Cartesia pricing per minute
Cartesia sells credits on monthly plans. Free costs $0, Pro $5, Startup $49, and Scale $299. One credit equals one character of text to speech. Cartesia says one minute of Sonic audio takes 750 to 800 credits. Voice agents cost $0.06 a minute. Figures come from the Cartesia pricing page on October 27, 2026. We do not track Cartesia on SaaS Price Watch yet.
Cartesia plans
| Plan | Price a month | Credits | Prepaid agents | Sonic TTS minutes | Ink STT hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 20K | $1 | about 27 | about 1h 51m |
| Pro | $5 | 100K | $5 | about 133 | about 9h 16m |
| Startup | $49 | 1.25M | $49 | about 1,667 | about 115h 44m |
| Scale | $299 | 8M | $299 | about 10,667 | about 740h 44m |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Ink speech to text uses 3 credits per second of audio. Each plan lists model credits and a prepaid voice agent balance each month.
Cost per minute of speech
| Plan | Our math per TTS minute |
|---|---|
| Pro | about $0.0376 |
| Startup | about $0.0294 |
| Scale | about $0.0280 |
This divides the plan price by its included minutes. It assumes you use all credits, and it ignores the prepaid agent balance on the same plan.
Voice agents and overage
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Voice agent call time | $0.06 per minute |
| Telephony on a Cartesia number | $0.014 per minute |
| Overage on Pro | $65 per 1M credits |
| Overage on Startup | $45 per 1M credits |
| Overage on Scale | $38 per 1M credits |
Paid users can turn on overages. If overages are off, new requests stop when credits run out. Unused credits roll over up to 2x the monthly plan amount.
A conflict on speech to text
The Cartesia FAQ says one hour of Ink speech to text is $0.39 on the Scale plan. Our math gives about $0.40: one hour is 10,800 credits, and Scale sells 8M credits for $299. The gap is small. We show both and do not resolve it.
What we withhold
We do not list Enterprise rates or Pro Voice Clone limits beyond the slot counts. We do not list LLM costs for agent calls, because Cartesia lists them as free for a limited time.
Compare and track
See the ElevenLabs pricing per minute guide, the Deepgram pricing per minute guide, the Amazon Polly pricing guide, the Google text to speech pricing guide, and all AI tools.
FAQ
How much does Cartesia cost per minute? Our math puts Sonic text to speech at about $0.0376 a minute on Pro and $0.0280 on Scale. Voice agents cost $0.06 a minute.
How many credits is one minute of Cartesia audio? Cartesia says 750 to 800 credits. One credit equals one character.
Does Cartesia have a free plan? Yes. Free costs $0 and gives 20K credits, about 27 minutes of speech.
What happens if I run out of Cartesia credits? Paid users can turn on overage at $65, $45, or $38 per 1M credits by plan. With overage off, new requests stop.
How much is Cartesia speech to text? Ink uses 3 credits per second. Cartesia says an hour costs $0.39 on Scale. Our math gives about $0.40.
How we check
We read the Cartesia pricing page on October 27, 2026. Get an alert when an AI voice price changes.
Checked 2026-10-27. Prices and policies change. Confirm on the source before you buy.
Sources
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