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Amazon Polly vs Deepgram comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Deepgram
Ranking in Text-To-Speech Services
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Speech-To-Text Services (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

SB
Helps modify text-to-speech by controlling speech patterns, but putting more tags gives an error
We can play text-to-speech when we need to play some prompts inside Amazon Connect. Any number we provide will be played as digits when we play text-to-speech. By using SSML tags in a conversational manner in Amazon Polly, we can convert those digits into numbers. We can use the SSML tags in Amazon Polly to modify text-to-speech by controlling speech patterns and behaviour.
Ariel Lindenfeld - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."
"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."
"The solution does not properly identify the number of speakers."
"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 area of live transcription could be improved. Sometimes, Deepgram's WebSocket is disposed due to redundancy."
"Deepgram is currently restricted to only the English variants, but it should include other languages, such as German or French."
 

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."
"Deepgram is a cheap solution."
"The solution’s pricing is cheap."
"When using Deepgram, one needs to pay for the hours or minutes for which the transcription is needed."
"The pricing is moderate."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Polly?
The solution has a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you must pay according to your usage.
What needs improvement with Amazon Polly?
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.
What is your primary use case for Amazon Polly?
We use Amazon Polly to check the SSML tags to see how they play the prompt.
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?
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 issu...
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.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GoAnimate, Duolingo, Bandwidth
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Polly vs. Deepgram and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.