Amazon Polly

Amazon Polly is the AWS text-to-speech service, with standard, neural, long-form and generative engines, SSML control, speech marks for subtitles, and per-character billing. It is the one hyperscaler that labels voices "Arabic (Gulf)": Hala, launched in November 2022, and Zayd, from August 2023, both neural, filed under the UAE locale and described by Amazon as fully bilingual between Gulf Arabic and English. Zeina is the older standard-engine voice for formal Arabic. Neither the generative nor the long-form engine had an Arabic voice as of the October 2026 documentation. Polly runs in Bahrain, but neural voices are not offered there, so Hala and Zayd are served from outside the Gulf; the UAE is not a Polly region. Pricing in November 2026: $4 per million characters for standard voices and $16 for neural, which is what the two Gulf voices cost; the free tier covers five million standard and one million neural characters monthly in the first year.