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Updated in 2026.4 Speech services integrate Speech-to-Text (STT) or Text-to-Speech (TTS) vendors in the Voice Gateway Self-Service Portal. To ensure the AI Agent gets a voice, a speech service must be selected within the Application. By connecting with a speech vendor of your choice, you can select between multiple voices, genders, accents, and languages. You can add multiple speech vendors to the Voice Gateway Self-Service Portal, or install multiple configurations of one speech vendor, to quickly switch between different setups. Voice Gateway supports the following speech vendor configurations: For the list of supported vendors and their Speech-To-Text and Text-To-Speech capabilities, see the TTS and STT Vendors reference. If you need to create multiple speech services from the same vendor, use the Label field to create a unique speech service. After creating a speech service, you can edit or delete it. If you have an Account scope, you can only edit speech services you have created, as well as speech services created by other users with the same scope. You can still use and view speech services shared by Service providers or Admins.
Voice Gateway speech services page listing configured TTS and STT vendors

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Cloud-Based Speech Services

To configure the connection for a cloud-based speech service:
  1. In the left-side menu of the Voice Gateway Self-Service Portal, select Speech.
  2. Click Add Speech Service and select your preferred vendor.
  3. Select the account you want to use it with.
  4. (Optional) If you need to create multiple speech services from the same vendor, use the Label field to create a unique speech service.
  5. Select Speech-To-Text, Text-To-Speech or both, depending on your use case.
  6. Follow further instructions according to your selected vendor:
  1. Make sure you have set the following IAM policies:
To use Amazon Polly as a TTS service, you need at least the following IAM policy:
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "polly:SynthesizeSpeech",
        "polly:DescribeVoices"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}
Where:
  • polly:SynthesizeSpeech — allows the service to synthesize speech.
  • polly:DescribeVoices — allows the service to list the available voices.
  • * — allows the service to access all resources. AWS doesn’t support resource-level restrictions.
Voice Gateway uses real-time streaming transcription for speech recognition. To use Amazon Polly’s speech services, you need to configure Amazon Transcribe’s STT policy to allow real-time streaming transcription. To do so, configure at least the following IAM policies:
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "transcribe:StartStreamTranscription",
        "transcribe:StartStreamTranscriptionWebSocket"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}
Where:
  • transcribe:StartStreamTranscription — allows the service to start a real-time streaming transcription.
  • transcribe:StartStreamTranscriptionWebSocket — allows the service to start a real-time streaming transcription via WebSocket.
  • * — allows the service to access all resources. AWS doesn’t support resource-level restrictions.
  1. Enter the Access Key in the Access key ID field. For more information on AWS Access Keys, read the Amazon AWS documentation.
  2. Enter the Secret Access Key in the Secret access key field.
  3. Select a region from the Region list.
Save your changes by clicking Save. Once you have created a speech service, add this service to the Application.

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On-Premises Speech Services

  1. In the left-side menu of the Voice Gateway Self-Service Portal, select Speech.
  2. Click Add Speech Service and select your preferred vendor.
  3. Select the account you want to use it with.
  4. (Optional) If you need to create multiple speech services from the same vendor, use the Label field to create a unique speech service.
  5. Select Speech-To-Text, Text-To-Speech or both, depending on your use case.
  6. Follow further instructions according to your selected vendor:
  1. Select Use on-prem Deepgram container.
  2. Enter the container URI for TTS in the Container URI field.
  3. Select Use TLS, if required.
Save your changes by clicking Save. Once you have created a speech service, add this service to the Application.

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Add Custom Speech Vendors

If the desired vendor is not included in the list of preinstalled vendors, or if you want to modify the configuration of an existing one, you can add a custom vendor. Before adding a vendor to the Voice Gateway, you need to create it. To do this, use the custom-speech-example template on GitHub. Using the same template, you can customize vendors that are provided in it as examples, such as Google, AssemblyAI, and Vosk, or create a new one. After you have created the custom provider, deploy it on a server, for example, in the AWS Cloud, then copy the address of the custom provider for use in the Voice Gateway. To add a custom speech vendor, follow these steps:
  1. In the left-side menu of the Voice Gateway Self-Service Portal, select Speech.
  2. On the Speech services page, click Add speech service.
  3. On the Add a speech service page, select Custom from the Vendor list.
  4. In the Name field, specify a unique name for your provider. You need to reuse this name in the Node configuration.
  5. From the Account list, select a specific account or leave the All accounts value if you want the custom speech provider to be available for all accounts.
  6. In the Label field, create a label only if you need to create multiple speech services from the same vendor. Then, in your application, use the label to specify which service to use.
  7. Activate the Use for text-to-speech setting to use this provider as a TTS vendor. Enter the TTS HTTP URL of the server where your custom vendor is deployed.
  8. Activate the Use for speech-to-text setting to use this provider as an STT vendor. Enter the STT WebSocket URL of the server where your custom vendor is deployed.
  9. In the Authentication Token field, enter the key that you get from your TTS or STT vendor to set up a connection.
  10. Click Save.
To start using your speech provider, you need to specify the provider name in the Custom parameter of the relevant Nodes, such as Set Session Config, Say, Question or Optional Question, or Session Speech Parameters Config.

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More Information

1: The EU environment is isolated, and custom voices aren’t available in it by default. To use custom voices in the EU environment, you need to share them from non-isolated environments. For more information on sharing resources from non-isolated environments, read the respective instructions in the ElevenLabs documentation.