Amazon Polly vs Deepgram comparison

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Amazon Polly

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Amazon Polly and Deepgram are competitive products in the voice and speech recognition category. Amazon Polly appears to have the upper hand in pricing and support, while Deepgram excels in feature offerings and precision.

Features: Amazon Polly provides advanced text-to-speech capabilities, offering natural-sounding speech with a wide range of lifelike voices, supporting multiple languages and dialects. Deepgram is notable for high-accuracy speech recognition, customizable models, and seamless real-time processing, making it suitable for contexts where precision is key.

Room for Improvement: Amazon Polly could enhance its real-time processing capabilities and expand its customization options. Improved integration with non-AWS platforms would add value. Deepgram might benefit from more straightforward cost structures that cater to smaller businesses, broader language support, and simplified deployment processes for users less technically savvy.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon Polly offers easy deployment within the AWS ecosystem, backed by solid AWS support plans. Its integration into AWS services makes setup convenient for existing users. Deepgram provides a versatile deployment model, adaptable for cloud or on-premises use, requiring potentially more technical setup. Its customer service is known for its responsiveness and personalized approach.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon Polly's pricing is character-based, making it economical for budget-conscious businesses, ensuring good returns with low expenses. Deepgram charges based on processing hours, incurring higher costs justified by its accuracy and bespoke solutions. It offers significant value for businesses that prioritize precision and real-time processing, highlighting a trade-off between cost and advanced feature performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Polly vs. Deepgram Report (Updated: April 2025).

Amazon Polly vs. Deepgram

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Polly

Ranking in Text-To-Speech Services

1st

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Deepgram

Ranking in Text-To-Speech Services

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Speech-To-Text Services (4th)

Featured Reviews

Anubhav Garg

Senior Software Developer at Accenture

Text has been converted to speech across multiple languages with customizable voice settings

The most beneficial aspect of Amazon Polly ( /products/amazon-polly-reviews ) is its ability to convert text to speech in multiple languages. It allows us to change the voice configurations for both male and female voices, and enables adjustments in pronunciation and delays. These features help us effectively target our users. Additionally, the integration capabilities with AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ) services like Lambda aid us in storing Polly voice messages in DynamoDB and S3 ( /products/amazon-s3-reviews ). It also offers configurations in multiple languages, enhancing our service reach.

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Ariel Lindenfeld

Director of Product Management at PeerSpot

Excellent quality, great speech-to-text recognition, and responsive support

Two things come to mind for improvement. Maybe they have fixed these, or maybe there is something new, and we haven't implemented it yet. One improvement could be dual-channel audio. We've had issues in the past where it generates the transcript, and a lot of the text is duplicated. I understand why it would happen. It's an audio file with more than one channel of the same speaker, which is what may cause the duplicated text. That said, it would be great either to have a way for Deepgram to realize that it's basically the same audio on two channels and only transcribe one of them or at least give us a warning that it's happening. We've found workarounds, however, a better solution from Deepgram's side would be great. The other issue comes up when some changes are made on their end, and we want to test them. We've had one to two instances where they tell us that we have access, and we try to test something out, and it turns out we don't. When that happens, then they have to fix something on their end. It's not a big deal. We have a Slack channel with them where we can quickly touch base. We let them know, and they will get back to us and fix the access. It's not something we're doing very often.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Amazon Polly is useful because it's helpful to hear the words on top of it when I can't take in information in a general way. Sometimes, it's very taxing if I'm trying to read cases. They have the neural voices, and they're so realistic. You don't even know that a person is not reading to you, making things much better. I know that they do have the ability to provide you with your own lexicon that's personal to you. I like that you can adjust the pitch and the speed of the voice because some people talk way too fast. Or if you're reading, I read slowly, so that's always helpful. One of the functions that I find helpful is that when reading material on the web, it's like it has its own browser. You go to the URL, and you don't have to read the whole thing, and you can stick the cursor on the place where you want it to start. Then if you want it to skip over something, you put it somewhere else, and that's ideal for reading case law because you skip around a lot. You don't really read it from start to finish. It helps if someone's going to read all those citations because they definitely want to be able to skip that."

"The most beneficial aspect of Amazon Polly is its ability to convert text to speech in multiple languages."

"We can use the SSML tags in Amazon Polly to modify text-to-speech by controlling speech patterns and behaviour."

"The features that I have been using in the tool have been very stable."

"The solution's Speech-to-Text conversion feature is really awesome."

"Deepgram is able to handle large volumes of audio data without compromising accuracy."

"The speed of the solution for transcribing videos is good."

"The recognition of industry-specific terminology phrases and abbreviations is really important for us. We were able to get a good level of industry specificity with Deepgram."

Cons

"Amazon Polly's standard text-to-speech feature could be enhanced to deliver more natural and expressive human-like speech."

"The price could be better. I wish it weren't so expensive to do because it's really cool. I would love to see them have lexicon packages of them like, this is for lawyers, this is for accountants, and it's going to have a lot of things in it. I also think they could do a better job at showing use cases other than telemarketing or contact center stuff like bots that are very commercial. I know that's where the money is, but it's such a huge hole that's missing for people with disabilities that are even worse than mine. Some people cannot see or hear at all, but they're not just cognitively impaired."

