Best for
Best for apps and content that need expressive, emotionally aware speech and real-time voice interactions.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Voice & Speech Comparison
Hume AI 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 | Hume AI | Vapi |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free tier; paid from $3 / month Paid tiers are metered by monthly TTS characters and EVI minutes. | 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 10,000 TTS characters and 5 minutes of EVI per month | Not stated |
| Commercial use | Yes | Yes, usage-based |
| Output | Expressive text-to-speech (Octave) and empathic speech-to-speech (EVI) | 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, from about 15 seconds of audio | Not part of Vapi itself; voices come from connected providers such as ElevenLabs and Deepgram |
| Real-time use | Yes, Octave 2 streaming with latency as low as about 100ms | Yes, live inbound and outbound phone and web conversations at an average latency under 500 ms |
| Languages | Octave 2 in 11 languages | 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, the EVI empathic voice interface | 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 | Voice design from text prompts (English), plus emotional expression from context | 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 | Cloning requires filling out a legal agreement confirming you hold the rights or consent for the sample, and use is bound by Hume's Terms of Use and Ethical Guidelines | 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 | Community forum | more entries Email helpdesk, Community forum |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | more entries Freelancers, 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 Hume AI Free tier; paid from $3 / month Vapi From $0.05 / minute of calls
- Company size Hume AI Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Vapi Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Support Hume AI Community forum Vapi Email helpdesk, Community forum
- MCP-ready Hume AI No Vapi Yes
- Commercial use Hume AI Yes Vapi Yes, usage-based
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Hume AI
Strengths
- Expressive, emotionally aware speech
- Voice cloning from about 15 seconds and voice design from text prompts
- Low-latency streaming for real-time voice agents
Limitations
- Voice design and acting instructions are English only or still in preview
- Character and EVI-minute caps scale the monthly cost
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
Hume AI
- Free $0 10,000 TTS characters and 5 minutes of EVI per month.
- Starter $3 / month 30,000 TTS characters and 40 minutes of EVI per month.
- Creator $14 / month 140,000 TTS characters and 200 minutes of EVI per month; 50% off the first month.
- Pro $70 / month 1M TTS characters and 1,200 minutes of EVI per month.
- Scale $200 / month 3.3M TTS characters and 5,000 minutes of EVI per month.
- Business $500 / month 10M TTS characters and 12,500 minutes of EVI per month.
- Enterprise Not stated Custom pricing with unlimited usage.
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
Hume AI
- 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
Hume AI https://www.hume.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.