AI Voice Agents · pricing · Updated September 2026
Cartesia pricing (2026)
Cartesia starts at $0/mo (Free) as checked on 2026-09-10, read from Cartesia's own pricing page; 5 plans. Best for Latency-critical agents where time-to-first-audio is the product. Every figure below links to its source and the date we captured it.
At a glance
- Entry price: $0/mo (Free)
- Free tier: Yes
- Compliance: HIPAA Yes · SOC 2 Yes · GDPR Yes
- Best for: Latency-critical agents where time-to-first-audio is the product; Teams already on LiveKit or Pipecat who need the fastest TTS in the pipeline; Developers who want STT, TTS, orchestration and a phone number from one bill
As of · every figure below links to its source
Cartesia plans & pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Billing | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | — | hybrid | Forever-free tier: roughly 27 minutes of Sonic TTS or ~1h 51m of Ink STT, plus $1 of prepaid voice-agent credit. Concurrency is published as three separate limits: 2 concurrent TTS requests, 8 concurrent STT requests and 8 concurrent calls. Voice agents meter at $0.06/min of call duration; telephony on a Cartesia-provided number adds $0.014/min. Allowances draw on one shared credit pool, so TTS, STT and agent minutes compete for it. | cartesia.ai |
| Pro | $5 | — | hybrid | $5/month: ~133 minutes of TTS or ~9h 16m of STT, $5 of prepaid voice-agent credit. Concurrency: 3 TTS requests, 12 STT requests, 12 calls. Voice agent calls bill at $0.06/min against that credit; Cartesia-provided phone numbers add $0.014/min. The agent credit equals the plan price, so the subscription effectively prepays roughly 83 agent minutes rather than bundling them on top. | cartesia.ai |
| Startup | $49 | — | hybrid | $49/month: ~1,667 minutes of TTS or ~115h 44m of STT, $49 of prepaid voice-agent credit. Concurrency: 5 TTS requests, 20 STT requests, 20 calls. Agent calls $0.06/min, Cartesia telephony +$0.014/min. | cartesia.ai |
| Scale | $299 | — | hybrid | $299/month: ~10,667 minutes of TTS or ~740h 44m of STT, $299 of prepaid voice-agent credit. Concurrency: 15 TTS requests, 60 STT requests, 60 calls. Agent calls $0.06/min, Cartesia telephony +$0.014/min. | cartesia.ai |
| Enterprise | quote-only | — | custom | Quote-only, so monthlyUsd is null: custom allowances, custom concurrency and negotiated rates. Optional zero-data-retention is the enterprise-relevant control Cartesia advertises. | cartesia.ai |
Last verified 2026-09-10. Re-verified against cartesia.ai/pricing on 2026-09-10. All four published monthly prices confirmed unchanged ($0 / $5 / $49 / $299) with no annual toggle on the page. ONE MATERIAL CORRECTION: the draft treated the per-tier concurrent-TTS-request cap (2/3/5/15) as the ceiling on simultaneous calls. The page publishes a SEPARATE and substantially higher concurrent-call limit per tier — 8 / 12 / 20 / 60 — plus separate STT concurrency of 8/12/20/60, so the TTS cap does not gate call concurrency. Plan notes and limits corrected. The pricing page's compliance FAQ renders client-side and returned only question headings, so compliance flags come from Cartesia's own GDPR-compliance post, which was independently fetched and verified; it states GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, PCI-DSS and HIPAA with optional Zero Data Retention, and does NOT mention a BAA, so baa stays null.
Price changes
No change record has cleared two sources yet, so nothing is published on the wire.
Capabilities
Integrations: LiveKit, Pipecat, Twilio, SIP trunking.
Key features: Sonic state-space TTS built for very low time-to-first-audio, the specific problem Cartesia was founded on; First-party STT (Ink) alongside first-party TTS, so one vendor covers both legs of the pipeline; Voice agents at $0.06/min with optional $0.014/min first-party telephony, cheaper than bolting on a third-party carrier; Optional Zero Data Retention plus SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, PCI-DSS (service level provider) and GDPR compliance; Entry paid tier at $5/month is the lowest in this set, so the step off free is nearly free.
Plan limits: Three separate concurrency meters per tier, and they are not interchangeable: TTS requests 2/3/5/15, STT requests 8/12/20/60, and concurrent calls 8/12/20/60 — the call limit, not the TTS limit, is what caps simultaneous live calls; The voice-agent credit included in each plan equals the plan price, so agent usage is prepaid rather than bundled on top of the subscription; Compliance answers are hidden behind a client-side FAQ accordion on the pricing page; the claims are verifiable only from Cartesia's own blog post; No BAA availability is stated anywhere, despite the HIPAA claim — a blocker for PHI workloads; Zero data retention is opt-in, not default.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Cartesia cost?
Cartesia starts at $0/mo (Free); it has 5 published plans. Verified 2026-09-10.
Does Cartesia support HIPAA?
Cartesia HIPAA support: Yes. SOC 2: Yes. GDPR: Yes.
Does Cartesia have a free plan?
Cartesia free tier: Yes.
Cartesia vs alternatives
Compare all AI voice agents · Cartesia alternatives · True cost of AI voice agents · SOC 2-certified AI voice agents · HIPAA-compliant AI voice agents · GDPR-compliant AI voice agents · Open data · MCP
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