"When you put more tags inside Amazon Polly to define break time and instruct the speech to be conversational, sometimes it gives you an error."

"We've had issues in the past where it generates the transcript, and a lot of the text is duplicated."

"I would like it to be more accurate."

"The solution does not properly identify the number of speakers."

"Deepgram is currently restricted to only the English variants, but it should include other languages, such as German or French."

"The area of live transcription could be improved. Sometimes, Deepgram's WebSocket is disposed due to redundancy."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be better. Neural voices are so realistic, and I want to say that they have it so that you can try to tell where the voice is coming from or something like that. But if I have more than one, it's so expensive to have to listen to a bunch of cases on my phone and have the neural voice read to me. It really wouldn't be worth it. It'd be paying probably more than what I make in the case. Right now, I'm on the free tier, and I think the number of minutes that you get is reasonable as long as you're not doing this all the time and you're using it judiciously. I have some credits that I think I can use, but I don't know how fast they'll go through."

"The solution has a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you must pay according to your usage."

"The solution’s pricing is cheap."

"The pricing is moderate."

"When using Deepgram, one needs to pay for the hours or minutes for which the transcription is needed."

"Deepgram is a cheap solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

University

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

12%

Retailer

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Polly?

Pricing for Amazon Polly is considered reasonable, but it depends on the scale of the business. Some companies use hybrid cloud solutions with other products like Genesys ( /products/genesys-cloud-...

What needs improvement with Amazon Polly?

Amazon Polly could benefit from a feature allowing it to mimic the voices of well-known brand ambassadors, with their permission. This would add significant value to customer interactions by making...

What is your primary use case for Amazon Polly?

I have worked with Amazon Polly ( /products/amazon-polly-reviews ) for deploying Amazon Connect ( /products/amazon-connect-reviews ). Amazon Polly ( /products/amazon-polly-reviews ) is one of the f...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Deepgram?

The pricing was very good. Although the competitors also would have saved us a lot of money, we were mainly looking for the right level of quality of the transcript.

What needs improvement with Deepgram?

What is your primary use case for Deepgram?

We primarily use the solution for transcribing speech to text. We use it to record phone calls and meetings and then transcribe them.

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Product Reports

Text-To-Speech Services

Download Amazon Polly product report

Download Deepgram product report

Overview

Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, allowing you to create applications that talk, and build entirely new categories of speech-enabled products. Polly's Text-to-Speech (TTS) service uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize natural sounding human speech. With dozens of lifelike voices across a broad set of languages, you can build speech-enabled applications that work in many different countries.

In addition to Standard TTS voices, Amazon Polly offers Neural Text-to-Speech (NTTS) voices that deliver advanced improvements in speech quality through a new machine learning approach. Polly’s Neural TTS technology also supports two speaking styles that allow you to better match the delivery style of the speaker to the application: a Newscaster reading style that is tailored to news narration use cases, and a Conversational speaking style that is ideal for two-way communication like telephony applications.

Finally, Amazon Polly Brand Voice can create a custom voice for your organization. This is a custom engagement where you will work with the Amazon Polly team to build an NTTS voice for the exclusive use of your organization.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Deepgram stands out for its speed in transcribing videos and speech to text, leveraging cutting-edge models like Whisper and Nova for exceptional performance and accuracy. Its latency is remarkably low, enabling swift transcription that users find superior to alternatives.

Deepgram provides an efficient solution for transforming video and audio content into text, benefiting from its advanced ability to recognize industry-specific terminology. Users experience faster results compared to IBM Watson and OpenAI's Whisper model, with low latency contributing to its appeal. However, challenges in speaker recognition and language support remain areas for improvement. Additionally, stronger spelling and grammar accuracy could enhance its performance. Some seek expanded multi-language capabilities and improved manageability during testing phases, noting its slightly less accuracy compared to other tools.

What are Deepgram's most notable features?

Rapid Transcription: Utilizes cutting-edge models for quick speech-to-text conversion.
Industry Terminology Recognition: Excels in comprehending specific jargon and abbreviations.
Low Latency: Offers transcription with minimal delay, approximately 0.5 to 1 second.
Model Integration: Employs Whisper model combined with Nova for high accuracy.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating Deepgram?

High Speed: Significant improvement in processing time over competitors.
Performance Satisfaction: Users appreciate faster and more fluid transcription.
Textual Accuracy: Enhancements can lead to more reliable outputs in transcripts.
Streamlined Processes: Features like punctuation and Smart Format boost efficiency.

Deepgram is widely implemented across industries for transcribing speech to text, often used by organizations for generating machine transcripts of legal proceedings and other vital communications. Teams deploy it on local systems to convert videos and phone calls, integrating speech recognition seamlessly into applications.

Sample Customers

GoAnimate, Duolingo, Bandwidth

Information Not Available

Amazon Polly vs. Deepgram