Every API request is authenticated with an API key and paid from your account's prepaid API credit. This guide gets you both, then makes your first request.
1. Create an account
Sign up
Create a free account at app.menavoice.ai with your email address or your Google account.
Switch to the Developer workspace
Click the workspace switcher under the logo at the top of the sidebar (it reads Creative) and choose Developer. This workspace holds your API keys, the API Playground and API billing.
The API is open to every account, including the Free plan. API requests are paid from API credit, not from your plan's monthly quota.
2. Add API credit
API requests cost $25 per million characters, paid from a prepaid balance that's separate from any subscription.
Open API Billing
In the Developer workspace, open API Billing.
Top up
Click Top Up, choose $10, $25, $50 or $100 (or enter any amount from $5 to $5,000) and pay by card. Your balance updates a few moments after the payment goes through.
$10 of credit covers about 400,000 characters of text to speech. Your total top-ups also raise how many requests you can run at once. See Rate Limits.
3. Create an API key
Open API Keys
In the Developer workspace, open API Keys and click Create API Key.
Name the key
Give it a name you'll recognize later, such as My App Backend, and click Create Key.
Copy it now
Your new key starts with mv_live_. Copy it and keep it somewhere safe: it's shown only once. MenaVoice stores only a hash of it and can't show it again.
Treat your API key like a password. Never commit it to source control or ship it in browser or mobile app code. Anyone who has it can spend your API credit.
You can have up to 10 keys. Use a separate key for each app and environment, so you can revoke one without breaking the others.
4. Set your API key
Keep the key in an environment variable so it never appears in your code:
export MENAVOICE_API_KEY="mv_live_your_key_here"$env:MENAVOICE_API_KEY = "mv_live_your_key_here"5. Make your first request
This request turns a line of Arabic into speech with the voice Layla and saves it as hello.mp3:
curl -X POST https://api.menavoice.ai/api/tts \
-H "x-api-key: $MENAVOICE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text": "مرحباً بكم في مينا فويس", "voiceId": "layla"}' \
| jq -r .audio | base64 --decode > hello.mp3import base64
import os
import requests
response = requests.post(
"https://api.menavoice.ai/api/tts",
headers={"x-api-key": os.environ["MENAVOICE_API_KEY"]},
json={"text": "مرحباً بكم في مينا فويس", "voiceId": "layla"},
timeout=120,
)
response.raise_for_status()
with open("hello.mp3", "wb") as f:
f.write(base64.b64decode(response.json()["audio"]))// Node.js 18+, saved as hello.mjs
import { writeFile } from "node:fs/promises";
const response = await fetch("https://api.menavoice.ai/api/tts", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"x-api-key": process.env.MENAVOICE_API_KEY,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
},
body: JSON.stringify({ text: "مرحباً بكم في مينا فويس", voiceId: "layla" }),
});
if (!response.ok) throw new Error((await response.json()).error);
const { audio } = await response.json();
await writeFile("hello.mp3", Buffer.from(audio, "base64"));Play hello.mp3 and you'll hear Layla say "Welcome to MenaVoice". The request cost 23 characters, about $0.0006.
Want to try it without writing code? The API Playground runs the same request from your browser, charges it to your API credit, and shows the matching cURL, Python and JavaScript.