Cartesia vs Descript
Explore the differences between Cartesia and Descript voice AI models. Discover features, pricing, and performance metrics.
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Compare Cartesia and Descript Voice AI Models
Cartesia offers ultra-fast voice generation with a latency of just 40ms, ensuring real-time interactions. Its voices are ultra-realistic, with no hallucinations, making it a top choice for developers seeking high-quality voice solutions.
Updated on:
Feb 14, 2025
Features
Cartesia
40ms for the Sonic Turbo model, 90ms for the Sonic 2 model
Consistently rated as more natural, expressive, and realistic in blinded human evaluations
Infinite request length
Requires 3 seconds of audio
IPA support with strong contextual understanding
Slider control for speed and emotion + synthetic voice mixing and design
8kHz audio, telephony optimized voices
Supports both on-prem and on-device deployments
15 languages with extensive dialect coverage
Up to 15 on highest self-serve tier (60 parallel conversations), custom for enterprise
Descript
Higher latency, impacting responsiveness
Less depth and reliability ratings in human evals
Limited character count for longer texts
Requires 90-second of audio
Not supported
IPA support, isolated pronunciation
Stability, similarity, and style exaggeration controls
8kHz audio
No on-device or on-prem support
25
Limited concurrent usage options
Cartesia - Advanced AI Voice Capabilities
Cartesia AI offers the fastest voice model with hallucination-free, ultra-realistic voice generation and cloning.
High-Quality Voice Cloning
Cartesia delivers high-fidelity voice cloning with unmatched accuracy.
Ultra-Realistic Voices
Experience lifelike voices that sound nearly indistinguishable from human speech.
No Hallucinations
Cartesia's AI ensures crystal-clear audio without distortions or errors.
Enterprise Ready
Enterprise-grade reliability with 99.9% uptime, SOC2 compliance, and full on-premises support.
Voice Quality Comparison
In terms of voice quality, Cartesia consistently outperforms Descript. Cartesia's Sonic model has been rated 4.7 out of 5 in independent evaluations, while Descript scores 4.38. This superior quality is attributed to Cartesia's advanced state space model architecture, which allows for lifelike speech generation. Furthermore, Cartesia excels in accurately pronouncing challenging content, such as acronyms and uncommon words, ensuring a more natural and engaging listening experience compared to Descript.
Latency Performance
Latency is a critical factor in voice AI applications. Cartesia's Sonic model boasts an impressive Time to First Audio (TTFA) of just 199 ms, significantly faster than Descript's 832 ms. This measurement is calculated using the 90th percentile score from 100 TTFA measurements for each provider. Cartesia's architecture, based on State Space Models (SSMs), enables greater latency optimization compared to the traditional transformer architecture used by Descript, ensuring a smoother and more responsive user experience.
Hallucination Rate Analysis
Cartesia's voice cloning technology is designed to eliminate hallucinations, providing crystal-clear audio that maintains authenticity. In contrast, Descript's models may produce less reliable outputs, leading to potential distortions in voice replication. Cartesia's advanced embedding technology ensures that even in challenging audio conditions, the quality remains high and consistent. This focus on accuracy and clarity makes Cartesia a preferred choice for applications requiring reliable voice outputs.
Voice Cloning Showdown
When it comes to voice cloning, Cartesia shines with its ability to create an instant clone from just 3 seconds of audio. This feature allows for unlimited instant voice cloning, making it a versatile choice for users. In contrast, Descript imposes restrictions on cloning capabilities, limiting the number of voices available. Cartesia leverages advanced embedding technology to ensure high-quality voice clones that maintain authenticity, even in noisy audio clips. Additionally, its voice mixing and design capabilities provide a broader range of diverse voices for various applications.
Voice Design Controllability
Cartesia stands out in voice design controllability by offering unique features such as emotion and speed modulation. This allows users to make refined adjustments to the voice output, creating a more personalized auditory experience. Additionally, Cartesia enables localization of voices to match different accents, enhancing versatility. In contrast, Descript provides limited control options, focusing primarily on stability and similarity, which may not meet the diverse needs of users seeking more dynamic voice customization.
Explore Pricing for Cartesia and Descript
Cartesia
Free - $0 per month with 10k free credits
Pro - $5 per month with 100k credits
Startup - $49 per month with 1.25M credits
Scale - $299 per month with 8M credits
Enterprise - trusted by Fortune 500 companies
Descript
Hobbyist - $12 per month with 10 transcription hours
Creator - $24 per month with 30 transcription hours
Business - $40 per month with 40 transcription hours
Custom solutions, dedicated support
What Cartesia Customers Say
Join the growing list of companies opting for Sonic.
"Cartesia’s voice API power dynamic and empathetic conversational experiences that are consistently dependable. What really stands out to me is how natural and considerate the responses feel—especially the empathetic tone in statements like ‘I’m sorry, that must be frustrating.’"
Sami Ghoche, CEO of Forethought
"In 1999, Salesforce brought software to the cloud. In 2025, 11x is killing software as we know it and unleashing the era of digital workers. To realise this vision, we needed AI voice technology that feels truly human. Cartesia’s technology gives our AI digital workers reps the speed, reliability, and natural expressiveness required to engage customers at scale.
It's the only solution fit for our relentless drive toward innovation.”
Keith Fearon, Head of Product & Growth, 11x
"Before conversational voice models like Cartesia, Thoughtly relied on legacy text-to-speech APIs from major cloud providers. Nearly two years later, the evolution of this technology is staggering—customers can clone their voice and hear it speaking autonomously over the phone in just 60 seconds.”
Torrey Leonard, CEO, Thoughtly
