Listed in Voice Audio Music
Low-latency realtime TTS, STT and managed voice agents. Pricing, the evidence and the alternatives, checked Oct 2026.
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Low-latency realtime TTS, STT and managed voice agents.
Cartesia: Low-latency realtime TTS, STT and managed voice agents. Best for builders shipping voice agents and realtime speech apps. Watch out for: developer/API-first; free plan blocks commercial use and pro voice cloning. Price: $5/mo (Pro, 100K credits) (free tier, checked Oct 2026).
Note: Sonic TTS and Ink STT plus Managed Agents. Credits cover TTS/STT; each paid plan also includes prepaid agent dollars. Claims #1 on Artificial Analysis Speech Arena / STT leaderboards on the homepage.
| Free tier | Free tier: 20K credits/mo + $1 agent prepaid; no commercial license |
|---|---|
| Job in a stack | Voiceover, text-to-speech |
| Cheapest paid plan | Pro, $5/mo (monthly) |
| Price checked | 2026-10-16, verified |
| Plan | Price | Billing | Key limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | free | 20K credits/mo, $1 prepaid agents; TTS+STT; no commercial license |
| Pro | $5/mo | monthly | 100K credits/mo, $5 prepaid agents, commercial license, instant voice cloning |
| Startup | $49/mo | monthly | 1.25M credits/mo, $49 prepaid agents, pro voice cloning, orgs |
| Scale | $299/mo | monthly | 8M credits/mo, $299 prepaid agents, priority support, high concurrency |
| Enterprise | Pay as you go | custom | Custom credits, DPAs/BAAs, SSO, shared Slack |
From cartesia.ai/pricing, checked 2026-10-16, verified. Prices are before tax and vendors change them often.
| Type | Source | Result | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| benchmark | Artificial Analysis Speech Arena (claimed on Cartesia homepage) | Homepage claims #1 on Speech Arena and Speech-to-Text leaderboards Vendor claim; confirm on artificialanalysis.ai when ranking pages are checked Counts toward: Text-to-speech & voice only | 2026-10-16 |
| rating | Product Hunt | 5.0/5 from 24 reviews Counts toward: Text-to-speech & voice only | 2026-10-16 |
Our scores: quality 4.7/5, ease 3.6/5, value 5/5 ($1.10 per quality point). Editorial start 4.5/3.5; benchmark adjustment +0.2, rating adjustment +0.1. Some of this evidence only counts toward Text-to-speech & voice, so other sections rank this tool without it (why). How we rank.
Free tier. Cheapest paid plan: $5/mo (Pro, 100K credits) (checked Oct 2026).
Builders shipping voice agents and realtime speech apps.
Developer/API-first; free plan blocks commercial use and pro voice cloning.
ElevenLabs, Suno, Udio, Descript.