Head to head / AI Voice

Cartesia vs Hume AI

The verdict
  • Cartesia is cheaper per million characters ($39.2 vs $100).
  • Hume AI is cheaper to start ($3/mo vs $5/mo).
ComparedCartesiaHume AI
Cost / 1M chars$39.2$100
Starting price$5/mo$3/mo
Free tier
Visit CartesiaVisit Hume AI

Feature by feature

FeatureCartesiaHume AI
Languages40+11+ (Octave)
Voice cloningYesYes (unlimited)
APIYesYes
Commercial usePaid plansYes
Styles/emotionsYesYes (core strength)
OutputMP3, WAV, PCMMP3/WAV/PCM stream

Cartesia

Developers building real-time voice agents where latency matters most.

  • +Ultra-low latency streaming
  • +Instant cloning from ~10s audio
  • +40+ languages on one model
  • +Competitive per-character pricing

Hume AI

Developers building emotionally expressive or empathic conversational voice agents.

  • +Best-in-class emotional/expressive prosody
  • +Empathic real-time voice interface (EVI)
  • +Unlimited voice cloning on paid tiers
  • +Commercial license on all plans

Compared on the metrics we track for this category. Prices are the cheapest paid tier. Some links are affiliate links.