Cartesia
The speed specialist whose fast, natural speech is what keeps a live phone agent feeling real rather than laggy.
Paid link, we may earn a commission. How this works.
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 $239/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 Sonic text-to-speech that powers it is metered at one credit per character, roughly $0.035 per 1,000 characters effective, which makes it one of the cheaper options for narration as well as agents. Subscription tiers: Free, Pro $4/mo, Startup $39/mo, Scale $239/mo, Enterprise custom. Speech-to-text (Ink) is bundled into the agent rate. SOC 2 and HIPAA are advertised for Enterprise 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 | $4/mo | $39/mo | $239/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 $4/mo—
- Commercial licence
- Yes
- Voice cloning
- Instant
- Concurrent calls
- 3 TTS / 12 STT streams
- Team seats
- —
- Priority support
- —
- Startup $39/mo—
- Commercial licence
- —
- Voice cloning
- Professional
- Concurrent calls
- 5 TTS / 20 STT streams
- Team seats
- Team workspace
- Priority support
- —
- Scale $239/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 2026-06-03 · 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 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. The subscription tiers (Free, then $4, $39 and $239 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. Turning text into speech costs one credit per character, which works out at 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 40-odd 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, captured 2026-05-30.
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.
Tracking Cartesia? Get the next test result
We re-test and re-price the platforms we cover. Join the list and the next dated update lands in your inbox.
Newsletter launching soon.
Sources
- 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