specification: FinOps Framework
specificationVersion: '1.0'
schema: https://www.finops.org/framework/
provider: Unreal Speech
providerId: unrealspeech
created: '2026-07-11'
modified: '2026-07-11'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Text to Speech
- TTS
- Audio
- FinOps
- Cost Management
- FOCUS
description: >-
  FinOps view of Unreal Speech spend. Unreal Speech is a hosted, commercial
  text-to-speech API with no self-hosted option, so all cost is a vendor invoice.
  Billing combines a monthly subscription tier with a per-character consumption
  meter: each plan bundles an included monthly character allowance, and volume
  beyond it is billed as overage (about $8 per 1,000,000 characters at enterprise
  scale) or absorbed by moving to a higher tier. A free allowance (~250K
  characters/month) covers evaluation. Roughly 750 characters equals one minute
  of synthesized audio, so cost tracks closely to minutes/hours of audio
  produced.
notes: >-
  Per-unit overage rates and plan allowances reflect the published pricing page
  at the time of review and can change; verify at
  https://app.unrealspeech.com/pricing during reconciliation.
sources:
- https://unrealspeech.com/
- https://app.unrealspeech.com/pricing
- https://docs.unrealspeech.com/reference/getting-started-with-our-api
- https://focus.finops.org/focus-specification/v1-3/
alignedWith:
  framework: FinOps Foundation Framework
  frameworkUrl: https://www.finops.org/framework/
  dataSpec: FOCUS
  dataSpecVersion: '1.3'
  dataSpecUrl: https://focus.finops.org/focus-specification/v1-3/
publisherName: Unreal Speech
serviceCategory: AI and Machine Learning
billingModel:
  pricingCategory: Subscription plus Usage-Based
  billingFrequency: Monthly
  billingCurrency: USD
  chargeCategories:
  - Purchase
  - Usage
  - Adjustment
focusColumns:
  ServiceName: Unreal Speech
  ServiceCategory: AI and Machine Learning
  ProviderName: Unreal Speech
  PublisherName: Unreal Speech
  InvoiceIssuerName: Unreal Speech
  BillingCurrency: USD
  ChargeCategory: Usage
  PricingCategory: Usage-Based
meters:
- name: characters_synthesized
  description: Characters of text synthesized to speech, metered monthly against the plan allowance and billed as overage beyond it.
  unit: characters
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - account
  - endpoint
  - voice
- name: plan_subscription
  description: Fixed monthly subscription fee for the selected plan tier.
  unit: subscription
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - account
- name: overage_characters
  description: Characters synthesized beyond the plan's included monthly allowance, billed per million.
  unit: characters
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - account
principles:
- name: Visibility
  description: Track characters synthesized per endpoint and voice; convert to minutes of audio (~750 characters per minute) to relate spend to output.
- name: Allocation
  description: Attribute character consumption to workloads or teams by API key/account so TTS spend maps to internal cost centers.
- name: Optimization
  description: Right-size the plan tier to actual monthly character volume; use /synthesisTasks for long-form to batch cost-effectively; trim or cache repeated text to avoid re-synthesizing the same content; select bitrate no higher than needed.
- name: Accountability
  description: Assign an owner per account/key and review monthly character usage against the plan allowance to avoid overage surprises.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com