Speakvora vs Cartesia
Cartesia and Speakvora are priced very differently. Cartesia sells monthly credit bundles; Speakvora bills the characters you actually use. Which is cheaper depends on how steady your volume is.
Short answer. Pick Cartesia when low-latency Sonic voices and phone agents are the product and you will use your monthly credits. Pick Speakvora when volume is small or uneven, you do not want a subscription, or your speech is mostly repeated prompts.
The price, read carefully
Cartesia's text to speech costs 1 credit per character. The plans are Free (20K credits), Pro $5 (100K), Startup $49 (1.25M) and Scale $299 (8M), with overage priced per million credits at $65, $45 and $38. Dividing plan price by credits gives about $50 per million characters on Pro, $39 on Startup and $37 on Scale. Speakvora's catalog voices are $0.70 per million characters, with no monthly fee.
The subscription model matters at small volumes. At 100,000 characters a month, Cartesia Pro costs $5 and Speakvora costs $0.07 at list price (and the first 100,000 characters are free, once per account). At 8 million characters a month, Cartesia Scale is $299 for the allowance and Speakvora's list price is $5.60. Cartesia's included credits also cover other products, so this is a cost-per-character view, not a total-cost view.
Transcription: Cartesia's Ink model uses 3 credits per second of audio and the page gives $0.39 per hour on Scale, about $0.0065 per minute. Speakvora lists $0.0015 per minute. Agents are $0.06 per minute at Cartesia, plus $0.014 per minute for a provisioned phone number. Speakvora has no phone-number product.
Cartesia official pricing (as read)
Source: https://www.cartesia.ai/pricing · checked 2026-10-08. Prices change; confirm on the source.
| Product / model | Price | Native unit | Notes and restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text to speech, Sonic | 1 credit | per character | Break tags count as 1 credit each |
| Plans | Free $0 (20K credits), Pro $5 (100K), Startup $49 (1.25M), Scale $299 (8M) | monthly credits | Credits expire with the plan period; overage must be enabled |
| Overage | $65 / $45 / $38 | per 1M credits (Pro / Startup / Scale) | Requests are blocked when credits run out if overage is off |
| Speech to text, Ink | 3 credits | per second of audio | The page gives $0.39 per hour on Scale |
| Agents | $0.06 | per minute | Phone numbers cost $0.014 per minute extra |
| Voice cloning | Instant on Pro and above; Professional slots from Startup | plan feature | Free plan has none |
Speakvora list prices (early access)
| Product | List price | Native unit | Free allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catalog voices (Kokoro) | $0.70 | per 1M characters | 100,000 characters |
| Your own voice | $6 | per 1M characters | same pool |
| Speech to text | $0.0015 | per minute, billed per second | 60 minutes |
| Voice agents (beta) | $10 | per 1,000 turns | 200 turns |
| Industry packs | Coming | one time, per pack | priced when published |
Where Cartesia is stronger
- Sonic low-latency text to speech with a model ID you choose per request
- Instant cloning on Pro and above, professional cloning slots from Startup
- Voice agents with provisioned phone numbers
- A raw audio response and a documented output-format object
Where Speakvora is stronger
- No subscription, no credit expiry to manage
- A $0.70 per million rate that is steady regardless of volume
- A searchable checked phrase library, with industry packs (47 live across 23 industries today, more being built for every industry)
- A free allowance with no card
Three situations, three different answers
A hobby project that speaks 50,000 characters a month
On Cartesia that fits inside the Free plan's 20K credits only partly, so you would pay $5 for Pro. On Speakvora the 100,000 free characters cover it once, and afterwards it is $0.035 a month at list price.
A product that speaks 6 million characters of live replies a month and needs very low latency
Scale at $299 is plausible if Sonic's latency is the reason you chose it. We have not benchmarked against Cartesia and do not claim lower latency.
A kiosk fleet that plays 80 fixed prompts
Play stored audio of the prompts (library clips or a pack). Nothing in Cartesia's pricing material we read describes a ready-generated phrase library or industry packs.
What we did not find at Cartesia
- Curated industry phrase packs
- Downloadable ready-generated industry audio
- Searchable phrase catalog with stable identifiers
"Not found" means we did not see it in the official material reviewed. It is not a claim that the provider lacks it.
What we are not claiming
We have not benchmarked audio quality, accuracy or uptime against Cartesia. Speakvora has no SLA and is in early access with billing is live. Our own timings are on the speed page, with the method.
Questions people ask
Is Speakvora cheaper than Cartesia?
Per character, yes at every Cartesia plan we compared ($0.70 per million versus roughly $37 to $65). Cartesia's plans also bundle other products and credits, so compare your whole workload.
Do I need a subscription with Speakvora?
No. You pay for what you use after the free allowance. Billing is live; the free allowance is what you can use today.
Does Speakvora have a Sonic-class low-latency model?
We do not claim that. In our 2026-10-08 production test a brand-new sentence took about 1 second with a warm GPU worker; library lines took about a tenth of a second.
What about phone agents?
Cartesia offers provisioned phone numbers. Speakvora does not.
Switching? See the Cartesia alternative guide with the code change. Prices side by side: text to speech · speech to text.