Real-Time Voice Agent Stacks Compared: Pricing, Plans and Platform Fit
Six speech platforms used to build real-time voice agents, compared on archive scores, five-dimension quality and published plan pricing. No latency numbers are claimed — the archives contain none.
PlayHT leads this field with 89.2/100 — +1.4 pts over ElevenLabs.
All figures below are derived from the AiRecMark deterministic five-dimension evaluation archives. Pricing quotes are taken verbatim from each vendor's published plans.
| Rank | Tool & Vendor | Quality / Perf / Usability | Score | Pricing | Best for | Spec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | PL PlayHTPlayHT Inc. |
91 89 87 |
89.2 | Free Starter (10,000 credits/mo) · Creator $9. | High-volume multilingual voiceover & dubbing | Inspect |
| #2 | EL ElevenLabsElevenLabs Inc. |
95 84 88 |
87.8 | Free $0 · Starter $6 / mo · character-based qu | Voice & Dubbing | Inspect |
| #3 | CA CartesiaCartesia |
88 90 84 |
85.8 | $5 / mo (Pro, 100k credits) · Free 20k | Developers building low-latency voice agents and real-time TTS products | Inspect |
| #4 | DE DeepgramDeepgram |
88 86 82 |
85.1 | PAYG STT from $0.0043/min · TTS from $0.015/1k | Voice-API Product Builders | Inspect |
| #5 | AS AssemblyAIAssemblyAI |
88 86 78 |
84.5 | Pay-as-you-go · Batch from $0.15-0.21/audio hr | Developers Building Voice Products | Inspect |
| #6 | HU Hume AIHume AI |
84 82 80 |
82.6 | Free 10K TTS chars + 5 EVI min/mo · Starter $3 | Voice-Agent Experience Designers | Inspect |
Five-Dimension Matrix
| Dimension | PlayHT | ElevenLabs | Cartesia | Deepgram | AssemblyAI | Hume AI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quality | 91 | 95 | 88 | 88 | 88 | 84 |
| Features | 89 | 90 | 80 | 86 | 86 | 82 |
| Usability | 87 | 88 | 84 | 82 | 78 | 80 |
| Performance | 89 | 84 | 90 | 86 | 86 | 82 |
| Value | 89 | 80 | 86 | 82 | 82 | 84 |
Choose By Fit
PlayHT
PlayHT Inc. · 89.2/100Choose PlayHT if you need high-volume multilingual voiceover & dubbing.
- 900+ voices across 142 languages with regional accent coverage
- Instant voice cloning from short samples (1–10 slots by tier)
ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs Inc. · 87.8/100Choose ElevenLabs if you need voice & dubbing.
- Industry-leading voice naturalness
- Full chain: voice cloning / dubbing / API
Cartesia
Cartesia · 85.8/100Choose Cartesia if you need developers building low-latency voice agents and real-time tts products.
- Aggressively low entry price ($5) with usable credits
- Latency-first engineering for real-time agents
Deepgram
Deepgram · 85.1/100Choose Deepgram if you need voice-api product builders.
- $200 free credit with no expiration
- Nova-3 STT across 45+ languages with diarization
AssemblyAI
AssemblyAI · 84.5/100Choose AssemblyAI if you need developers building voice products.
- Universal models with strong accuracy benchmarks
- Full speech-intelligence stack (diarization, PII, sentiment)
Hume AI
Hume AI · 82.6/100Choose Hume AI if you need voice-agent experience designers.
- EVI senses user emotion and adapts in real time
- Unlimited voice cloning on all plans
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