Best AI Voice Agents · alternatives
Best Cartesia alternatives (2026)
12 alternatives to Cartesia in ai voice agents, ranked by entry price. Cartesia starts at $0/mo. Every figure links to the public page it was captured from — the vendor's own wherever the vendor publishes the number, otherwise the named public source — with the date we captured it.
Key takeaways
- Free alternatives: Bland AI, Deepgram Voice Agent API, ElevenLabs Agents, LiveKit Agents, Millis AI, Pipecat Cloud, Retell AI, Synthflow, Telnyx Voice AI Agents, Twilio ConversationRelay, Ultravox, Vapi.
- Closest by price: Bland AI ($0/mo), Deepgram Voice Agent API ($0/mo), ElevenLabs Agents ($0/mo).
Cartesia alternatives compared
| # | Alternative | Entry price | Free | HIPAA | Best for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bland AI | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | contact-centers | bland.ai |
| 2 | Deepgram Voice Agent API | $0/mo | No | Yes | Healthcare and regulated teams that can sign an Enterprise contract, which is the only tier where Deepgram signs a BAA | deepgram.com |
| 3 | ElevenLabs Agents | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | Teams that want top-tier synthetic voice quality as the primary differentiator | elevenlabs.io |
| 4 | LiveKit Agents | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | Teams building realtime voice into an existing web or mobile app rather than only a phone line | livekit.com |
| 5 | Millis AI | $0/mo | Yes | — | Cost-sensitive developers who already run their own LLM and want to pay only for orchestration | docs.millis.ai |
| 6 | Pipecat Cloud | $0/mo | Yes | — | Teams already building on open-source Pipecat who want managed infrastructure without rewriting their agent | daily.co |
| 7 | Retell AI | $0/mo | No | Yes | developers | retellai.com |
| 8 | Synthflow STALE · 2026-06-15 | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | agencies | synthflow.ai |
| 9 | Telnyx Voice AI Agents | $0/mo | No | Yes | Teams that want voice AI and the phone carrier on a single bill and a single SLA | telnyx.com |
| 10 | Twilio ConversationRelay | $0/mo | No | — | Enterprises already running contact-centre traffic on Twilio who want to add AI answering without re-platforming | twilio.com |
| 11 | Ultravox | $0/mo | Yes | — | Latency-sensitive agents where skipping the STT step materially improves turn-taking | ultravox.ai |
| 12 | Vapi | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | developers | vapi.ai |
Data current through 2026-09-10. STALE marks a row with at least one plan we have not re-checked at its source in over 30 days. 1 of 12 rows above is marked. Compare any two directly on the AI Voice Agents index.