5,000 minutes of speech in 2027: Gemini TTS vs MAI-Voice vs Sume

For 5,000 minutes of speech in 2027, Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS audio output lists at $135 and Flash-Lite at $90 once the promotional price doubles on 1 January 2027; MAI-Voice-2.1 costs $99 and its Flash model $67.50; Sume TTS costs $213.75. These use my assumptions of 25 audio tokens a second, which follows from Google's own per-10-second figures, and 900 characters a minute. Sume is the most expensive per minute here, and the only one of the four that sits inside a job API with captions, music and a render.

How each number is built

Gemini: 5,000 minutes x 60 s x 25 tokens = 7.5M tokens. At $18 per 1M that is $135, and at $12 it is $90. In 2026, at $9 and $6, the same volume is $67.50 and $45. Text input is extra: $0.50 per 1M now and $1.00 from 2027 (Google AI, read 2026-10-09).

MAI: 5,000 minutes x 900 characters = 4.5M characters. At $22 per 1M that is $99, and at $15 it is $67.50 (Microsoft AI, read 2026-10-09). Sume: 4,500 x $0.0475 = $213.75.

What the numbers leave out

Gemini and MAI are model prices; neither includes captions, a render or an audio join. Sume lists none of the Gemini or MAI voice models. The Sume rate includes the job system, retries by idempotency key and the other media steps at their own prices. The assumption of 900 characters a minute is language-dependent, and Korean or Spanish scripts differ in length, so use your own measured figure.

A decision rule

If speech is your whole product and volume is high, the model-level prices decide, and you build the surrounding steps yourself. If speech is one part of a video pipeline, the extra $78.75 to $146.25 a year of 5,000 minutes against Gemini or MAI is small next to the render and clip costs. Recompute with real character counts and re-check each vendor page in December, because both Microsoft's and Google's rates are time-limited.

Sensitivity

The Gemini line depends on 25 tokens a second, which I derived from Google's own price per 10 seconds, and the MAI and Sume lines depend on 900 characters a minute. If your speech is denser, at 1,200 characters a minute, the character-priced lines rise by a third: MAI-Voice-2.1 to $132 and Sume to $285, while Gemini stays at $135. So the ranking of Gemini against the others depends on how many characters each minute of your audio holds.