Best ElevenLabs Alternatives for Voice Agent TTS (2026)
ElevenLabs' API lists $0.04 per 1K characters for its low-latency Flash / Turbo and v4 Turbo models, and $0.08 per 1K for v4, v3 and v2 Multilingual. The alternatives below publish different rates: Rime Mist v3 at $0.03 per 1K characters with about 800 free minutes, Deepgram Aura-2 at $0.030 per 1K, Speechmatics at $0.011 per 1K with the first 1M characters free, Soniox at about $0.70 per hour of generated speech, and Cartesia Sonic 3.6 on monthly credits from a free 20K-credit plan or $5/mo Pro. Prices are from each vendor's own pricing page.
Cartesia, Rime, Deepgram, Speechmatics and Soniox compared with ElevenLabs on published text-to-speech pricing.
| Tool | Starting price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free; paid from $5/mo | Fast, low-latency text-to-speech | |
| From $0.03 per 1K characters (~$0.03/min) | Natural-sounding TTS for phone agents | |
| Nova-3 streaming $0.0048/min ($0.29/hr); $200 free credit | Low-latency speech-to-text for voice agents | |
| From $0.24/hr pay as you go (as low as ~$0.12/hr with discounts) | Multilingual transcription with language switching | |
| ~$0.10/hr async; ~$0.12/hr real-time | Very low-cost speech-to-text |
TTS models compared
| Model | Price | Latency | Languages | Cloning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs Flash v2.5 | $0.04 / 1K chars | ~75 ms (model inference) | 32 | Yes | Source |
| ElevenLabs v4 Turbo | $0.04 / 1K chars | ~100 ms median (model inference) | 90+ | Yes | Source |
| Cartesia Sonic 3.6 | Free tier; from $5/mo (100K credits) | — | 44 | Yes (instant, paid plans) | Source |
| Rime Mist v3 | $0.03 / 1K chars (~$0.03/min) | 37 ms P50 time-to-first-audio | 4 (en, fr, de, es) | Enterprise | Source |
| Rime Coda | $0.05 / 1K chars (~$0.05/min) | 96 ms P50 time-to-first-audio | 8 | Enterprise | Source |
| Deepgram Aura-2 | $0.030 / 1K chars | — | 7 (en, es, de, fr, nl, it, ja) | — | Source |
| Deepgram Flux TTS | $0.045 / 1K chars | — | — | — | Source |
| Speechmatics TTS | $0.011 / 1K chars; first 1M chars free | — | — | — | Source |
| Soniox TTS | ~$0.70 / hr of speech | Real-time streaming | — | — | Source |
See all voice models · Latency and prices as each vendor publishes them.
Prices from vendors' official pricing pages, checked October 14, 2026. Not sponsored; order isn't a ranking.