ElevenLabs vs. Cartesia

Companies are leveraging AI Audio to produce high-quality localized content at scale. We wrote this post (updated as of June 2024) to help you evaluate ElevenLabs versus Cartesia on text to speech quality, overall feature set, pricing, and more to assess which is better for your use case.

ElevenLabs v Cartesia, a quick overview

Feature	ElevenLabs	Cartesia
Languages Supported	32	1
Total Number of Voices	3k+	29
Voice Quality	Unparalleled voice realism	Less depth and reliability
Character Limits	40k characters for Turbo v2.5, request stitching	500 characters for Sonic Turbo English
Latency	300ms + network time	150ms + network time
Price	Pricing tiers that work for creators and businesses	Pricing tiers that work for creators and businesses
Voice Cloning	Both Instant Voice Cloning (w/ less than 1 minute of audio) and Professional Voice Cloning (most realistic clones w/ 30 min+ audio)	Instant Voice Cloning with 30 seconds of audio
AI Dubbing	Yes, into 32 languages	No
Concurrency	Up to 15 on highest self serve tier, custom for enterprise	Up to 15 on highest self serve tier, custom for enterprise
API Access	Yes, all plans	Yes, all plans

Comparing Text to Speech

There are several ways to evaluate text to speech solutions and the way you weight each factor will depend on your use case.

Voice Quality

Realistic, human-like text to speech is essential for driving listener engagement and building great product experiences. You can sample both ElevenLabs versus Cartesia for free their sites or listen to the samples below:

Supported Languages

ElevenLabs powers text to speech in 32 languages. Cartesia only supports English.

Size of voice library

ElevenLabs allows anyone to share & profit off their voice in their Voice Library. Thousands of people across different ages, regions, languages, and accents have shared their voice which means you can find exactly what you need whether it be a Southern cowboy or a regional British accent. Cartesia has only 29 preset voices today.

Voice Cloning functionality

Both ElevenLabs and Cartesia allow you to create Instant Voice Cloning that approximates your voice with under a minute of audio. ElevenLabs also has Professional Voice Cloning, which allows you to create a custom model of your voice that is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. We find that business and creatives opt for Professional Voice Cloning when they need the highest possible quality for their project.

Max Request Length and Prosody

You can generate up to 40k characters on a single text to speech request with ElevenLabs Turbo v2.5, whereas you are limited to 500 characters with Cartesia Sonic.

Longer max text lengths, along with the ability to stitch requests on ElevenLabs, leads to more consistent prosody. For long form content generation like audiobooks, ElevenLabs is best. Otherwise you run the risk of your speaker changing up the delivery, cadence and tone across pages.

Controllability

Both ElevenLabs and Cartesia accept phoneme prompts which enable you to specific the precise pronunciation of a word. ElevenLabs also allows you to upload a pronunciation dictionary which enables consistent pronunciation across a project without having to specify every time a target word comes up in your prompt.

With ElevenLabs Speech to Speech, you can also deliver dialogue exactly as you want it and then transform it into a speaker of your choice.

Latency

ElevenLabs Turbo v2.5 returns audio in 300ms (+ network latency) on average. Cartesia Sonic returns audio in 150ms (+ network latency) on average.

Additional models & products

Today, Cartesia supports only the Text to Speech product and API we've discussed up to this point.

ElevenLabs is a full fledged AI Audio platform, including:

• Speech to Speech: Convert one voice (source voice) into another (cloned voice) while preserving the tone and delivery of the original voice.
• Projects: Generate, edit, and customize long-form spoken audio with precision, all within a streamlined workflow.
• Voice Over Studio: Create video voice overs or podcasts in a streamlined workflow that allows you to generate speech from multiple speakers, along with sound effects, and adjust the timing.
• AI Dubbing: Localize content into 29 languages to reach a global audience.
• Audio Native: Embed an audio player that creates an automated voice over of your blog or news site.
• Text to Sound Effects: Generate sound effects and short instrumental tracks from a simple text prompt.

Pricing

Both ElevenLabs versus Cartesia offer a free plan along with a set of subscription options that can work for anyone from small creators to enterprises. Across self-serve plans, Cartesia text to speech is roughly one fifth the cost of ElevenLabs.

Overview

ElevenLabs is a premium AI Audio solution used to voice audiobooks and news articles, animate video game characters, help in film pre-production, automate localization processes in entertainment, create dynamic audio content for social media and advertising, and train medical professionals. If you need the highest quality AI Audio, a diverse set of voices, multi-lingual text to speech, additional controllability with speech to speech, or are doing long form content generation, ElevenLabs is for you. For simpler projects where Cartesia's more limited functionality isn't an issue, you may save money with their solution.