Cartesia TTS Cost Calculator
Enter characters or audio minutes of Sonic TTS per month plus Ink STT hours. The calculator converts them to Cartesia credits (1 per character, 3 per second of STT), picks the cheapest plan including optional overage, and shows effective $ per audio minute and per 1M characters. Estimates only; cartesia.ai/pricing prevails.
Math runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Credits needed
—
Cheapest plan (overage on)
—
Effective cost
—
| Plan | Fee · credits / mo | Overage rate | Overage $ | Total / mo |
|---|
Formula: credits = TTS characters × 1 (Sonic, incl. Pro Voice Clone speech) + break tags × 1 + STT seconds × 3 (Ink). Audio minutes are converted at your characters-per-minute (Cartesia cites ~750–800 credits per minute). Plans: Free $0 / 20K credits (no overage) · Pro $5 / 100K · Startup $49 / 1.25M · Scale $299 / 8M · Enterprise custom. Optional overage on paid plans: Pro $65, Startup $45, Scale $38 per 1M credits; with overage off, requests stop at zero balance. Unused credits roll over up to 2× the monthly allowance (not modeled). Total = plan fee + overage; effective $ = total ÷ credits. Not included: voice agents ($0.03 / min from prepaid agent dollars; Cartesia phone numbers $0.014 / min), telephony and LLM usage.
Estimates only. Official list prices as of 2026-11-01 (Asia/Shanghai); the provider's pricing page prevails. Sources: Cartesia pricing
TTS API Cost Comparison · ElevenLabs TTS Cost Calculator · OpenAI TTS Cost Calculator · Gemini TTS Cost Calculator · OpenAI Realtime Voice Cost Calculator · Gemini Live Voice Cost Calculator
More in this group
- Vapi Cost Calculator Vapi hosting + models + transport → $/mo, $/min.
- Retell AI Cost Calculator Retell LLM + infra + TTS + telephony → $/min.
- TTS API Cost Comparison OpenAI vs ElevenLabs vs Gemini vs Cartesia TTS.
- ElevenLabs TTS Cost Calculator TTS chars × $/1K; optional STT hours.
- OpenAI TTS Cost Calculator TTS characters or audio tokens by model.
- Gemini TTS Cost Calculator Gemini TTS seconds with promo cliff and Batch.
- OpenAI Realtime Voice Cost Calculator Realtime audio tokens and GPT-Live minutes in USD.
- Gemini Live Voice Cost Calculator Live audio minutes plus optional text/image.
How it works
- How many Cartesia credits does a minute of TTS use?
- Sonic TTS bills 1 credit per character, about 750–800 credits per minute of audio. Pro Voice Clone speech is also 1 credit per character (training is free) and each break tag counts as 1 credit. Ink STT is 3 credits per second, i.e. 10,800 credits per hour.
- Which Cartesia plan is cheapest for my volume?
- Free 20K credits, Pro $5 with 100K, Startup $49 with 1.25M, Scale $299 with 8M. Paid plans can enable overage at $65 (Pro), $45 (Startup) or $38 (Scale) per 1M credits. Example: 1M characters ≈ 1,300 minutes costs $63.50 on Pro with overage vs $49 on Startup, so Startup wins.
- What does Cartesia cost per audio minute?
- At 800 characters per minute: Scale's included credits work out to about $0.030 per minute ($37.38 per 1M characters), Startup about $0.031, Pro about $0.040; overage minutes cost $0.030–$0.052. Unused credits roll over up to 2× your monthly allowance.
- Does this include voice agent, telephony or LLM cost?
- No. Plans also include prepaid voice-agent dollars (Free $1 … Scale $299; agents run $0.03 per minute, Cartesia phone numbers $0.014 per minute). Telephony and LLM usage are billed separately and are not modeled here.
- Is any data uploaded?
- No. These calculators and QR codes run in your browser.