Price checkMonthly
FreeFreePro$5/moStartup$49/mo
See all 5 plans

All Cartesia Plans & Pricing

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
View all features by plan (compare side-by-side)

Free

  • 20K credits / month
  • $1 prepaid agents / month
  • Text to Speech
  • Speech to Text

Pro

  • 100K credits / month
  • $5 prepaid agents / month
  • Everything in Free
  • Commercial use license
  • Instant voice cloning

Startup

  • 1.25M credits / month
  • $49 prepaid agents / month
  • Everything in Pro
  • Pro voice cloning
  • Organizations

Scale

  • 8M credits / month
  • $299 prepaid agents / month
  • Everything in Startup
  • Priority support
  • High concurrency limits

Enterprise

  • Custom credits & agent usage
  • Volume pricing
  • Everything in Scale
  • Custom concurrency limits
  • DPAs and BAAs for compliance
  • Shared Slack channel
  • SSO
  • Security questionnaires
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What does Cartesia actually cost you?

Drag the slider. Pick a tier. Your projected spend updates as you go.

Tier
Billing
Your projected cost$125per month · $5/unit × 25units
Year 1 license$1.5K12 months at this rate
At a glance

List price by tier (annualized, per unit)

Per-unit list price across Cartesia's plans, annualized. Custom-priced tiers show a hatched bar.

FreeCustom
Pro$60/yr
Startup$588/yr
Scale$3.6K/yr
EnterpriseCustom
Quick Answer
Last verified:
High confidence

Cartesia costs Free to $299 per month as of September 2026, with 5 plans available including a free tier. Plans: Free (free), Pro at $5/month, Startup at $49/month, and Scale at $299/month. Custom pricing is available on request. Pricing depends on your chosen tier, contract length, and negotiated discounts.

Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.

  • Free tier: Yes

Cartesia offers 5 pricing tiers: Free, Pro, Startup, Scale, Enterprise. A free plan is available. Paid plans include Pro at $5/user/month, Startup at $49/user/month, Scale at $299/user/month. The Pro plan is commercial use with instant voice cloning and higher monthly credits.

Compared to other voice apis (text-to-speech & voice cloning) software, Cartesia is positioned at the mid-market price point.

  • 4 documented hidden costs beyond list price
Last verified: | Sources: 3 pricing pages and reviews

How much does Cartesia cost?

Cartesia offers 5 pricing plans, starting with a free tier and scaling to custom enterprise pricing. Plans include Free (free), Pro at $5/month, Startup at $49/month, Scale at $299/month, Enterprise (custom pricing).

Cartesia Pricing Overview

Cartesia has 5 pricing plans, including a free tier. Paid plans range from $0 to $299/month. The Free plan is free and is best for starting free with basic text-to-speech and speech-to-text usage. The Pro plan costs $5/month, best for commercial use with instant voice cloning and higher monthly credits. The Startup plan costs $49/month, best for teams using pro voice cloning and organization features. The Scale plan costs $299/month, best for businesses scaling voice api usage with higher concurrency needs. The Enterprise plan requires contacting sales for a custom quote and is designed for high-volume and compliance-focused deployments requiring custom usage and support.

Cartesia with a one year to receive a 20% discount minimum commitment.

There are at least 4 documented hidden costs beyond Cartesia's list price, including implementation, training, and add-on fees.

This pricing was last verified in August 17, 2026 from 3 independent sources.

Try Cartesia Free

Cartesia is a text-to-speech API platform offering plans from $0/month (Free, with 10K credits) through Pro at $5/month, Startup at $49/month, and Scale at $299/month. For high-volume or enterprise deployments, custom pricing is available. Reddit users cite Cartesia as a competitive alternative to ElevenLabs, noting favorable pricing and fast synthesis speeds.

How Cartesia Pricing Compares

Compare Cartesia pricing against top alternatives in Voice APIs (Text-to-Speech & Voice Cloning).

PlayHT $0-$499/month Compare → Rime $0-$40/month Compare → ElevenLabs $0-$990/month Compare →

Compare Cartesia vs Alternatives

Before committing to Cartesia, compare pricing with these 3 alternatives in the same category.

VSPlayHT
Free

Testing the platform

Full comparison
VSRime
Free

Evaluating Rime for contact center workloads

Full comparison
VSElevenLabs
Free

Building and testing for free

Full comparison

All Cartesia alternatives & migration guides

What Companies Actually Pay for Cartesia

Review scores
Third-party review aggregates, as of Jul 2026
Top pricing complaints
Limited Voice Library and Language SupportVoice Quality and ExpressivenessCustomization LimitationsData Usage for Model Improvement

Cartesia Year 1 Total Cost by Company Size

Real deployment costs including licenses, implementation, training, and admin — not just the sticker price.

