Cartesia
The speed specialist whose fast, natural speech is what keeps a live phone agent feeling real rather than laggy.
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Scored on the same voice-agent rubric as the full platforms, so a building block like this scores low on the axes it does not address. Read its value score against its job.
See how it stacks up · Full rankings →The fast one. Cartesia's pitch is answering almost instantly, so calls feel natural, and the same engine is one of the cheapest ways to record narration. Fewer voices than the big libraries, but quick and cheap. Strong if speed or narration cost is what matters.
About $0.08 to 0.15 for a minute of conversation, once the phone line and the AI are added in.
That's roughly $4.80–9.00 an hour. Plans: from $0/mo (Free) up to $299/mo (Scale).
Pricing
Show the cost breakdown
| What the platform charges to run the agent, before the phone line and the AI usage are added on. | $0.06 /min |
|---|---|
| The step that turns what the caller says out loud into text the AI can read. | — |
| The AI 'brain' that reads what the caller said and works out what to say back. | $0.01 /min |
| The step that turns the AI's written reply back into a spoken voice. | — |
| The phone line itself: the service that connects the call to a real phone number. Usually billed on top of the platform. | $0.01 /min |
| The total you actually pay for one minute of conversation once every piece is added up: the platform, the AI, the voice and the phone line. | $0.08–0.15 /min |
Agent calls are billed at $0.06/min on the Pro through Scale tiers, with telephony at $0.014/min on a Cartesia number; bring your own AI model (about $0.01/min) for a realistic $0.08 to 0.15 all-in. The voice-agent product is now named Line (re-captured 2026-07-23), and each tier bundles prepaid agent dollars equal to its subscription price ($1 Free / $5 Pro / $49 Startup / $299 Scale per month). 'LLM usage during calls: free for UI-created agents for a limited time' is a promo, so we keep the ~$0.01/min BYO-model estimate, and evaluations are also free for a limited time. The Sonic text-to-speech is metered in credits; the page's '15 credits per second' line is the VOICE CHANGER rate, and the plan cards' own maths implies about 750 credits per generated minute of TTS (100K credits is roughly 133 minutes on Pro, 1.25M roughly 1,667 on Startup, 8M roughly 10,667 on Scale). Cartesia no longer lists a flat per-character rate, so the roughly $0.035 per 1,000 characters here is a derived effective figure, not a directly published price (plan-implied effective TTS cost sits near $0.028 to 0.042 per minute by tier), and it still makes Cartesia one of the cheaper narration options. Standing subscription tiers: Free, Pro $5/mo, Startup $49/mo, Scale $299/mo, Enterprise custom (Pro and Startup rose from the $4/$39 recorded on 2026-06-15, and no annual toggle now shows; included credits are Free 20K, Pro 100K, Startup 1.25M, Scale 8M per month). Voice-agent concurrency runs 8/12/20/60 calls by tier with 1/3/5/10 agent slots. Speech-to-text (Ink-2) is bundled into the agent rate. Sonic now covers 42 languages. The public voice count is no longer stated as a single total. SOC 2 and HIPAA are advertised for Enterprise (whose card now also lists DPAs and BAAs, SSO and security questionnaires) but are not yet verified here from a primary certification source.
Every plan in one place: the monthly fee, what each one includes, and the features it unlocks. Anything beyond a plan's allowance, or on a pay-as-you-go tier, is billed at the per-minute rate above. A blank in the features means the vendor's plan page does not state it for that plan, not that it is unavailable.
| Free | Pro | Startup | Scale | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $5/mo | $49/mo | $299/mo | Custom |
| Included | Pay per use | — | — | — | — |
| What each plan unlocks | |||||
| Commercial licence | — | Yes | — | — | — |
| Voice cloning | No | Instant | Professional | — | — |
| Concurrent calls | 2 TTS / 8 STT streams | 3 TTS / 12 STT streams | 5 TTS / 20 STT streams | 15 TTS / 60 STT streams | Custom |
| Team seats | — | — | Team workspace | — | — |
| Priority support | — | — | — | Priority | Shared Slack channel |
- Free FreePay per use
- Commercial licence
- —
- Voice cloning
- No
- Concurrent calls
- 2 TTS / 8 STT streams
- Team seats
- —
- Priority support
- —
- Pro $5/mo—
- Commercial licence
- Yes
- Voice cloning
- Instant
- Concurrent calls
- 3 TTS / 12 STT streams
- Team seats
- —
- Priority support
- —
- Startup $49/mo—
- Commercial licence
- —
- Voice cloning
- Professional
- Concurrent calls
- 5 TTS / 20 STT streams
- Team seats
- Team workspace
- Priority support
- —
- Scale $299/mo—
- Commercial licence
- —
- Voice cloning
- —
- Concurrent calls
- 15 TTS / 60 STT streams
- Team seats
- —
- Priority support
- Priority
- Enterprise Custom—
- Commercial licence
- —
- Voice cloning
- —
- Concurrent calls
- Custom
- Team seats
- —
- Priority support
- Shared Slack channel
Prices in USD as set by the vendor · last checked 2026-07-30 · vendor pricing →
Slide your expected monthly volume to see roughly what Cartesia would cost.
A rough estimate from Cartesia's sourced rates, not a quote. Always confirm on the vendor's own pricing page before you commit.
