Cartesia vs PlayHT
Explore the differences between Cartesia and PlayHT voice AI models. Discover features, pricing, and performance metrics.
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Comparing Cartesia and PlayHT Voice AI Models
With latency below 40 milliseconds, Cartesia delivers the fastest voice generation available—making it ideal for real-time interactive applications. Its text-to-speech models produce ultra realistic voices with perfect accuracy, offering developers and creators a reliable solution. Though PlayHT provides more voice, it suffers from lower audio quality and longer latency.
Updated on:
Feb 21, 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
PlayHT
190 ms + network time results in slower response
Voice quality may lack depth and realism
Limited character count for longer texts
Requires 2 seconds to 1 hour of audio
Requires 1 to 2 hours of audio
Pronunciation may lack contextual awareness
Limited customization options available
Basic telephony optimization features
No on-device or on-prem support
142 languages and accents
up to 3 requests per second on highest self serve tier
Cartesia - Advanced AI Voice Capabilities
Cartesia AI offers the fastest voice model with hallucination-free, ultra-realistic voice generation and cloning.
Low Latency Performance
Cartesia's Sonic model achieves a remarkable latency of sub 40 ms, ensuring real-time responsiveness.
High-Quality Voice Cloning
With just 3 seconds of audio, Cartesia can create high-fidelity voice clones that sound natural and authentic.
Ultra-Realistic Voices
Cartesia's voices are nearly indistinguishable from human speech, enhancing user engagement and satisfaction.
Enterprise Ready
Enterprise-grade reliability with 99.9% uptime, SOC2 compliance, and full on-premises support.
Voice Quality Evaluation
In terms of voice quality, Cartesia consistently outperforms PlayHT.
Cartesia's Sonic model has been rated 4.7 in independent evaluations, while PlayHT scores lower at 4.38. This is supported by human evaluators, 81.1% of the evaluators preferred Cartesia's voices vs 18.9% prefer PlayHT's voices.
The clarity, naturalness, and emotional sensitivity of Cartesia's voices make them a top choice for applications requiring high-quality audio.
Cartesia
PlayHT
Latency Performance Review
Latency is a crucial factor in voice AI applications. Cartesia's Sonic model boasts a model latency of just 40 ms, significantly faster than PlayHT's 190 ms.
The P90 Latency measurement uses the 90th percentile score from 100 TTFA measurements, demonstrating Cartesia's efficiency. The Sonic model performs faster globally, with verified latencies across Asia, the US, and the EU.
The Sonic model's architecture, based on State Space Models (SSMs), allows for superior latency optimization compared to traditional transformer models used by PlayHT.
Hallucination Analysis
Cartesia's text to speech technology excels in minimizing hallucinations and accurately following the transcript, providing natural audio without errors.
In contrast, PlayHT's models may exhibit more AI hallucinations and inconsistencies, leading to a higher rate of mistakes.
Cartesia's commitment to quality ensures that users receive reliable and accurate voice outputs.
Example #1
Script: If you have any further issues you can contact us on 1-800-212-1212. Our customer support team is ready to help at all times. We are always here to assist you with whatever you need. Have a fantastic day.
Result: PlayHT often hallucinates on number phrases - in this case confuses “1212” for “2122”
Cartesia
PlayHT
Example #2
Script: Thank you for calling, my name is Sarah, how can I help you today? Your confirmation number is Alpha Bravo 7 2 9 Charlie, is that correct? The appointment is scheduled for December 27th, 2024 at 2:00 PM. Please hold while I transfer you to our billing department.
Result: Play misses contextual understanding like the year “2024”
Cartesia
PlayHT
Voice Cloning Comparison
Cartesia excels at voice cloning, creating instant voice replicas from just 5–10 seconds of audio with remarkable similarity to the original audio.
PlayHT, on the other hand, requires longer audio samples and produces less accurate voice clones with more restrictions.
Using advanced technology, Cartesia creates high-quality voice clones that preserve accents and vocal characteristics—even with noisy source audio. Cartesia voice mixing and design features offer diverse voice options, making the experience more versatile. Cartesia generated cloned voices sound nearly identical to the original speakers.
Source
Cartesia
PlayHT
Voice Design Controllability
Cartesia stands out by offering unique features for voice design, including emotion and speed modulation. This allows users to make refined adjustments while maintaining a natural sound. Additionally, Cartesia enables localization, allowing an American voice to adopt a French accent, enhancing versatility.
In contrast, PlayHT provides limited control options, focusing mainly on stability and similarity, which may not meet the diverse needs of users.
Explore Pricing Options for Cartesia and PlayHT
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
PlayHT
Free - $0 per month with 12.5k characters and limited features
Creator - $5 per month with 25k characters per month
Pro - $49 per month with 500k characters per month
Startup - $299 per month with 5M characters per month
Growth - $999.00 /month with 20M characters per month
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
