Acapela Group vs Cartesia Sonic
Acapela Group
acapela-group.com
Cartesia Sonic
cartesia.aiSide by side
| Figure | Acapela Group | Cartesia Sonic |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | €8.25/mo | $5/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 9 | 6 |
| Spec score · Text-to-Speech Software | 9.3 (#2) | 8.7 (#28) |
| Spec score · AI voice generators | 9.3 (#1) | 8.7 (#8) |
| Spec score · Text-to-speech tools | 9.2 (#9) | 8.7 (#33) |
| Spec score · Game Voice Generators | 9.3 (#3) | 8.6 (#12) |
| API access | Yes | Yes |
| Commercial use | Yes | Yes |
| Deployment | Customer interaction products are available through cloud, sovereign cloud, on-premises, and embedded deployments. | Cartesia says Sonic can be deployed on-premise, in a customer VPC on AWS, GCP, or Azure, or through OEM licensing. |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Headquarters | Mons, Belgium | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Languages | The company says its voices cover over 30 languages. | Sonic supports 44 languages. |
| Platforms | web,windows,macos,linux,ios,android,api | web,api |
| Support | Acapela says its team advises customers on voice selection and project requirements, and asks them to provide project, application, operating system, and language details. | Cartesia's documentation directs users to Discord to chat with the Cartesia team and community for help. |
| Voice cloning | Yes | Instant voice cloning can use 10 seconds of audio, while Pro Voice Clone training uses 30 minutes or more from one speaker. |
Plans
Acapela Group
- Yearly subscription€99 a year
- One-time license€999 a month
- Acapela Android voice€3.99, paid once
- Acapela TTS voices for Google Play€3.99, paid once
- My-Own-Voice yearly subscription€99 a year
- My-Own-Voice one-time licence€999, paid once
- Virtual Speaker€1,500, paid once
- Virtual Speaker first prepaid package€1,500, paid once
- Acapela TTS voices for NVDA€5,999, paid once
Cartesia Sonic
- FreeFree
- Pro$5 a month
- Startup$49 a month
- Scale$299 a month
- FreeFree
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Acapela Group
Acapela Group creates synthetic voices that turn written content into speech for services, apps, and devices. Its portfolio includes more than 250 voices in over 30 languages, with voice cloning, API access, and commercial use supported. Customer interaction products can be deployed through cloud, sovereign cloud, on-premises, or embedded setups. Acapela Cloud provides a web interface for creating and editing AI voice prompts and organizing files by project. Developers can use the Windows Server toolkit with proprietary APIs, SAPI5,.NET, C/C++, Java, MRCP v2, and W3C SSML. Rule-based pronunciation and lexicon tools allow specific terms to be tuned across languages. Acapela identifies voice agents and interactive voice response systems as use cases, and its NVDA voices serve blind and vision-impaired computer users. Platforms include Android, API, iOS, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows. The yearly subscription is €99 a year, billed excluding VAT; a three-month voice evaluation is included. Acapela is based in Mons, Belgium.
Cartesia Sonic
Cartesia Sonic is a text-to-speech model for real-time voice applications, available through the web and an API. It has sub-90ms latency and supports 44 languages. Sonic can interpret emotional subtext and add non-verbal expressions such as laughter to transcripts. Its localization feature carries emotion, tone, and speaker identity into another language, while custom pronunciation dictionaries let users set how proper nouns and domain terms are spoken. For voice agents, Managed Agents combine Ink-2 speech-to-text, a selected LLM, and Sonic-3.6 text-to-speech, with turn-taking and interruption handling. Phone connectivity can use Cartesia-provisioned numbers, imported Twilio numbers, or a carrier over SIP. Cartesia lists HIPAA compliance, SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and PCI. It says Sonic can be deployed on-premise, in a customer VPC on AWS, GCP, or Azure, or through OEM licensing. A free plan includes 20K credits per month and two concurrent text-to-speech requests. Paid plans start at $5/mo; higher tiers raise credit allowances and list capabilities including organizations and priority support.