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 90ms. 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 5 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 at:
Feb 14, 2025
Features
Cartesia
90 ms + network time
Consistently rated as more natural, expressive, and realistic in blinded human evaluations
Infinite request length
Requires 5-10 seconds of audio
IPA Support, strong contextual understanding
Slider control for speed and emotion + synthetic voice mixing and design
8kHz audio, telephony optimized voices
Real-time generation on-device
20 languages with extensive dialect coverage
Up to 15 on highest self serve tier, 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 generation available
English only
Limited concurrent usage options
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 5 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.
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 90ms time-to-first-audio, ensuring rapid voice responses.
High-Quality Voice Cloning
With just 5 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.
Explore Pricing for Cartesia and Hume AI
Cartesia
Free - $0/mo. per month with 10k free credits
Pro - $5/mo. per month with 100k credits
Startup - $49/mo. per month with 1.25M credits
Scale - $299/mo. per month with 8M credits
Enterprise - trusted by Fortune 500 companies
Hume
Starter - $10/mo. with 5k credits and basic features
Standard - $25/mo. with 250k credits and additional features
Business - $99/mo. with 1M credits and advanced features
Enterprise - $499/mo. 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.
"This partnership represents a transformative moment in enterprise AI adoption," said Melissa Gordon, CEO of Rasa. "By combining Rasa’s strengths in enterprise conversational AI with Cartesia's innovative voice technology, we're fundamentally changing how enterprises can deploy and scale AI assistants across their organizations."
"We're thrilled to partner with Cartesia - their technology has dramatically improved the accuracy and reliability of our call center agents. Beyond just providing best-in-class voice AI, the Cartesia team has been a true partner in helping us transform 24/7 patient support for over 215,000 patients. Their support has been instrumental in making exceptional care accessible anytime, anywhere."
Jeffrey Liu, Founder and co-CEO, Assort Health
"Together AI's mission has always been to provide developers with the most powerful and efficient tools for building AI applications," says Vipul Ved Prakash, Together AI's CEO. "Cartesia is leading the charge of building efficient, multimodal models from first principles, starting with their Sonic TTS model. By integrating Sonic into our platform, we're enabling developers to create sophisticated multi-modal applications that leverage the most advanced and lowest latency voice model available today, all while maintaining the simplicity and reliability our users expect."
