★★★★★ 4.5 CE

Cartesia Pricing: Plans & Features 2026

Usage-based pricing spans 5 plans from free to $5/mo, with the $5/mo Pro plan offering a low-cost entry point for developers.

AI Voice & AudioUsage-BasedPrice verified 2 days agoFrom $5/mo Free plan ✓

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Plans & Tiers Quick Answer Calculator Real Cost Expert Take History FAQ Sources

Cartesia plans and pricing

High· Verified July 2, 2026

Free

Best for: Ideal for individuals to explore basic AI voice features and test the platform's capabilities without any cost.

✓20K credits/mo
✓$1 prepaid agents/mo
✓TTS + STT
✓~27 TTS min/mo
✓~1h 51m STT/mo

View on vendor site

Pro

$5/mo

Best for: Perfect for individuals needing more advanced AI voice generation, offering enhanced features beyond the free tier for a low monthly fee.

✓100K credits/mo
✓$5 prepaid agents/mo
✓Everything in Free + commercial use license
✓Instant voice cloning
✓~133 TTS min/mo

View on vendor site

Startup

$49/mo

Best for: Designed for small teams or growing projects, this plan provides significant feature upgrades and higher usage limits for serious development.

✓1.25M credits/mo
✓$49 prepaid agents/mo
✓Everything in Pro + Pro voice cloning
✓Organizations
✓~1,667 TTS min/mo

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Scale

$299/mo

Best for: established businesses requiring extensive AI voice capabilities, offering high volume usage and advanced tools for production environments.

✓8M credits/mo
✓$299 prepaid agents/mo
✓Everything in Startup + Priority support
✓High concurrency limits
✓~10,667 TTS min/mo

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Enterprise

Contact Sales

Best for: Tailored for large organizations with unique requirements, this plan offers custom features, dedicated support, and scalable infrastructure.

✓Custom credits & agent usage
✓Volume pricing
✓Everything in Scale + Custom concurrency limits
✓DPAs and BAAs
✓Shared Slack channel

View on vendor site

Cartesia pricing: the quick answer

Quick answerLast verified: July 2, 2026High

Cartesia runs $5-$299 per month across 4 paid tiers as of July 4, 2026, plus a free tier with 20,000 credits monthly. Free gives 20K credits and 1 agent slot; Pro is $5/mo for 100K credits, a commercial license, and instant voice cloning; Startup is $49/mo for 1.25M credits; Scale is $299/mo for 8M credits; Enterprise is custom. Voice agent calls run $0.06/minute on every plan and Cartesia phone numbers cost $0.014/minute. Two meters run at once here: plan credits and a separate agent balance, each draining on its own.

FreeFree
Pro$5/mo
Startup$49/mo
Scale$299/mo
EnterpriseCustom

Use the interactive Cartesia pricing calculator to estimate your exact monthly cost at your team size, with annual-billing savings and the hidden costs counted in.

Free tier

Yes

Billing model

Usage-Based

Cheapest paid

$5/mo

Annual discount

Not offered

At $5/mo to start, Cartesia sits 50% below the $10/mo median across 8 ai voice & audio tools we track.

Cartesia cost calculator

What Cartesia really costs

What sits on top of the plan fee

The plan price buys a credit pool and a separate prepaid agent balance. Once either runs dry, usage-based rates take over on top.

Voice agent calls (Line)

Applies across every plan tier

$0.06/minute

Telephony number

Cartesia-provided phone number for voice agents

$0.014/minute

TTS credit rate

Sonic-3.5 model, per second of generated audio

15 credits/second

Voice cloning setup

One-time cost to localize a cloned voice

225 credits

Prepaid agent balance

Separate dollar balance from the credit pool, tied to plan tier

$1-$299/mo depending on plan

Pricing Expert Take

Independent analysis · Cartesia

Verified Pricing Data

Value Analysis

$5/mo50% below median

Category median: $10/moBased on 8 products in this category

Cartesia's $5/mo Pro plan dramatically undercuts competitors, yet the subsequent Startup tier jumps to $49/mo, a significant increase. The Startup plan at $49/mo targets teams entering production, while the Scale tier at $299/mo caters to high-volume enterprises. Given that its speech-to-text engine, Ink, is priced at roughly half the cost of major competitors like Deepgram, the platform offers exceptional value for developers prioritizing speed and cost-efficiency.

Hidden Costs

Telephony rates are variable, with Scale plan users locked into a specific rate of $0.014/min.
Pricing is straightforward; no documented hidden fees or overage traps found.

Red Flags

While Cartesia offers impressive latency, international developers face limitations with non-English languages. The platform's multilingual capabilities are still maturing, which can lead to unexpected quality drops depending on the target accent.

"Italian support was limited when we evaluated it."
Reddit

Based on analysis of recent Reddit and G2 discussions.

Green Wins

The Pro plan at $5/mo offers sub-80ms P99 latency for truly conversational AI.

Sub-80ms P99 latency for truly conversational AI
Optimized for streaming audio, reducing perceived lag
High-fidelity voice cloning from just 30s of audio

"The voices offered by Thoughtly, like the cartesia voices, are a feature that I"
G2

"Their better pricing and better voices motivated me to switch from Cartesia"
G2

"Cartesia: Very promising on latency (their streaming is genuinely fast)"
User review

User Voices

"Cartesia Ink is about half the price of Deepgram with probably similar accuracy."
Reddit

"The pricing is better, and the voice generation is very promising on latency."
Reddit

"Our users need multilingual agents with accurate accents. Way more reliable w/ Elevenlabs."
Reddit

Verdict

Individual developers and early-stage startups should start with the $5/mo Pro plan to test the ultra-low latency APIs, while scaling teams will find the $299/mo tier necessary for production-grade concurrency. If your application requires highly mature, out-of-the-box multilingual accents across dozens of locales, consider ElevenLabs starting at $5/mo as the sharpest alternative.

ComparEdge EditorialUpdated: July 2, 2026