I want to use Azure Custom text to speech, is it available in the free plan even after 12 months ?

Question

I want to use the custom text to speech feature of Azure for a personal project of mine. I was wondering if that feature is only available in the 12 months period of a free account or is it forever available. Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

@Jagath Jijo Azure speech service which provides custom text to speech functionality has a free pricing tier with certain limitations on usage. Please check this link for more details. Once the limits are reached you will most probably see your requests fail. You can always upgrade the pricing tier of your speech resource if your volume increases.

The free 12 month Azure trial provides always free services and services free for 12 months. Azure speech service does not fall in either of this category, but you can create an Azure speech resource using the 200$ credit received in your first month or 30days of signing up. This speech resource will be available after 30 days if you upgrade your account from Free to Pay As You Go. If you have chosen free tier plan for your speech resource while creation you can continue to keep the speech resource until you delete the same. Please refer the note at this link for more details.

Answer 2

Once you have an Azure account, you can always use the F0 pricing tier without the limitation to the first 12 months.

Answer 3

Custom Neural TTS need to apply for the approval. The model training is not included in the free tier, but there are amount of free character consumption, similar with Neural TTS.