Per-character pricing, run against flat lines.

This is a lab report on a pricing model, not on a vendor. Published character meters run $30 to $100 per million characters, a spoken minute is about 1,000 characters, and a flat line here is $150 a month. Four workloads through both models, arithmetic shown.

5,000 min

break-even against the cheapest published meter

The crossing, drawn

One month of one line, both models on the same axes. The meter is a wedge, because published rates span $30 to $100 per million characters; the line is a horizontal at $150. Where your traffic sits against the crossing window is the whole decision.

Fig. — One line, one month — meter wedge vs flat line

Meter cost = minutes × 1,000 chars × rate ÷ 1M, at the published $30–$100 range (July 2026). The flat line crosses the cheapest meter near 5,000 spoken minutes and the priciest near 1,500.

The arithmetic

Every cell is one multiplication — check any of them. The first row is the meter winning, and our own reminders page says to take it.

Table 1 — Four workloads, one month, both models

Workload	Minutes / mo	On the meter	Gandr flat
Reminders only	2,000	$60 – $200	$150
Support desk line	8,000	$240 – $800	$150
Outbound, 6 h / day	10,800	$324 – $1,080	$150
24/7 receptionist	43,200	$1,296 – $4,320	$150

Run it on your own traffic

Pull one month of talk time from your telephony logs, multiply by 1,000 characters and your meter rate, and set it beside line count times $150. If the meter side is smaller, keep the meter — this report is arithmetic, not advocacy. If it is larger, the 30-minute call reruns the numbers with your own traffic on screen.

Related sheets.

glossary

$30–$100

TTS pricing: per character vs flat rate

The two ways speech synthesis is priced, what each one does to a voice product, and which side of the break-even your workload sits on.

capability

$10

Burst lines: capacity priced by the day

Traffic past your committed lines spills to burst lines at $10 a line-day, capped in your dashboard — capacity for spike days without paying for them all year.

use case

10,800 min

TTS for outbound sales agents

Outbound dialers talk six hours a day per line. That is 10,800 minutes a month — $324 to $1,080 on a character meter, $150 on a flat line.

Bring the invoice this report is about — the call reruns the table with your traffic on screen.

Hold us to these numbers on a call