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Cartesia vs Fish Audio

Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, side by side.

Cartesia logo

Cartesia

Real-time speech AI for developers: fast text-to-speech, transcription and voice agents

Freemium
Visit websiteView details
Fish Audio logo

Fish Audio

Expressive text-to-speech, voice cloning and speech-to-text with fine-grained emotion control

Freemium
Visit websiteView details

Verdict

Cartesia and Fish Audio are both Audio & Speech AI tools. Both have a free plan or trial.

Best overall

Cartesia

  • Developers
  • Voice AI Engineers
  • Contact Centre Teams
  • Enterprises

Choose Cartesia if

  • You want a tool built for Low-latency voice agents, real-time text-to-speech and streaming transcription inside applications.
  • Published time to first audio of about 90 ms for Sonic 3.6, suited to live conversation.
  • Free tier with 20K credits per month and a $5 Pro plan with commercial use and instant cloning.

Choose Fish Audio if

  • You want a tool built for expressive narration and character voices, cloning a voice from a short sample, and building voice agents through an API.
  • Inline emotion and non-verbal tags give direct control over delivery.
  • Voice cloning from about 10 to 15 seconds of audio.
Best for beginners
Cartesia
Best for business
Cartesia

Features

17 features compared.

  • Sonic Text-to-Speech
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Ink Speech-to-Text
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Managed Agents
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Voice Cloning
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Pronunciation Dictionaries
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Regional API Routing
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Telephony Support
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Python and JavaScript SDKs
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Usage and Access Controls
    Cartesia
    Available
    Fish Audio
    Not available
  • Expressive Text-to-Speech
    Cartesia
    Not available
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Speech-to-Text
    Cartesia
    Not available
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Voice Library
    Cartesia
    Limited
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Voice Design
    Cartesia
    Not available
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Audio Tools
    Cartesia
    Not available
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Voice Agents
    Cartesia
    Not available
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Developer API and MCP
    Cartesia
    Not available
    Fish Audio
    Available
  • Avatar Lipsync and Media Generation
    Cartesia
    Not available
    Fish Audio
    Available

Limited means partial support or a paid add-on.

Pricing

Plans as listed by each vendor. Check their sites for current prices.

  • Pricing model
    Cartesia
    Freemium
    Fish Audio
    Freemium
  • Free plan
    Cartesia
    Yes
    Fish Audio
    Yes
  • Starting price
    Cartesia
    $0
    Fish Audio
    $0
  • Plans
    Cartesia
    5 plans
    Fish Audio
    5 plans

Cartesia plans

  • Free

    $0

    Entry tier for testing text-to-speech and transcription

    • 20K credits/month
    • Text to Speech
    • Speech to Text
    • 2 concurrent TTS requests
    • 1 phone number

  • Pro

    $5/month

    Individuals building with commercial use rights

    • 100K credits/month
    • commercial use license
    • instant voice cloning
    • 3 concurrent TTS requests

  • Startup

    $49/month

    Small teams shipping voice products

    • 1.25M credits/month
    • professional voice cloning (2 slots)
    • Organizations
    • 5 concurrent TTS requests

  • Scale

    $299/month

    Higher-volume production workloads

    • 8M credits/month
    • priority support
    • high concurrency
    • 15 concurrent TTS requests
    • 4 professional voice clone slots

  • Enterprise

    Custom/custom

    Large organizations with custom requirements

    • Custom limits
    • DPAs and BAAs
    • SSO
    • shared Slack channel
    • security questionnaire support

Fish Audio plans

  • Free

    $0

    Personal use with monthly credits

    • 8,000 credits/month
    • 500 characters per generation
    • 3 public voice slots
    • standard speed

  • Plus

    Most popular

    $15/month

    Individual creators needing more volume and private voices

    • 250,000 credits/month
    • 15,000 characters per generation
    • 10 private voices
    • 1 professional voice
    • Voice Design
    • priority generation

  • Pro

    $100/month

    Heavier production use with team seats

    • 2,000,000 credits/month
    • 30,000 characters per generation
    • 5 professional voices
    • 3 team seats

  • Max

    $999/month

    High-volume production

    • 25,000,000 credits/month
    • 15 professional voices
    • 10 team seats

  • Enterprise

    Custom/custom

    Organizations needing controls and compliance

    • Pay-as-you-go
    • zero data retention
    • on-premise deployment
    • SOC2 compliance
    • volume discounts

Our ratings

Scored out of 10 by the Finder Atlas editorial team. Last reviewed October 2026.

Cartesia
8.3overall
Fish Audio
8.2overall

Cartesia leads in 3 categories and Fish Audio in 1, with 1 tied.

