Rime vs Cartesia
Pricing and features, side by side. Checked October 14, 2026.
| Rime | Cartesia | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $0.03 per 1K characters (~$0.03/min) | Free; paid from $5/mo |
| Billing | Usage, per 1K characters | Monthly credits + agent minutes |
| Best for | Natural-sounding TTS for phone agents | Fast, low-latency text-to-speech |
| Key features | ~800 free minutes | Instant voice cloning (paid plans) |
| Two voice model families | Hosted agents at $0.06/min | |
| Usage-based | Free tier |
Both sell low-latency TTS for phone agents. Rime is usage-based from $0.03 per 1K characters on Mist v3 (~$0.03/min, 37 ms P50 time-to-first-audio) and $0.05 per 1K on Coda, with about 800 free starter minutes and no monthly platform fee. Cartesia starts free (20K credits/mo) then $5/mo for 100K credits on Pro, with hosted agents at $0.06/min and Cartesia numbers at +$0.014/min; Sonic 3.6 covers 44 languages.
Pick Rime if you want published per-character rates with no monthly plan fee and Mist's 37 ms P50 time-to-first-audio.
Pick Cartesia if you want a free monthly credit pool, instant voice cloning on paid plans, and a hosted agent product at $0.06/min.