Unreal Speech

Unreal Speech is a text-to-speech API aimed at developers who need to turn written text into spoken audio programmatically rather than through a consumer-facing app. It converts text via REST and websocket endpoints, with streaming synthesis starting in roughly 300 milliseconds and support for single requests generating up to 10 hours of audio. Voice output can include per-word or per-sentence timestamp data, which is useful for building synchronized captions, karaoke-style text highlighting, or accessibility features tied to playback position. The tool is built for engineering teams shipping audio at volume: audiobook and e-reading platforms, news and blog readers, IVR and phone systems, and e-learning tools that need narrated content generated automatically. A customer testimonial from the CEO of Listening.com describes processing over 10,000 pages per hour through the service, which signals the product is oriented toward production throughput rather than one-off narration. In practice, integration happens through one of four endpoints chosen by text length and latency needs: /stream for short clips returned almost instantly, /speech for medium-length text with timestamp URLs, /synthesisTasks for asynchronous jobs up to 500,000 characters, and a /streamWithTimestamps websocket for real-time word-level timing during playback. Developers select from 48 voices across up to nine languages, and can adjust speed, pitch, bitrate, and output format, including standard MP3, phone-call optimized audio, and PCM mu-law. Official SDKs cover Python, Node.js, and React Native, with sample code provided for each endpoint and a GitHub repository demonstrating word-highlighting playback. Unreal Speech positions itself squarely on cost and throughput against Amazon Polly, Microsoft, Google, ElevenLabs, and Play.ht, publishing its own price and quality comparisons across fiction, non-fiction, and conversational text. For teams already invested in a premium voice-cloning service for highly expressive narration, this tool reads more as a cost-optimized production alternative than a creative playground; a 250,000-character free allotment and a live demo let teams sample voice quality before adopting it for larger workloads.