first with a handful of voices and no free tier. Audexum gives you 43 voices across 33 languages over the same REST workflow — with a real free tier (no card), €4/mo for a flat 250K credits, and dictation included. Cheaper per character at every plan tier; far more range.
"Voices priced for production, not for enterprise sales calls."
- Includes Speech-to-Text dictation too — OpenAI bills TTS and Whisper separately
- 33 languages vs OpenAI's effective ~10 (their TTS is English-optimized)
- Free tier of 30,000 credits/mo, never expires — OpenAI has none
- Dedicated TTS billing, separate from your LLM quota
- REST + Bearer keys — identical integration pattern to OpenAI SDKs
The actual numbers.
What ships in each box.
OpenAI TTS is convenient if you're already paying them for GPT — same API key, same dashboard, same invoice. But it's English-first: a handful of voices, and quality that drops on lower-resource languages.
If you're generating any volume — a podcast, a voiceover pipeline, accessibility audio, IVR prompts — Audexum gives you 33 languages on equal footing and a free tier to prototype on. At 10 million characters/month you're looking at roughly €99 on the Audexum Business plan versus about $150 on OpenAI.
Audexum is also a real polyglot. OpenAI's TTS handles English very well but degrades on lower-resource languages. Audexum ships 33 languages on equal footing, including the ones nobody else covers properly — and every plan bundles speech-to-text dictation, which OpenAI charges for separately through Whisper.
Two lines of code.
Same REST shape. Same JSON-in / WAV-out. Just point at our URL with your Audexum Bearer token.
import OpenAI from "openai";
const openai = new OpenAI();
const speech = await openai.audio.speech.create({
model: "tts-1",
voice: "alloy",
input: "Hello world"
});const res = await fetch("https://audexum.com/api/synthesize", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.AUDEXUM_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
text: "Hello world",
voice: "af_heart"
})
});
const buf = await res.arrayBuffer();Why not just use OpenAI for everything?+
If you generate < 30K chars/month and only need English, OpenAI is fine. Above that, or if your users speak other languages, Audexum's 33 languages, free tier, and bundled dictation start to matter more than the small per-character difference.
Is the audio quality the same?+
OpenAI's tts-1-hd produces excellent English. Audexum's Kokoro-based voices are competitive on English and far better on non-English languages. Sample our voices on the homepage before you decide.
Can I use Audexum from Python like OpenAI?+
Yes — it's a normal REST call. You can wrap it in a function that mirrors the OpenAI SDK shape in 10 lines. We're working on a first-party Python SDK.
What about latency?+
Audexum typically streams the first byte in 300-600ms after the request. OpenAI is similar. We're not a streaming-first product yet — full WAV is returned in one response.
Try Audexum free.
30,000 credits per month, no credit card. First WAV in your terminal in 60 seconds.
Questions? [email protected]