  • Ease of Use

    Fish Audio leads by 0.5
    Cartesia
    7.8
    Fish Audio
    8.3

  • Feature Depth

    Tied
    Cartesia
    8.5
    Fish Audio
    8.5

  • Value for Money

    Cartesia leads by 0.2
    Cartesia
    8.2
    Fish Audio
    8.0

  • Performance & Speed

    Cartesia leads by 0.7
    Cartesia
    9.0
    Fish Audio
    8.3

  • Documentation & Support

    Cartesia leads by 0.4
    Cartesia
    8.2
    Fish Audio
    7.8

Scores weigh documented features, plan value, platform coverage, integrations and user feedback. A missing score means we have not rated that area yet.

Pros and cons

Cartesia

Pros

  • Published time to first audio of about 90 ms for Sonic 3.6, suited to live conversation.
  • Free tier with 20K credits per month and a $5 Pro plan with commercial use and instant cloning.
  • One platform covers text-to-speech, speech-to-text and managed voice agents.
  • Regional endpoints in the US, EU and APAC, with on-premise and on-device options.
  • Frequent releases: the changelog shows monthly model, voice and API updates in 2026.
  • Ranked first on Artificial Analysis speech leaderboards according to the company.

Cons

  • The free tier has no instant voice cloning, only 2 concurrent TTS requests and no commercial license.
  • Credit-based billing with overage up to $65 per 1M credits can be hard to forecast as usage grows.
  • Independent reviews note a smaller preset voice library than some narrative-focused competitors.
  • Developer-oriented; there is no consumer app and no released iOS or Android app.

Fish Audio

Pros

  • Inline emotion and non-verbal tags give direct control over delivery.
  • Voice cloning from about 10 to 15 seconds of audio.
  • Permanent free tier with 8,000 credits per month.
  • Separate pay-as-you-go API with published per-unit prices and an MCP integration.
  • Large public voice library, reported at more than 2 million voices.
  • Open-source roots in Fish Speech and OpenAudio.

Cons

  • No official mobile app confirmed; web and API only.
  • Free plan is limited to 500 characters per generation, and its commercial-use terms are inconsistent on the plan page.
  • Big price jumps between tiers: $15 Plus, $100 Pro and $999 Max per month.
  • Plan page credit-per-minute estimates do not match plan figures, which makes usage hard to forecast.

Platforms

  • Web
    Cartesia
    Supported
    Fish Audio
    Supported
  • Windows
    Cartesia
    Not supported
    Fish Audio
    Not supported
  • macOS
    Cartesia
    Not supported
    Fish Audio
    Not supported
  • iOS
    Cartesia
    Not supported
    Fish Audio
    Not supported
  • Android
    Cartesia
    Not supported
    Fish Audio
    Not supported
  • API
    Cartesia
    Supported
    Fish Audio
    Supported
  • Browser Extension
    Cartesia
    Not supported
    Fish Audio
    Not supported

Integrations

Cartesia

3 integrations
  • Twilio
  • Anthropic
  • OpenAI

Fish Audio

9 integrations
  • HeyGen
  • Retell
  • LiveKit
  • Telnyx
  • ComfyUI
  • OpenArt
  • Novita AI
  • Viggle
  • Runware

Company

  • Company
    Cartesia
    Cartesia
    Fish Audio
    Hanabi AI Inc.
  • Founded
    Cartesia
    2023
    Fish Audio
    2025
  • Headquarters
    Cartesia
    San Francisco, CA
    Fish Audio
    Palo Alto, CA
  • Monthly users
    Cartesia
    Not listed
    Fish Audio
    8M+
  • Listing
    Cartesia
    Claimed
    Fish Audio
    Claimed

Frequently asked questions

Is Cartesia better than Fish Audio?

It depends on your workflow. Cartesia is built for Low-latency voice agents, real-time text-to-speech and streaming transcription inside applications. Fish Audio is built for expressive narration and character voices, cloning a voice from a short sample, and building voice agents through an API.

What are the key feature differences between Cartesia and Fish Audio?

Cartesia: Real-time speech AI for developers: fast text-to-speech, transcription and voice agents. Fish Audio: Expressive text-to-speech, voice cloning and speech-to-text with fine-grained emotion control.

Does Cartesia or Fish Audio have a free plan?

Yes, both do. Cartesia is freemium and Fish Audio is freemium, and each has a free plan or trial.

Which is cheaper, Cartesia or Fish Audio?

Both can be used for free. Paid plans differ in limits and features, so compare the tiers in the pricing table above.