At a glance
- Speech-to-text
- Cartesia Ink
- Text-to-speech
- Cartesia Sonic · Bring your own voice: you can upload or clone a custom voice instead of being limited to the platform's stock ones.
- Languages
- en, es, fr, de, pt, hi
- Integrations
- Twilio, SIP trunk providers, LiveKit, Pipecat, Native SDKs (web/mobile)
Compliance
Our full take
Cartesia is the platform you reach for when speed is the thing you cannot compromise on. Its Sonic voice engine is built around a single claim, that speech starts in under 100 milliseconds, and in other people’s tests it is one of the few that consistently lands there. If you have ever heard a phone agent stumble over an awkward pause before it answers, that pause is exactly what Cartesia is built to remove.
The pricing is refreshingly clear. Agent calls, now sold under Cartesia’s Line product, run $0.06 a minute on the Pro tier and up, the phone line adds $0.014 a minute on a Cartesia number, and you supply your own AI model (about $0.01 a minute), so a realistic all-in sits around $0.08 to 0.15. Each tier bundles prepaid agent usage equal to its subscription price (the $49 Startup plan includes $49 of agent dollars a month), and at our 23 July 2026 capture the language-model cost was free for agents built in Cartesia’s UI, labelled a limited-time offer, which is why we still budget the model at about a cent a minute. The subscription tiers (Free, then $5, $49 and $299 a month) mostly buy you more monthly minutes rather than different features.
What is easy to miss is that the same Sonic engine makes Cartesia a genuinely cheap option for narration. Cartesia now meters this in credits rather than a flat per-character price (about 750 credits per generated minute by the plan cards’ own arithmetic; the 15-credits-a-second figure on the page belongs to the voice changer), but worked back it is roughly $0.035 per 1,000 characters, about a third of what the premium narration platforms charge. The voice library is smaller (around 100 voices across 42 languages, against ElevenLabs’ thousands), but cloning a voice needs only a three-second clip, so for a branded read you are not stuck with the stock set.
On compliance, Cartesia advertises SOC 2 and HIPAA on its enterprise tier, but we have not yet linked those to a primary certificate, so this page leaves them unticked. If you are in a regulated industry, get the paperwork in writing before you build.
The 1–10 scores and the latency figure on this page are an editorial preview, not a measured result. We have not run Cartesia through our own listening or call tests yet. The pricing and capability detail is sourced from Cartesia’s pricing and Sonic pages, first captured 2026-05-30 and most recently re-captured 2026-07-23.
Cartesia compared
Our in-depth pieces that put Cartesia side by side with the field, with the sourced numbers and a clear pick.
Alternatives to Cartesia
Other platforms that overlap with Cartesia on the same kind of work, ranked by how many capabilities they share, then by cheaper all-in cost per minute. Compare any of them side by side on the compare page.
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Sources
- Re-verified 2026-07-30 (screenshot in evidence/): pricing page re-captured and diffed against the 2026-07-23 capture; no change to any rate, tier or plan figure. · captured 2026-07-30
- Re-captured 2026-07-23 (screenshot in evidence/): tiers (Free / Pro $5 / Startup $49 / Scale $299 / Enterprise custom), $0.06/min call rate and $0.014/min Cartesia-number telephony all unchanged; the page is restructured around the Line voice-agent product with prepaid agent dollars equal to each tier's price ($1/$5/$49/$299 per month); 'LLM usage during calls: free for UI-created agents for a limited time' and evaluations 'free of charge for a limited time' (promos); the '15 credits per second' line applies to the voice changer, while plan-card maths implies about 750 credits per generated TTS minute (100K ≈ 133 min, 1.25M ≈ 1,667, 8M ≈ 10,667); voice-agent concurrency 8/12/20/60 by tier with 1/3/5/10 agent slots; the Enterprise card adds DPAs and BAAs, SSO and security questionnaires (advertised, no certificate). · captured 2026-07-23
- Re-captured 2026-07-11 (screenshot in evidence/): Pro $5/mo and Startup $49/mo (up from $4/$39; no annual toggle shown), Scale $299 unchanged; included credits Pro 100K / Startup 1.25M / Scale 8M per month; agent calls $0.06/min and Cartesia-number telephony $0.014/min unchanged. · captured 2026-07-11
- Cartesia pricing page re-captured 2026-06-15: standing tiers Pro $4 / Startup $39 / Scale $299 (the stored $239 was the annual-billing monthly equivalent; a $224 promo also runs); pricing now metered in credits, no flat per-character TTS rate published; Sonic-3.5 + STT Ink-2. · captured 2026-06-15
- Cartesia pricing page re-captured 2026-06-02 for the quarterly re-verification; pricing reviewed against the live page (screenshot in evidence/). · captured 2026-06-02
- Cartesia plan page: per-plan feature matrix (concurrency, voice cloning, commercial licence, support) · captured 2026-05-31
- Cartesia pricing page: tiers, $0.06/min agent, $0.014/min telephony · captured 2026-05-30
- Cartesia Sonic: sub-100ms latency, 100+ voices, 40+ languages, model versions · captured 2026-05-30
- Cartesia voice library and instant voice cloning · captured 2026-05-30
- Sonic pricing breakdown: one credit per character, ~$35 per million characters · captured 2026-05-30