Gemini TTS bills 1,500 tokens a minute: 1.35 cents on Flash

A minute of Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS audio costs about $0.0135 (1.35 cents) in 2026 and $0.027 from 2027-01-01; Flash-Lite costs $0.009 and $0.018. Those figures are derived from Google's own pricing page, which gives audio output per million tokens and a per-10-seconds equivalent. Neither Gemini TTS model is listed by Sume.

Where 25 tokens a second comes from

Google's page prices Flash TTS audio at $9.00 per 1M tokens and also as $0.00225 per 10 seconds. Divide: $0.00225 / $0.000009 per token = 250 tokens per 10 seconds, so 25 tokens per second and 1,500 per minute. For Flash-Lite, $0.0015 / $0.000006 per token gives the same 250 tokens per 10 seconds. The token rate is the same for both models; only the price per token differs. This is arithmetic on Google's published figures, not a measurement of any file.

Per-minute table

Add text input separately: Google lists $0.50 per 1M text tokens through 2026-12-31 and $1.00 after.

The Sume side: price depends on your script

Sume does not bill by audio duration for TTS. It bills $0.0475 per 1,000 characters (Sume API catalog, read 2026-10-09), spaces and punctuation included. Cost per minute therefore depends on how many characters a minute of your script holds. Pick your own rate and compute:

What to take from it

At an assumed 900 characters a minute, Sume costs $0.04275 a minute against Gemini Flash's $0.0135, so Gemini is the cheaper line item in 2026 and also in 2027 ($0.027). Microsoft's MAI-Voice-2.1 Flash is listed at $15 per 1M characters, which is $0.0135 at the same 900 characters a minute, equal to Gemini Flash's 2026 rate (Microsoft AI, read 2026-10-09).

What Sume adds is the rest of the job: the same API key and job envelope cover captions, audio joins and the render, so the voice is one step in a priced chain. If you only need a standalone voice file, price the voice vendors against each other. If the voice feeds a video, add the downstream steps from the Timeline docs to the line.

Checks before you rely on the derived rate

Treat 25 tokens a second as a billing rate, not a promise about files. Google's page states the price per token and the per-10-seconds equivalent; it does not state how a given voice or language maps to tokens, and the pricing page shown here says nothing about languages or voices. If you plan a large run, generate one sample, check the usage the API reports back, and compare it with the 1,500 tokens a minute implied here.

Also remember the date edge. Both models' prices are listed as doubling on 2027-01-01, so a monthly budget that spans the new year needs two rates. For a 10,000 minute year split evenly, half at $0.0135 and half at $0.027 averages $0.02025 a minute on Flash, or $202.50 in audio output, before text input.