# Cartesia: what's new, verdict & setup

Canonical: https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/cartesia · First covered by us (no vendor release date published): 2026-10-25 · Last verified: 2026-10-25 · Evidence: Reported (not run by us) · Vendor: Cartesia · Official site: https://cartesia.ai/

> Realtime voice AI: text-to-speech, speech-to-text in 44 languages and voice agents, with a free plan and credit tiers.

## Verdict

**Realtime voice AI: text-to-speech, speech-to-text in 44 languages and voice agents, with a free plan and credit tiers.**

Good for:
- Developers building low-latency voice agents

Skip if:
- You want a consumer voice-over app

Status: Reported. Written from official release notes and docs; we have not run this release ourselves.

Pricing: Official page, dated. Read from cartesia.ai/pricing on 2026-10-25. (checked 2026-10-25)

## Best for

- [Best AI tool for AI voice and speech](https://theagenticweekly.com/best/voice-ai) (#-): Real-time text-to-speech, speech-to-text and voice agents.

## Key facts

Cartesia's pricing lists Free ($0, 20K credits and $1 of prepaid agent usage a month), $5 a month (100K credits), $49 a month (1.25M credits) and $299 a month (8M credits), plus custom Enterprise. Its site says speech-to-text covers 44 languages.

- License: Proprietary
- Platforms: API
- Pricing model: Freemium
- Free tier: Free: $0 a month, 20K credits and $1 prepaid agents
- Paid plans: $5/month (100K credits, $5 agents); $49/month (1.25M credits, $49 agents); $299/month (8M credits, $299 agents); Enterprise custom
- How to start: Create an account and API key from cartesia.ai.
- Catalog entry: facts read from the vendor's pages on 2026-10-25. We do not track release notes for this entry.

## How to set it up: Get started with Cartesia

These steps come from the vendor's own pages as read on 2026-10-25. We have not run Cartesia.

1. **Get access.** Create an account and API key from cartesia.ai.
2. **Check the limits and costs first.** Free: $0 a month, 20K credits and $1 prepaid agents. Paid: $5/month (100K credits, $5 agents); $49/month (1.25M credits, $49 agents); $299/month (8M credits, $299 agents); Enterprise custom. Read from cartesia.ai/pricing on 2026-10-25.

## Pros and cons

Pros:
- Free plan
- Credit tiers published

Cons:
- Credits map to usage by model

## Alternatives

- [Vapi](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/vapi): Developer platform for voice agents; $5 free credits, then pay for the minutes you run.
- [Deepgram](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/deepgram): Voice AI APIs for speech-to-text, text-to-speech and agents with $200 in free credit.
- [ElevenLabs](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/elevenlabs): Voice, speech, music and voice-agent platform with a detailed API changelog.
- [AssemblyAI](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/assemblyai): Speech AI APIs for transcription and understanding; start free, pay as you go.
- [Murf AI](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/murf-ai): Text-to-speech platform with a $10 free API trial, pay-as-you-go credits and per-character API pricing.
- [Resemble AI](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/resemble-ai): Resemble AI now leads with real-time deepfake detection and watermarking for audio, video and images; plans from free to $1,000 a month.
- [Retell AI](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/retell): Voice AI agents for phone calls with pay-per-minute pricing and 20 free concurrent calls.
- [Speechify](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/speechify): Text-to-speech app that reads PDFs, books and web pages aloud, with a Free plan and a $29 monthly premium price.
- [Piper](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/piper): Fast local neural text-to-speech that runs on CPU.
- [faster-whisper](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/faster-whisper): Speech-to-text library that runs OpenAI Whisper models with CTranslate2.

## FAQ

### What is Cartesia?

Cartesia's pricing lists Free ($0, 20K credits and $1 of prepaid agent usage a month), $5 a month (100K credits), $49 a month (1.25M credits) and $299 a month (8M credits), plus custom Enterprise. Its site says speech-to-text covers 44 languages.

### Is Cartesia free?

Free: $0 a month, 20K credits and $1 prepaid agents. Paid: $5/month (100K credits, $5 agents); $49/month (1.25M credits, $49 agents); $299/month (8M credits, $299 agents); Enterprise custom. Read from cartesia.ai/pricing on 2026-10-25. Checked 2026-10-25; prices change, so confirm on the vendor's page.

### What license is Cartesia under?

Its license: Proprietary. Read from the project's own pages on 2026-10-25.

## What we have not verified

- Release date (none published on the pages we read; the date shown is the day we first covered this entry)
- Latency claims (vendor)

## Sources

- [Cartesia](https://cartesia.ai/) (fetched 2026-10-25)
- [Cartesia pricing](https://cartesia.ai/pricing) (fetched 2026-10-25)

## How to cite

Agentic Weekly, "Cartesia: what's new, verdict & setup", last updated 2026-10-25, https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/cartesia

Keep the Reported or Tested label when you quote the verdict.