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Cartesia costs Free to $299 per month as of April 2026, with 4 plans available including a free tier. Plans: Free (free), Pro at $49/month, and Startup at $299/month. Enterprise 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 4 pricing tiers: Free, Pro, Startup, Enterprise. A free plan is available. Paid plans include Pro at $49/month, Startup at $299/month. The Pro plan is startups and production pilots.

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

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How much does Cartesia cost?

Cartesia offers 4 pricing plans, starting with a free tier and scaling to custom enterprise pricing. Plans include Free (free), Pro at $49/month, Startup at $299/month, Enterprise (custom pricing).

Cartesia Pricing Overview

Cartesia has 4 pricing plans, including a free tier. Paid plans range from $0 to $299/month. The Free plan is free and is best for evaluating sonic latency and quality. The Pro plan costs $49/month, best for startups and production pilots. The Startup plan costs $299/month, best for production voice agents and apps. The Enterprise plan requires contacting sales for a custom quote and is designed for high-volume voice agent deployments.

This pricing was last verified in April 23, 2026 from 1 independent sources.

Cartesia is a text-to-speech API platform offering plans from $0/month (Free, with 10K credits) through Pro at $4/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).

All Cartesia Plans & Pricing

Plan Monthly Annual Best For
Free Free Free Evaluating Sonic latency and quality
Pro $49 /month $490 /year Startups and production pilots
Startup $299 /month $2990 /year Production voice agents and apps
Enterprise Contact Sales Contact Sales High-volume voice agent deployments
View all features by plan

Free

  • 10,000 credits/month
  • Access to Sonic models
  • Non-commercial use
  • Community support

Pro

  • 100,000 credits/month
  • Instant voice cloning
  • Commercial license
  • Standard concurrency

Startup

  • 1,250,000 credits/month
  • Professional voice cloning
  • Higher concurrency
  • Priority support

Enterprise

  • Volume commits
  • Self-hosted option
  • Dedicated support
  • SLA

Usage-Based Rates

Per-unit pricing for Cartesia API usage.

Startup

Item Dimension Unit Rate
sonic-2 character 1M characters $30.00
sonic-turbo character 1M characters $15.00
  • 1 credit = 1 character for Sonic models
  • Sonic Turbo costs 0.5 credits per character
  • Overage billed at same per-credit rate

Compare Cartesia vs Alternatives

Before committing to Cartesia, compare pricing with these 2 alternatives in the same category.

All Cartesia alternatives & migration guides

What Companies Actually Pay for Cartesia

Review scores

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
PlayHT Free $499/month
Rime Free $40/month

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 $4/month (Pro) for higher usage needs.

02 What are all of Cartesia's pricing tiers?

Cartesia has five tiers: Free ($0/month), Pro ($4/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 $4/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 $4/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 $4/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 $4/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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