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ElevenLabs vs Amazon Polly

Explore how ElevenLabs compares to Amazon Polly to help you choose the best AI audio platform for your use-case.

Side-by-side comparison of the IIElevenLabs logo on a black background and the Amazon logo on a dark gray background, illustrating branding contrast between a tech startup and a major e-commerce company.
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Feature Comparison

ElevenLabs is the industry-leading AI audio platform, offering over 5,000 lifelike AI voices - 50 times the selection available from Amazon Polly. With exceptionally low latency at 75ms and superior voice customization capabilities, ElevenLabs is perfectly suited for Conversational AI, Voice AI applications, and premium content creation.

ElevenLabs
Voice quality
Highly natural, human-like voices with rich emotional expressiveness, often indistinguishable from real speech.
Latency
Very fast TTS (~75ms for flash model & ~300ms for highest quality); great for real-time and conversational use.
Languages supported
70+ languages
Customization
Advanced controls for voice style (speed, stability, similarity, style). Ability to create entirely new voices.
Voice cloning
Yes – instant cloning with ~10s of audio, or high-fidelity clones with longer samples.
Voice library
5,000+ curated, high-quality voices
Pricing
Transparent per-character pricing
Pronunciation accuracy
Built-in prosody support & SSML with custom pronunciation
Custom Lexicon
Yes, custom dictionaries for brand names, etc.
Amazon Polly
Voice quality
Robotic or neutral tone; less emotional range.
Latency
Responsive but can vary (~100ms - 1s) + network time.
Languages supported
29 languages
Customization
Basic SSML adjustments
Voice cloning
Voice library
100
Pricing
Complex pricing (per-million, varying costs per voice)
Pronunciation accuracy
Partial or basic SSML support
Custom Lexicon

Voice quality

ElevenLabs is superior as shown by independent benchmarks.

ElevenLabs leads in independent benchmarks, including HuggingFace TTS Arena Leaderboards. Across nearly 20,000 blind test votes, ElevenLabs achieved a listener preference of 75.3%, significantly outperforming other models.

Side-by-side comparison chart showing ElevenLabs leading in text-to-speech performance. Left panel: HuggingFace TTS Arena Leaderboard with ElevenLabs receiving 19k votes versus 10k votes for the second-best competitor. Right panel: Internal blind-test pie chart showing 75% preference for ElevenLabs and 25% for the second-best model.

Latency

ElevenLabs has the lowest latency and real-time support

Natural human conversations occur at around 200 milliseconds latency. For genuinely immersive, real-time conversational interactions, AI speech must fall below this threshold.

Latency comparison - Model time (excl. Network Latency)

  • ElevenLabs: 75ms
  • Amazon Polly: 200ms

ElevenLabs maintains a faster, more consistently low-latency experience essential for real-time applications.

Bar chart comparing model latency between ElevenLabs and Amazon Polly. ElevenLabs model latency is significantly lower, under 75 ms, while Amazon Polly exceeds 200 ms. The chart highlights ElevenLabs' superior speed in text-to-speech generation.

Expressiveness

ElevenLabs is contextually aware and gives you full control

ElevenLabs uniquely provides contextual control, meaning fewer manual adjustments yield superior, naturally expressive results. While other platforms like Amazon Polly offer basic adjustments, ElevenLabs delivers consistently high-quality, contextually nuanced speech output, including speed adjustments.

In the ancient land of Eldoria, where skies shimmered and forests, whispered secrets to the wind, lived a dragon named Zephyros. [sarcastically] Not the “burn it all down” kind... [giggles] but he was gentle, wise, with eyes like old stars. [whispers] Even the birds fell silent when he passed.
294/1000

Voice selection

ElevenLabs has 1,000s of human-like voices

ElevenLabs offers an extensive voice library featuring over 5,000 AI-generated voices, plus advanced tools like Voice Design, enabling you to create entirely new voices tailored to your needs. Amazon Polly, in comparison, provides a limited set of 100 pre-made voices with no capacity for new voice creation.

American
Whispering
Mysterious
Gaming
Lively
Irish
Soothing
Audiobook

Nicole

Voice cloning & design

ElevenLabs support professional voice cloning

ElevenLabs boasts a suite of powerful voice cloning and design capabilities. With Instant Voice Cloning, you can replicate voices quickly from just 30-second audio samples. Professional Voice Cloning offers hyper-realistic, high-fidelity voice clones based on extensive audio inputs. Additionally, the Voice Design tool allows the creation of entirely new voices from a single text prompt.

Amazon Polly, conversely, does not offer voice cloning or design capabilities, limiting users to the voices already provided.

Original
Voice clone