Best for
Best for developers building low-latency, real-time voice agents.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
Cartesia vs. Vapi
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for developers putting voice agents on real phone lines for support, lead qualification or scheduling.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Cartesia | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free tier; Pro from $5 / month Usage-based credits and agent minutes. Pro adds a commercial-use license and instant voice cloning. | lower value From $0.05 / minute of calls Build plan, usage-based, plus $0.005 per SMS or chat message. Ten concurrent lines are included and further lines cost $10 / month each. Model provider costs for speech-to-text, the LLM and text-to-speech are passed through at cost, or nothing if you bring your own API keys. |
| Free trial | Free tier with 20,000 credits per month | Not stated |
| Commercial use | Paid | Yes, usage-based |
| Output | Low-latency real-time speech, instant clone from around three seconds | Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls, web voice, and SMS or chat |
| API | Yes | Yes, REST API, CLI and SDKs |
| Voice cloning | Yes, instant cloning from around three seconds, plus a Pro clone trained on 30 minutes or more of audio | Not part of Vapi itself; voices come from connected providers such as ElevenLabs and Deepgram |
| Real-time use | Yes, real-time text-to-speech (Sonic), built for live voice agents | Yes, live inbound and outbound phone and web conversations at an average latency under 500 ms |
| Languages | Yes, Sonic 3.6 covers 44 languages natively, chosen per request with a language parameter and regional locale variants | Depends on the providers chosen for a given assistant: automatic language detection and code-switching with Deepgram (100+ languages), Google STT (125+) or Gladia (110+), while Azure, OpenAI Whisper, Speechmatics and Talkscriber run one language at a time; on the voice side Vapi's own voices cover 40+ languages, Azure 140+ and ElevenLabs 30+. The languages an assistant may use have to be listed in its system prompt |
| Speech-to-speech and dubbing | Yes, a voice changer, plus localization that converts existing audio across the 44 supported languages while holding the speaker's emotion and identity | Yes, a call runs as spoken conversation by chaining speech-to-text, a language model and text-to-speech, with natural turn-taking |
| Editing and controls | Speed 0.6x to 1.5x, volume 0.5x to 2x, an emotion setting (neutral, calm, angry, content, sad) or model-interpreted emotion, custom pronunciation dictionaries, accent selection for multilingual voices and text normalization | Assistants for a single prompt with tools, Squads for multi-assistant orchestration, tool calls into APIs and databases mid-conversation, plus testing and call observability |
| Consent and trust | The terms of service forbid publishing audio of another person's voice without that person's express permission, and name deceased people and political candidates explicitly | SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI compliance with SSO, OAuth and role-based access control; HIPAA is a $2,000 / month add-on and zero data retention $1,000 / month on both plans |
| MCP-ready | No | stated Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Not stated | Email helpdesk, Community forum |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | Not stated | OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Deepgram, Gladia, ElevenLabs, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Slack, Google Workspace |
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The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Cartesia Free tier; Pro from $5 / month Vapi From $0.05 / minute of calls
- MCP-ready Cartesia No Vapi Yes
- Commercial use Cartesia Paid Vapi Yes, usage-based
- Output Cartesia Low-latency real-time speech, instant clone from around three seconds Vapi Voice agents for inbound and outbound phone calls, web voice, and SMS or chat
- API Cartesia Yes Vapi Yes, REST API, CLI and SDKs
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Cartesia
Strengths
- Lowest-latency real-time voice for agents
- Instant three-second cloning
- Cost-effective developer API
Limitations
- Less expressive on long-form and audiobook content
- Newer and developer-oriented
Vapi
Strengths
- Per-minute pricing with model provider costs passed through at cost
- Bring your own provider keys and the pass-through drops to nothing
- Free choice of speech-to-text, model and voice provider across dozens of options
- Official MCP server lets external AI agents drive Vapi's APIs
Limitations
- HIPAA compliance and zero data retention are monthly add-ons rather than included
- Total cost depends on which model, transcription and voice providers you choose
- Concurrent lines beyond the first ten cost $10 per month each
- A platform to build on, not a finished call-centre product
Plans
Pricing
Cartesia
- Free $0 20,000 credits per month plus $1 of prepaid agent usage. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text.
- Pro $5 / month 100,000 credits, a commercial-use license and instant voice cloning.
- Startup $49 / month 1.25 million credits, professional voice cloning and organizations.
- Scale $299 / month 8 million credits, priority support and high concurrency limits.
- Enterprise Not stated Custom credits and agent usage, custom concurrency limits, DPAs/BAAs and SSO.
Vapi
- Build $0.05 Per minute of calls, usage-based, plus $0.005 per SMS or chat message. Ten call concurrency included, additional lines $10 / month each. Model provider costs at cost. Community Discord and email support.
- Scale Not stated Annual contract with a fixed platform fee and committed volume, volume-based per-minute pricing on quote, enterprise features including SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI, a dedicated account team and a custom support SLA.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Cartesia
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Vapi
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Cartesia https://cartesia.ai · no check date recorded yet
Vapi https://vapi.ai · checked against the official source on 2026-08-30
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.