Going from text to speech is no longer a secret, artificial intelligence has made great strides in this regard, although they are still expensive and very limited solutions when it comes to defining the language.
In English there are many options, and the AWS solution, from Amazon, is one of the most used, but it is not the only one, today we have tested a really interesting alternative that can be bought with AWS side by side.
It is unrealspeech.com, an API that can be hired for a price eight times lower than that of AWS, ideal for a huge number of tasks, from creating audiobooks to facilitating access to information for people with some type of disability visual.
Its founder, Eric Jung, says that before creating Unreal Speech he worked at Audioread (formerly known as Audiblogs), where he saw how millions of people need to go from text to speech and end up using very low-quality free solutions. He comments that the highest quality engines are practically monopolized by the big technology companies, and that prices rise in a synchronized way as if it were gasoline.
Unreal Speech solves the price problem with an extremely natural speech solution, in English, with the option to choose several types of speech, as you can see on their website. Pricing starts at $99/month to integrate this text-to-speech engine into any app.
In the next 6 months they will continue to work to make robotic voices a thing of the past, and now they want to help companies that make read-aloud applications, UGC platforms (Medium, SubStack, etc.), publications and e-learning platforms like Duolingo. They are also interested in offering discounts to non-profit organizations (such as Wikipedia).
