Cartesia Sonic vs Convai
Cartesia Sonic
cartesia.ai
Convai
convai.comSide by side
| Figure | Cartesia Sonic | Convai |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $5/mo | $299/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 6 |
| Spec score · Game Voice Generators | 8.6 (#12) | 8.4 (#15) |
| Integrations | Managed Agents can use Cartesia-provisioned numbers, import Twilio numbers, or connect a carrier over SIP. | Convai lists Unity, Unreal Engine, 3JS, and other game engine integrations, plus plugins, APIs, tutorials, and documentation. |
| Product | Sonic is a text-to-speech model for real-time voice applications. | Convai is a conversational AI platform for building interactive AI characters and NPCs for games, virtual worlds, training simulations, and XR. |
| Support | Cartesia's documentation directs users to Discord to chat with the Cartesia team and community for help. | Convai's product blog says its developer support includes a forum, documentation, sample code, tutorials, and 24/7 support team availability. |
Plans
Cartesia Sonic
- FreeFree
- Pro$5 a month
- Startup$49 a month
- Scale$299 a month
- FreeFree
- EnterprisePriced on request
Convai
- FreeFree
- Scale$299 a month
- Business$499 a month
- Indie Dev$2,922 a month
- Professional$9,969 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
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.