Text to speech · 日本語
Japanese text to speech (音声読み上げ) reads Japanese written in its usual mix of kanji, hiragana and katakana aloud, in the polite keigo customers expect, with Mei, a native Japanese voice. Play it free below with no login, then use the same voice through the API. 日本語を入力して、すぐに聞いてみてください。
Sonexクリニックです。十月二十八日、午後三時のご予約を確認いたしました。前日にSMSでリマインダーをお送りしますので、ご変更の際はメッセージ内のURLからお手続きください。
Voices
Free to play in your browser without an account, up to 220 characters at a time. To save the audio as a file, sign up free for 10,000 characters and one voice clone, no card required: the dashboard saves WAV and the API returns MP3.
Making a video? See AI voice-over for YouTube and Reels. The audio is yours to use on monetised channels.
Last verified 24 October 2026
Mei, a native Japanese platform voice, reads the playground above. Any Sonex Labs voice can also read Japanese, keeping its own accent, and a voice cloned from a 10-second recording of a Japanese speaker carries that speaker's accent.
Sign up free, then send Japanese text to the API with "output_format": "mp3" and save the file, or generate clips in the dashboard and download them. Scripts longer than the playground's 220 characters work the same way.
About Japanese
Japanese mixes three writing systems in one sentence: kanji for most nouns and verb stems, hiragana for grammar and endings, and katakana for loanwords such as キャンセル (cancel) and ポイント (points). Many kanji have several readings, so 今日 is きょう (today) but the same characters read こんにち in こんにちは. A voice has to choose the reading from context, which is the main reason Japanese speech synthesis goes wrong on names and numbers.
Register matters as much as reading. Customer service in Japan uses keigo, polite and humble forms such as お届けいたします and ご確認ください; casual speech on a support call would sound rude. Japanese has no spaces between words and uses its own punctuation (、。). Retail, delivery and travel companies place huge numbers of confirmation calls, and redelivery notices (再配達) alone are a familiar part of daily life. The samples here are read by Mei, a native Japanese platform voice.
Use cases
Couriers and online retailers announce delivery windows and redelivery options in polite Japanese.
Appointment confirmations and reminders for clinics, dentists and beauty salons, read in keigo.
Hotels, rail and airlines answer booking questions for Japanese travellers at home and abroad.
Commercial use
The full wording is in our terms of service.
YouTube
Yes, AI voices are allowed. What YouTube limits is mass-produced, repetitive content: videos made from a template with little original work. Its July 2025 update renamed that rule from “repetitious” to “inauthentic” content (YouTube’s monetisation policies).
Write your own script, add your own research or editing, and keep one consistent voice for the channel. Where a realistic AI voice could mislead viewers, use YouTube’s altered or synthetic content label. The monetisation decision is always YouTube’s.
Voice cloning
Clone your voice from a 10-second recording. Your clone speaks Japanese, and every other language Pāṇini supports, in your own voice. The language comes from the text you type, so a clone recorded in English or Hindi can read a Japanese script.
Your accent comes with it: a clone sounds like you speaking Japanese, not like a different native speaker. Every free account includes one voice clone. Clone only your own voice, or a voice whose owner has agreed.
API
One request returns Japanese audio as MP3. The language is detected from the text, so no language setting is needed. Pāṇini TTS starts streaming audio in under 200 ms (time to first byte).
1curl https://api.sonexlabs.com/v1/speech \2 --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' \3 --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \4 --data '{"text": "Sonexクリニックです。十月二十八日、午後三時のご予約を確認いたしました。前日にSMSでリマインダーをお送りしますので、ご変更の際はメッセージ内のURLからお手続きください。", "output_format": "mp3"}' \5 --output japanese.mp3FAQ
It chooses readings from context, as a native reader does. For personal names and unusual words whose reading is uncertain, write the reading in hiragana.
Yes. The playground on this page reads up to 220 characters of Japanese at a time with no account. Sign up free for 10,000 characters and one voice clone, no card; after that it costs $0.03125 per 1,000 characters.
Yes, after free sign-up. The playground on this page plays audio in your browser only, up to 220 characters at a time, so you can check the voice first. Sign up free (10,000 characters and one voice clone, no card): the dashboard saves each clip as a WAV file with Download audio, and the API returns MP3 when you set "output_format": "mp3".
Yes. Mei is a native Japanese voice. Any Sonex Labs voice can also speak Japanese, and you can clone your own from a 10-second sample.
It reads the register you write, so a script in polite keigo sounds polite; the playground text on this page is an example.
$0.03125 per 1,000 characters, the same as every language.
Yes. Audio you generate, on the free tier or with paid credits, can be used on monetised YouTube channels, Shorts, Reels and in ads, with no attribution. YouTube limits mass-produced, repetitive videos, not AI voices, so write your own script and keep your edits original. The monetisation decision is YouTube's.
The audio you generate is yours to use, including commercially, with no attribution and no royalties to Sonex Labs. You are responsible for the script itself: if you read someone else's text, you need their permission.
Yes. A Sonex voice clone is not tied to the language it was recorded in. Type a Japanese script and your clone reads it in your own voice, with Japanese pronunciation. Your natural accent carries over, so it sounds like you speaking Japanese.
More languages
See text to speech in every language, the full list of 250+ languages, pricing, the Pāṇini TTS API, or transcribe Japanese audio with Valmiki speech to text.
10,000 free text-to-speech characters and one free voice clone that speaks every language, no card required. Every language is billed at the same rate.