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Amazon Polly - Runbook & Reference

中文 · GitHub source Facts verified against official AWS documentation: 2026-08-19

Overview

Amazon Polly is a cloud service that converts text into lifelike speech (text-to-speech, TTS). It supports multiple languages and voices, including generative, long-form, neural, and standard voices. You pay only for the text you synthesize, and you can cache and replay generated speech at no additional cost. Polly is HIPAA-eligible and PCI DSS certified for regulated workloads.

Key concepts

  • Voices: generative (most natural, supports long-form narration), neural, and standard voices across many languages; neural TTS includes a Newscaster speaking style for news narration.
  • Speech marks: timestamps/word boundaries for synchronizing speech with content (for example, karaoke-style apps).
  • SSML: Speech Synthesis Markup Language for controlling pronunciation, pauses, emphasis, and speaking rate.
  • Lexicons: custom pronunciation dictionaries (for example, brand names and acronyms).
  • Synthesis: synchronous synthesize-speech for short text, asynchronous tasks (start-speech-synthesis-task) for longer text; supports MP3, OGG, and PCM formats.
  • Use cases: newsreaders, eLearning, games, accessibility apps, IoT voice responses, IVR.

Common operations (AWS CLI)

# Synthesize speech (default voice)
aws polly synthesize-speech --output-format mp3 \
  --voice-id Joanna --text "Hello, welcome to our service." speech.mp3

# List voices and lexicons
aws polly describe-voices --language-code en-US
aws polly list-lexicons

# Async synthesis for longer text
aws polly start-speech-synthesis-task --output-format mp3 \
  --voice-id Matthew --text file://long-text.txt \
  --output-s3-bucket-name audio-bucket
aws polly get-speech-synthesis-task --task-id <task-id>

# Use SSML for control
aws polly synthesize-speech --output-format mp3 --voice-id Amy \
  --text-type ssml --text '<speak>Pause <break time="500ms"/> now.</speak>' out.mp3

Best practices

  • Choose neural or generative voices for customer-facing audio; standard voices only for low-cost needs.
  • Use SSML and lexicons to control pronunciation of product names and acronyms.
  • Cache generated audio (S3/CloudFront) to avoid re-synthesizing the same content.
  • Use async synthesis tasks for long-form content and monitor task status.
  • For compliance workloads, confirm HIPAA/PCI requirements and encrypt audio at rest.
  • Review voice licensing and usage notes in the service documentation for commercial distribution.

Troubleshooting

Symptom Checks and fixes
Synthesize fails Check the voice ID, language, text length, and output format.
Pronunciation wrong Add a lexicon or use SSML phoneme tags.
Long text error Use start-speech-synthesis-task instead of synchronous synthesis.
Audio not generated for task Verify the S3 bucket policy and task status; check output path.
Voice unavailable for language Confirm the voice supports the requested language/locale.

Limits

Characters per request, concurrent synthesis requests, lexicons per account, and task quotas apply. See the Amazon Polly endpoints and quotas page and Service Quotas console for current values.

Official references