Individual Developer $0 Year 1 total
Free plan
Total $0

Solo developer testing or building a small personal project with minimal TTS usage

Pro User $4 Year 1 total
Pro plan
Total $4

Individual or small project requiring more than the free credit allocation

Early-Stage Startup $39 Year 1 total
Startup plan
Total $39

Startup integrating TTS into a product with moderate API usage

Growing Product at Scale $239 Year 1 total
Scale plan
Total $239

Product with high-volume TTS needs requiring the Scale tier

Developer Testing / Prototyping $0 Year 1 total
10K credits included
Total $0

Using the Free plan to evaluate voice quality and build proofs of concept with minimal TTS generation.

Solo Developer / Low-Volume Production $4 Year 1 total
$48/year
Total $4

Pro plan for individual developers shipping voice features in apps that have exceeded the free 10K credit allocation.

Production Application at Scale $239 Year 1 total
$2,868/year
Total $239

Scale plan for growing applications with high TTS throughput requirements that have outgrown the Startup tier.

Cartesia current tier data

How Cartesia Pricing Compares

Software Starting Price Top Price
Cartesia Free $299/month
Acapela Group Custom Custom
Altered AI Free $90/month
Amazon Polly API $4/1 million characters $100/1 million characters
ElevenLabs API Free $990 per month
Fish Audio Free $999/month

Detailed pricing comparisons:

Browse all Voice APIs (Text-to-Speech & Voice Cloning) pricing →

4 Cartesia Hidden Costs Beyond the List Price

Beyond the listed price, Cartesia has at least 4 documented hidden costs that can significantly increase total cost of ownership.

Watch for 4 hidden costs
  • Overage Charges
    high 1 source
    industry "If usage is higher than anticipated, the bill can be considerably higher"
  • Pro Voice Cloning Training Fee
    medium 1 source
    industry "Pro Voice Cloning Training Fee: There is a one-time training fee for Pro Voice Cloning, in addition to the increased credit consumption (1.5 credits per character)"
  • Telephony Rates $0.06/minute
    medium 1 source
    industry "Telephony Rates: While clearly stated, the per-minute telephony rates are separate from the credit system and can add up, especially on lower-tier plans where the rate is higher ($0.06/minute)"
  • Lack of Enterprise Features
    critical 1 source
    industry "Lack of Custom SLAs, SSO, or HIPAA Compliance on lower plans: These features are only available on the Enterprise plan, implying that businesses requiring them would face the higher, custom costs of that tier"
Tip

Ask your Cartesia sales rep about these costs upfront. Getting them in writing before signing can save you from surprise charges later.

Full hidden costs breakdown →

Intelligence sourced from 1 independent sources
industry
Key claims include inline source attribution. Data verified against multiple independent sources. 5 source citations total.

Cartesia Contract Terms

Cartesia contracts do not auto-renew. Changes require advance notice. These terms are sourced from verified buyer experiences.

Contract Terms
Minimum Commitment one year to receive a 20% discount
Based on 1 verified source

Cartesia Price History

Pricing changes CostBench has tracked for Cartesia, verified across 4 snapshots going back to 2026Q2.

  1. Cartesia price increase

    Highest tier increased from $239 to $299/month

    +25.1%

  2. Cartesia Pro increase

    Pro tier increased from $4 to $5/month

    +25%

  3. Cartesia Startup increase

    Startup tier increased from $39 to $49/month

    +25.6%

Price increased 25% over 0.3 years

View Cartesia's full price history →

Cartesia Pricing FAQ

01 Does Cartesia have a free plan?

Yes. Cartesia offers a Free plan at $0/month. One user noted it includes 10K credits to get started. Paid plans begin at $5/month (Pro) for higher usage needs.

02 What are all of Cartesia's pricing tiers?

Cartesia has five tiers: Free ($0/month), Pro ($5/month), Startup ($49/month), Scale ($299/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing). Annual billing is available across paid plans.

03 How does Cartesia's pricing compare to ElevenLabs?

Reddit users report Cartesia offers competitive pricing versus ElevenLabs, with one user noting 'the pricing is better (100k tokens for only 5 bucks) with voices at similar quality and insane speeds.' Current paid plans start at $5/month (Pro).

04 What can I do on the free plan?

The Free plan includes 10K credits at no cost, which is sufficient for testing Cartesia's voices or building small personal projects. When you exhaust the free credits, you would need to upgrade to the Pro plan at $5/month.

05 Is there a discount for paying annually?

Cartesia offers annual billing on all paid plans, but the annualized cost is the same as paying monthly — Pro is $5/month ($48/year), Startup is $49/month ($468/year), and Scale is $299/month ($2,868/year). There is no percentage savings for committing to an annual plan.

06 Can I use Cartesia through third-party AI platforms?

Yes. Cartesia's Sonic and Sonic 2 models are available through third-party platforms such as Together.ai. Pricing on those platforms is set independently and may differ from Cartesia's direct API rates. For predictable costs, using Cartesia's API directly via one of its published plans (Pro at $5/month through Enterprise) is generally preferable to routing through an aggregator.

07 What is Cartesia used for?

Cartesia is a text-to-speech API provider used primarily by developers building voice-enabled applications — including AI voice agents, telephony stacks, accessibility tools, and real-time audio products. It is frequently mentioned alongside ElevenLabs and Deepgram as part of production AI speech stacks.

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