# Paxa TTS Flash now costs a third less

From October 1, Paxa TTS Flash costs 10 credits per 1,000 characters, after a September that brought transcription, Document Extraction, Mandarin Chinese, and emotion tags.

Published 2026-10-01. Paxa Labs.

On August 3 we opened our first public API, one speech model that read Thai and English. Eight weeks later Paxa Labs runs 4 product lines on 7 models, more than 800 accounts have signed up, and more than 20 updates have shipped across the platform and the models.

## Speech costs a third less

From October 1, Paxa TTS Flash costs 10 credits per 1,000 characters, which is $10 per million characters. Until September 30 the rate was 15 credits, or $15 per million.

The new rate applies to every speech request, whichever way it arrives: `POST /v1/tts`, the OpenAI-compatible `POST /v1/audio/speech`, the [live socket](https://paxalabs.com/docs/live-streaming), and the Speech tool in the console. Requests with timestamps and live streaming sessions cost a third less as well. The model id, the voices, and the request format stay the same, and no code needs to change.

Credits already in a balance or a plan keep their value and now voice 50 percent more text. A $10 refill pack voiced about 18 hours of Thai speech at the old rate. It voices about 27 hours now.

| Credits | Characters from October 1 | Characters until September 30 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 100 free credits on a new account | 10,000 | 6,666 |
| $10 refill pack, 10,000 credits | 1,000,000 | 666,000 |
| $6 monthly plan, 8,100 credits | 810,000 | 540,000 |
| $21 monthly plan, 25,200 credits | 2,520,000 | 1,680,000 |
| $99 monthly plan, 110,000 credits | 11,000,000 | 7,333,000 |

Most of September went into optimizing speech. The new price is the result, and it applies to every account from the first request.

## What shipped in September

Paxa TTS Flash was the only model when the API opened. Since then 6 more have shipped, most of them in September.

### Transcription, recorded and realtime

Paxa STT Lite opened on September 9 as a research preview. It transcribes Thai and English recordings through `POST /v1/stt`, word for word in the language spoken, with timestamps that cover whole Thai words. Speakers are numbered, and a vocabulary of up to 50 terms keeps names and product terms spelled the way you write them. It costs 8.33 credits per minute of audio.

A day later the same endpoint began returning subtitles as SRT or VTT files. Cues break at a change of speaker, at the end of a sentence, and at a pause, and a Thai line breaks only between words.

On September 23, [Paxa STT Lite Realtime](https://paxalabs.com/blog/realtime-transcription-for-thai-voice-agents) added transcription while the speaker is still talking. It takes audio over a WebSocket and detects the end of each turn itself, which tells a voice agent when to answer. It costs 12.5 credits per minute of audio received.

### Paxa Document Extraction

[Paxa Document Extraction](https://paxalabs.com/document-extraction) shipped on September 12. You send a PDF or an image with a JSON schema of the fields you need, such as an invoice number, a date, and the line items. The schema comes back filled in. Each value is the text printed on the page, or null with the reason it is missing.

A page costs 13 credits for a schema of up to 50 leaf fields and 19.5 for a larger one, with the reading of the page included.

### Mandarin Chinese, emotion tags, and a language setting

On September 14, Paxa TTS Flash [began reading Mandarin Chinese](https://paxalabs.com/blog/mandarin-chinese-and-six-new-voices) from Simplified script beside Thai and English. Six voices joined the roster that day, two for each language.

On September 25, [two experimental voices](https://paxalabs.com/blog/emotion-tags-for-thai-speech), Khanom Chan and Kaprao, began reading emotion tags written into the text. There are 26 tags, such as `[happy]` and `[furious]`, and a weight such as `[sad:0.5]` sets how strongly a tag lands. The roster now holds 34 voices.

On October 1, every speech request gained a language setting. Set it to the language the text is written in, and numbers, symbols, and codes such as AB2039 are read the way that language reads them. Auto, the default, works the language out from the text.

Earlier in September, the live socket gained a cancel message that stops a reply mid-sentence. An assistant can now stop talking the moment its user talks over it.

### Tools for developers and agents

The [MCP server](https://paxalabs.com/docs/mcp), `@paxalabs/mcp`, gives Claude Code, Cursor, and other MCP clients the API as tools. They can speak through the computer's speakers, save speech to a file, translate into Thai, and read documents with OCR.

[Feedback](https://paxalabs.com/docs/api/feedback) now goes through the API as well. `POST /v1/feedback` reports a wrong output or an API problem against the request ids it names, and `GET /v1/feedback` lists each report with its status and a note from our team.

## Time to first audio

The time a request takes to return its first audio is the delay a listener notices first in a voice agent or a live reply. [A measured run of the public API](https://paxalabs.com/blog/tts-latency-singapore-bangkok) from Singapore and Bangkok records it, with its date, client locations, and request shapes.

## Independent benchmarks

[Speko's multilingual text to speech benchmark](https://benchmarks.speko.ai/tts-multilingual?lang=th) includes Paxa TTS Flash on its Thai board. Speko runs the board and publishes its method beside the results.

## Try it at the new rate

The new rate is live on every account. The 100 free credits on a new account now voice 10,000 characters, about 16 minutes of Thai speech, in the Speech tool or through the API. [Pricing](https://paxalabs.com/pricing) lists every rate and plan, and the [changelog](https://paxalabs.com/docs/changelog) dates each release.