Cartesia vs Smallest
Discover the differences between leading voice AI models. Evaluate features, pricing, and performance to find the right fit for your needs.
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Comparing Cartesia and Smallest AI Voice Models
Both platforms offer advanced voice AI capabilities, but one excels in ultra-fast voice generation and realistic output. The other has a more limited feature set and slower 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
Smallest AI
100ms + network time
Voices may lack depth and emotional range
Limited character count for longer texts
Requires 3 seconds of audio
Not supported
Less contextual awareness in pronunciation
Basic customization options available
Standard telephony quality without enhancements
Limited on-device capabilities for some tasks
30
Concurrency limits may restrict usage
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 remarkably lifelike.
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 evaluating voice quality, Cartesia consistently outperforms Smallest AI. Cartesia's Sonic model has been rated 4.7 out of 5 in independent evaluations, showcasing its natural and realistic voice output. In contrast, Smallest AI's voices have received lower ratings, indicating less depth and reliability. Cartesia's commitment to quality ensures that users experience lifelike speech that closely resembles human conversation, making it the preferred choice for applications requiring high-quality voice synthesis.
Cartesia
Smallest AI
Latency Performance Review
When measuring latency, Cartesia's Sonic model achieves an impressive Time to First Audio (TTFA) of just 199 ms, significantly faster than Smallest AI's performance. This measurement is based on the 90th percentile score from 100 TTFA measurements for each provider. Cartesia's architecture, built on State Space Models (SSMs), allows for greater latency optimization compared to traditional transformer architectures, ensuring that users experience near-instantaneous voice responses.
Hallucination Rate Analysis
Cartesia's voice cloning technology boasts a no hallucination feature, ensuring crystal-clear audio without errors. This is a significant advantage over Smallest AI, which may experience inconsistencies in voice replication. Cartesia's advanced algorithms maintain authenticity and clarity, making it a reliable choice for applications that require high fidelity in voice synthesis. Users can trust that Cartesia's voice clones will sound natural and accurate, enhancing the overall user experience.
Voice Cloning Showdown
When it comes to voice cloning, Cartesia excels by requiring only 3 seconds of audio to create an instant clone. In contrast, Smallest AI imposes restrictions on cloning capabilities. Cartesia's advanced embedding technology ensures consistent, high-quality voice clones, preserving accents and maintaining voice quality even in noisy conditions. Additionally, Cartesia's voice mixing and design capabilities provide a wider variety of diverse voices, making it a superior choice for voice cloning needs.
Voice Design Controllability
Cartesia stands out by offering emotion and speed modulation features, allowing for refined voice adjustments while maintaining a natural auditory experience. Users can easily localize voices to match different accents, such as transforming an American voice to speak in a French accent. In contrast, Smallest AI provides limited control options, lacking the flexibility that Cartesia offers. This makes Cartesia the better choice for those seeking customizable and expressive voice design capabilities.
Pricing Plans for Cartesia and Smallest
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
Smallest AI
Free - $0/mo Monthly with ~ 30 minutes of ultra-high quality text to speech
Basic - $5 Monthly with ~ 3 hours of ultra-high quality text to speech
Premium - $29 Monthly with ~ 24 hours of ultra-high quality text to speech
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
