Cartesia review

Cartesia is best known for its text-to-speech and speech-to-text models, and its Managed Agents product wraps those models into phone agents with low entry costs. The free plan includes $1 of prepaid agent usage a month, 1 Cartesia-provisioned number and 8 concurrent calls, and Pro costs $5 a month with $5 of prepaid agent usage, 3 numbers and 12 concurrent calls. Agent calls are billed at $0.03 per minute, which Cartesia shows as a cut from $0.06, plus $0.014 per minute on a Cartesia number and separately billed LLM usage. Agents take inbound calls and place outbound calls to lists of up to 5,000 numbers on Cartesia, Twilio or SIP numbers. You can call an agent from the browser and score the call with metrics you write, and every call keeps its recording and transcript. It has fewer contact center features, such as warm transfers and phone tree handling, than Retell AI or Vapi document.

Who it is for

Prototypes and low-volume agents on a small budget

Price

Free plan with $1 of prepaid agent usage; Pro $5 per month with $5 of prepaid agent usage; agents $0.03 per minute plus LLM.

Pro $5 /mo Select Pro 100K credits / month $5 prepaid agents / month
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 12, 2026.

Key features

• Managed agents billed at $0.03 per minute of call duration
• Inbound calls and outbound calls to lists of up to 5,000 numbers
• Cartesia, Twilio or SIP phone numbers
• Browser test calls scored against metrics you write
• Recording, transcript and summary kept for every call

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: Free plan includes 1 Cartesia-provisioned phone number and 8 concurrent calls
• Strength: Pro costs $5 a month and includes 3 phone numbers and 12 concurrent calls
• Strength: Evaluations are free of charge for a limited time
• Weakness: LLM usage during calls is billed separately
• Weakness: Calls on a Cartesia number add $0.014 per minute
• Weakness: DPAs, BAAs and SSO are on the Enterprise plan

Key facts

• Agent rate: $0.03 per minute, previously $0.06
• Free plan: Yes, $1 prepaid agent usage a month
• Pro: $5 per month, $5 prepaid agent usage
• Outbound batch size: Up to 5,000 numbers

Where it ranks

Cartesia is No. 8 in our Best AI Voice Agent Platforms verdict.