Pick Cartesia if
product teams shipping a live voice agent or TTS API who will stay on Sonic / Ink.
Read the Cartesia pageCartesia vs MiniMax Audio
Our take
Pick Cartesia if you're on a product team shipping a live voice agent or TTS API who will stay on Sonic / Ink. Pick MiniMax Audio if you're on a team who will pay per million characters for Speech 2.8. Skip Cartesia if you're narrators who only need a one-off MP3 of a script (WellSaid). Skip MiniMax Audio if you're people who want MIT local TTS (Piper) or a phone pathway (Bland).
Best for
Cartesia Voice that has to answer live
MiniMax Audio A multilingual VO or clone billed per million characters
Free plan
Cartesia $0 · 20K credits / month. $1 prepaid agents / month. TTS + STT. No commercial-use license on this card
MiniMax Audio No free plan
Lowest paid
Cartesia Pro $5/mo
MiniMax Audio speech-2.8-turbo $60
Next step up
Cartesia Startup $49/mo
MiniMax Audio speech-2.8-hd $100
Coding agent
Cartesia Managed voice agents
MiniMax Audio
Runs where
Cartesia Hosted
MiniMax Audio Local or hosted
Watch out
Cartesia Free is not a commercial license
MiniMax Audio Characters are the meter
Last checked
Cartesia 2026-10-22 · cartesia.ai/pricing
MiniMax Audio 2026-10-27 · platform.minimax.io/docs/guides/pricing-paygo
Which one, then?
Pick MiniMax Audio if
teams who will pay per million characters for Speech 2.8.
Read the MiniMax Audio page