Cartesia Sonic vs PlayHT
Cartesia Sonic
cartesia.ai
PlayHT
playht.coSide by side
| Figure | Cartesia Sonic | PlayHT |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $5/mo | $9.99/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 4 |
| Spec score · Game Voice Generators | 8.6 (#12) | 7.9 (#24) |
| Integrations | Managed Agents can use Cartesia-provisioned numbers, import Twilio numbers, or connect a carrier over SIP. | The REST API supports speech generation and other PlayHT features, and the maker documents an MCP connector for Claude.ai, Claude Desktop, and other MCP-compatible clients. |
| Languages | Sonic supports 44 languages. | Its text-to-speech page says it supports more than 30 languages and local variations, while its About page states 50+ languages. |
| Product | Sonic is a text-to-speech model for real-time voice applications. | PlayHT converts text into speech using AI voices and also offers voice cloning, dubbing, voice changing, voice isolation, transcription, AI music, and sound effects. |
| Security | Cartesia lists HIPAA compliance, SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and PCI on the Sonic page. | The privacy policy states that data is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.3 and at rest with AES-256, and hosted on AWS infrastructure in the United States. |
| Voice cloning | Instant voice cloning can use 10 seconds of audio, while Pro Voice Clone training uses 30 minutes or more from one speaker. | PlayHT says a voice clone can be created from a 30-second sample and used for multilingual speech and through its API. |
Plans
Cartesia Sonic
- FreeFree
- Pro$5 a month
- Startup$49 a month
- Scale$299 a month
- FreeFree
- 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.