Get started with Cloud Text-to-Speech

Cloud Text-to-Speech is an API that is powered by Google's artificial intelligence (AI) technology. You send your transcript data to Cloud Text-to-Speech in an API call, then receive natural-sounding, synthetic human speech as playable audio in response. For more information on how Cloud Text-to-Speech works, see the basics page.

This guide walks you through the steps necessary to start sending requests to the Cloud Text-to-Speech API. See the code samples section for examples of how to make a request to the API and receive a response, or learn how to use these samples by following the Cloud Text-to-Speech quickstarts and how-to guides .

Enable the Cloud Text-to-Speech API

Before you can begin using Cloud Text-to-Speech, you must enable the API in the Google Cloud console:

Sign in to the Google Cloud console .
Open the project selector page and either choose an existing project or create a new one. For details about creating a project, see the Google Cloud documentation .
If you create a new project, you will be prompted to link a billing account to this project. If you are using a pre-existing project, make sure that you have billing enabled.

Learn how to confirm that billing is enabled for your project

Note: You must enable billing to use Cloud Text-to-Speech API; however, you won't be charged unless you exceed the free quota. See our pricing page for more details.
Once you have selected a project and linked it to a billing account, you can enable the Cloud Text-to-Speech API. Go to the Search products and resourcesbar at the top of the page and type in "speech". Select the Cloud Text-to-Speech APIfrom the list of results.
To try Cloud Text-to-Speech without linking it to your project, choose the Try this appoption. To enable the Cloud Text-to-Speech API for use with your project, click Enable.
Set up authentication for your development environment. For instructions, see Set up authentication for Cloud Text-to-Speech .

Disable the Cloud Text-to-Speech API

To disable the Cloud Text-to-Speech API, navigate to your Google Cloud dashboard and click the Go to APIs overviewlink in the APIsbox. Click Cloud Text-to-Speech API, then click the Disable APIbutton at the top of the page.

What's next

Learn how to send a transcription request to the Cloud Text-to-Speech API using client libraries or the command line .