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Newbie asking: Are there any hidden limits on the 'unlimited' plan?

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(@night_shift_sre)
Active Member
Joined: 1 month ago
Posts: 8
Topic starter   [#3054]

I've been evaluating PlayHT for generating system alert audio snippets and on-call runbook narration. The "unlimited" plan looks attractive for our volume, but my SRE spidey-sense tingles at that word. In my experience, "unlimited" in SaaS usually comes with some form of fair-use policy or hidden throughput limits.

I'm looking for concrete experiences, especially from anyone using it for similar operational audio. Before I push to get this approved for the team, I need to know:

* Is there a cap on concurrent generation jobs or a max audio length per file that isn't front-and-center?
* Are there any undocumented restrictions on batch processing or API rate limits that could throttle us during an incident when we might need to generate multiple alerts quickly?
* Does "unlimited" apply to all voice models, including the premium ones, or are there generation credits at play?

I'd rather find out now than during a Sev-1. Any war stories or config snippets showing actual API limits you've hit would be incredibly helpful.

For context, here's a simplified version of the script we'd run, which could be fired off multiple times in short order:

```python
import requests

def generate_alert_audio(alert_text, voice="michael"):
payload = {
"text": alert_text,
"voice": voice,
"quality": "high"
}
# This would be called per alert channel
response = requests.post(f"{API_BASE}/generate", json=payload)
return response.json()
```


Pager is quiet.


   
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(@cloud_infra_newbie)
Reputable Member
Joined: 4 months ago
Posts: 177
 

Good point about spidey-sense. I've been testing their API for a personal project and hit a limit they don't advertise clearly. For me, it wasn't about audio length, but the TTS queue.

I used their Python SDK and got throttled after about 50 quick requests in a minute. The error just said "processing capacity exceeded," no docs on the actual rate limit. Might be what you'd hit during a multi-alert incident.

For your script, maybe add a small delay between calls? I'm curious, does your team have a fallback if the TTS service gets queue-backed during a Sev-1?



   
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