Amazon Lex review

Amazon Lex is the low-cost, build-it-yourself option for teams on AWS. It is a fully managed service for voice and text conversational interfaces, built on the same speech recognition and language understanding technology as Alexa, with multi-turn context and 8 kHz telephony audio for contact center calls. Back-end logic runs in AWS Lambda, and Lex connects to Amazon Bedrock, Polly and Kendra, plus Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud CX and the Amazon Chime SDK. Generative features include conversational FAQ, assisted slot resolution, a descriptive bot builder and sample utterance generation, and an automated chatbot designer can draft a bot from call transcripts. Pricing is per request: $0.00075 per text request and $0.004 per speech request, while streaming conversations cost $0.0065 per 15-second speech interval and $0.0020 per text request. The V2 documentation lists more than 60 languages and locales. You assemble channels, analytics and knowledge yourself, so budget engineering time instead of license fees.

Who it is for

AWS customers, especially Amazon Connect contact centers, that want low per-request costs and developer control.

Price

Pay per request: $0.00075 per text request and $0.004 per speech request; streaming conversations cost more.

2,000 text requests $0.00075
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 7, 2026.

Key features

• Speech recognition and natural language understanding with multi-turn context
• 8 kHz telephony audio support for contact center calls
• Generative AI features: conversational FAQ, assisted slot resolution and descriptive bot builder
• Automated chatbot designer that builds bots from transcripts
• AWS Lambda for back-end business logic, with pre-built dashboards for metrics

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: Lowest published request price in this list
• Strength: Native fit with Amazon Connect and Genesys Cloud CX
• Strength: New AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits
• Weakness: Developer service with no prebuilt business templates
• Weakness: Analytics and channel setup rely on other AWS services
• Weakness: Streaming voice is billed per 15-second interval, including silence

Key facts

• Text request: $0.00075
• Speech request: $0.004
• Streaming speech: $0.0065 per 15-second interval

Where it ranks

Amazon Lex is No. 6 in our Best Conversational AI Platforms verdict.