WellSaid Starter 20 minutes vs Sume TTS per character: cost per hour

WellSaid's own prices work out to between about $0.18 and $0.95 per downloaded minute depending on the plan, while Sume's text to speech is about 4 cents per minute of speech on a stated speaking-rate assumption. WellSaid is a studio product with commercial rights, editing tools and plan minutes; Sume is a per-use API, so the cheaper option depends on whether you need the studio.

WellSaid figures are from its pricing page, read on 2026-10-02. Sume's rate is derived from its TTS Router catalog and is arithmetic, not a quote.

How does WellSaid price narration?

WellSaid sells download minutes. A free trial gives 3 minutes a month with no commercial rights. Starter is $10 a month on annual billing ($19 monthly) for 240 minutes a year (20 a month), with 10 projects. Pro is $33 a month annual ($49 monthly) for 2,160 minutes a year (180 a month), with unlimited projects and 48 kHz audio. Business is $160 per user per month billed annually for 2,880 minutes a year per user, up to 5 seats. Enterprise is custom.

All paid plans list unlimited generation and regeneration, full commercial usage rights and no AI training on customer data. The page also lists SOC 2 Type 2 certification and GDPR compliance.

What does the same narration cost on Sume?

Sume bills per transcript character, including spaces and punctuation. The TTS Router catalog lists list_usd_micros_per_character: 38 and billable_margin: 1.25, which is $0.038 per 1,000 characters at list and about $0.0475 after margin, before the cent rounding in the billing formula. Confirm the live rate in GET /v1/catalog.

To turn that into minutes, this post assumes 150 words per minute and 6 characters per word, or 900 characters per minute. That is an assumption; Korean, German or slower reads will change it. At that rate 20 minutes is 18,000 characters, about $0.86, and 180 minutes is 162,000 characters, about $7.70. Note that WellSaid's plan minutes are download minutes, and the page says generation and regeneration are unlimited, so retakes there are free. On Sume every retake is a new paid job.

Is it fair to compare a studio plan with an API?

Only partly. WellSaid's price includes a voice studio, projects, integrations (Adobe Express on Pro, Premiere Pro on Business) and commercial rights stated on the page. Sume's TTS returns an audio file and, if requested, word timings and sentence segments; there is no studio UI, and Sume does not list the same voice-tuning controls. What Sume offers is generation_config for volume (0.5 to 2), speed (0.6 to 1.5) and an emotion guide, a pronunciation dictionary id and a language field.

If you narrate a few dozen short videos by API, per-character billing avoids paying for 240 minutes you do not use. If you iterate by hand on scripts with a team, unlimited regeneration is worth real money.

How would I call Sume for a 20-minute course module?

One request takes up to 20,000 characters, so a 20-minute module at 18,000 characters fits in a single job. Use mode: async for jobs that may run longer than the 30-second wait, then read the audio artifact from the job result.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/tts-router/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: module-01" \
  -d '{
    "model": "sonic-latest",
    "transcript": "Module one. In this lesson we cover three ideas.",
    "avatar_handle": "@my.avatar",
    "language": "en",
    "generation_config": { "speed": 0.95 },
    "output_format": { "container": "wav", "sample_rate": 48000, "encoding": "pcm_s16le" },
    "mode": "async"
  }'

Which should I pick?

Take WellSaid Pro on annual billing if a team produces hours of narration monthly and wants unlimited retakes. Take Sume if narration is generated inside an automated pipeline, in small or irregular volume, and the audio goes on to a timeline or avatar on the same account.