Cartesia vs Hume AI vs Kyutai (Moshi / Unmute) vs Sesame AI
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Cartesia
Ultra-low-latency voice AI on Mamba SSMs
Visit
|
Hume AI
Empathic voice AI that responds to emotion
Visit
|
|
Sesame AI
Conversational-voice startup behind the viral Maya and Miles assistant...
Visit
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RECATOOLS Score | 7.6 / 10 | 7.2 / 10 | 7 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Capability | — | |||
| Value for money | — | |||
| Ease of use | — | |||
| ASEAN readiness | — | |||
| API quality | — | |||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Open Source | Freemium |
| Free tier | Free: 20K credits a month (about 27 minutes of text-to-speech) plus $1 of prepaid agent usage | Free — 10,000 TTS characters and 5 EVI minutes a month | Free and open source — self-host at no cost | Free public web voice demo (Maya/Miles); open CSM-1B weights free to download under Apache 2.0. |
| Paid from | $5/month (Pro, 100K credits, commercial use licence) — Startup $49, Scale $299 | $3/month (Starter) | — | — |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | — | — | — | 1M+ early demo users |
| Founded | 2023 | 2021 | — | 2023 |
| Maker | — | Alan Cowen | — | Brendan Iribe, Ankit Kumar, Ryan Brown |
| Verdict | Cartesia's Sonic models are a leading choice for real-time text-to-speech, prized for very low latency and natural prosody, making them well-suited to voice agents and interactive applications. The API is developer-frien... |
Hume AI specialises in emotionally expressive voice, with its Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) and speech models that detect vocal emotion and respond with natural, prosody-rich speech. It is a genuine differentiator for v... |
Kyutai is the rare well-funded lab that actually ships open weights: Moshi, released in July 2024, was one of the first speech-native, full-duplex dialogue models, and Unmute lets you bolt real-time listening and speakin... |
What this is for: Natural, emotionally expressive conversational speech — trying voice presence in a live demo or building on the open CSM speech model. Who this is for: Consumers curious about lifelike voice AI, and de... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.