Cartesia vs Hume
Explore the differences between Cartesia and Hume AI voice models. Compare features, pricing, and performance.
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Compare Cartesia and Hume AI Voice Models
Cartesia offers ultra-fast voice generation with a latency of just 40ms. In contrast, other models may have slower response times, impacting user experience. Cartesia's voices are consistently rated as more natural and realistic, while others may lack the same depth and clarity. With infinite character limits, Cartesia allows for extensive content generation, whereas competitors may impose restrictions. Instant cloning requires only 3 seconds of audio with Cartesia, while others may require longer durations. Professional voice cloning with Cartesia needs just 10 minutes of audio, compared to longer requirements elsewhere. Cartesia excels in pronunciation accuracy with strong contextual understanding, while others may struggle with nuanced pronunciations. Voice customizations in Cartesia include slider controls for speed and emotion, offering more flexibility than some alternatives. Telephony optimization is also a strong point for Cartesia, providing 8kHz audio for enhanced clarity. On-device real-time generation is available with Cartesia, while other models may not support this feature. Cartesia supports 15 languages, while competitors may offer fewer options. Concurrency is capped at 15 for both providers, ensuring robust performance.
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
Hume
900ms - 2000ms
Less depth and reliability ratings in human evals
Limited character count for longer texts
Requires 3 to 5 minutes of audio
Requires 1 to 2 hours of audio
Less contextual awareness in pronunciation
Limited controls for stability and similarity
Standard audio quality without optimization
No on-device or on-prem support
English only
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.
Low Latency Voice Cloning
Cartesia's Sonic model achieves a remarkable 40ms time-to-first-audio, ensuring rapid voice responses.
High-Quality Voice Cloning
With just 3 seconds of audio, Cartesia can create high-fidelity voice clones that sound lifelike and authentic.
Ultra-Realistic Voices
Cartesia's voices are rated #1 in quality, providing natural and expressive speech for various applications.
Enterprise Ready
Enterprise-grade reliability with 99.9% uptime, SOC2 compliance, and full on-premises support.
Voice Quality Comparison
In the realm of voice quality, Cartesia consistently outperforms Hume. Cartesia's Sonic model has been rated 4.7 in independent evaluations, while Hume falls short with a score of 4.38. This difference is evident in human evaluations, where Cartesia was preferred 36 times out of 50 transcripts. The quality of Cartesia's voices is often described as natural and realistic, making them suitable for a variety of applications, from customer support to entertainment. Hume's voices, while functional, lack the depth and emotional sensitivity found in Cartesia's offerings.
Latency Performance
Latency is a critical factor in voice AI performance. Cartesia measures latency using the Time to First Audio (TTFA) metric, achieving an impressive TTFA of 199 ms. This is significantly faster than Hume, which has a TTFA of 832 ms at the self-serve tier. Cartesia's Sonic model is built on State Space Models (SSMs), allowing for greater latency optimization compared to traditional transformer architectures. This efficiency ensures that Cartesia can deliver real-time responses that align with the natural pace of human conversation.
Hallucination Rate Analysis
Cartesia's voice cloning technology boasts a no hallucination feature, ensuring that the generated audio is clear and authentic. This is a significant advantage over Hume, which may experience inconsistencies in voice replication. Cartesia's advanced algorithms eliminate errors and maintain the integrity of the original audio, providing a reliable solution for users. The focus on high-quality voice cloning means that users can trust Cartesia to deliver accurate and lifelike voice outputs without the risk of distortion or inaccuracies.
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 powerful tool for developers. In contrast, Hume restricts cloning capabilities, limiting the flexibility for users. Cartesia employs advanced embedding technology to ensure high-quality voice clones that maintain their accents and clarity, even in noisy environments. Additionally, Cartesia's voice mixing and design capabilities provide a diverse range of voices for various applications.
Voice Design Control
Cartesia stands out in voice design controllability by offering unique features such as emotion and speed modulation. This allows users to refine voice adjustments while maintaining a natural sound. Additionally, Cartesia enables localization, allowing an American voice to adapt to a French accent, enhancing versatility. In contrast, Hume offers limited control options, focusing mainly on stability and similarity, which may not provide the same level of customization and expressiveness that Cartesia delivers.
Explore Pricing for Cartesia and Hume AI
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
Hume
Starter - $10 per month with 5k credits and basic features
Standard - $25 per month with 250k credits and additional features
Business - $99 per month with 1M credits and advanced features
Enterprise - $499 per month with 10M credits and priority support
Premium - Custom pricing with dedicated support and unlimited features
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
