Cartesia alternative

Get Indian voices with no plan to pick.

Voices for Indian calls that slip into English, paid per character from a rupee wallet.

Cartesia’s numbers checked 17 October 2026.

Compare
The Frequency console: Agent Studio with four agents in Hinglish, Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati, and a test call in the browser.

Why switch

Why people switch to Frequency.

Everything a phone call in India needs, from one team, priced in rupees.

Fourier TTS

₹1.80 per 1,000 characters.²

On pay as you go and on Business, paid from one rupee wallet. No plan to pick first.

Five languages, live.

Hindi, English, Gujarati, Tamil and Telugu. And the Hinglish in between, mid-sentence.

Every call runs on our own GPUs in India.

The listening, the thinking and the voice are ours: Fourier STT, Gemma 4 26B and Fourier TTS.

Ready for the phone line.

Ask for 8 kHz μ-law or A-law and send it straight down the line. Or take 48 kHz PCM for everything else.

Phone agents, on the same key.

When you want the whole call, the same key and wallet run our voice agents.

AI agents from ₹1 a minute.¹

Hear it before you decide.

Real lines from Fourier TTS, one request each, unedited. Pick a language and press play.

Hear it

Hindi, two ways

Here is how Cartesia and Frequency differ.

Cartesia's Sonic speaks 44 languages, clones voices and streams a line as your model writes it. It's sold on monthly credit plans, in dollars. Fourier TTS is simpler: voices for Indian calls that slip into English, ₹1.80 per 1,000 characters from a rupee wallet, and no plan to pick. Even pay as you go lets five requests run at once.

Sonic 3.6 lists 44 languages, Hindi among them. Cartesia says it now reads Hindi typed in Latin script better, and its docs say Sonic can switch between Hindi and English in one generation.

We cover less ground, on purpose. Our four voices were built for calls in India, where English words land in the middle of a sentence all the time, in Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil or Telugu. The audio is made on our own GPUs in India.

Hear it.

Real lines from Fourier TTS. Pick one, press play.

Text149 characters

Hi, मैं नेहा बोल रही हूँ Acme Store से। आपका order dispatch हो गया है और Friday तक deliver हो जाएगा। Address में कोई change करना हो तो अभी बता दीजिए।

48 kHz · MonoReady when you are

0:00 / 0:09

voice
Neha
language
Hinglish
speech
0:09
characters
149

Fourier TTS, voice neha, rendered 16 Oct 2026. One request, not edited.

Text119 characters

नमस्ते, मैं श्रुति बोल रही हूँ, दाँतों के क्लिनिक से। कल सुबह डॉक्टर साहब से आपका मिलना तय है। क्या आप समय पर आ पाएँगे?

48 kHz · MonoReady when you are

0:00 / 0:08

voice
Shruti
language
Hindi
speech
0:08
characters
119

Fourier TTS, voice shruti, rendered 16 Oct 2026. One request, not edited.

Text117 characters

નમસ્તે, હું આશુ બોલું છું. તમારી લોનનો હપ્તો આવતા અઠવાડિયે ભરવાનો છે. તમે કહો તો હું અત્યારે જ ભરવાની રીત સમજાવી દઉં.

48 kHz · MonoReady when you are

0:00 / 0:08

voice
Ashu
language
Gujarati
speech
0:08
characters
117

Fourier TTS, voice ashu, rendered 17 Oct 2026. One request, not edited.

Text167 characters

வணக்கம், நான் நேஹா பேசுகிறேன். உங்கள் பார்சல் நாளை மாலைக்குள் வந்து சேரும். அந்த நேரத்தில் நீங்கள் வீட்டில் இல்லையென்றால் சொல்லுங்கள், வேறு நாளுக்கு மாற்றி விடுகிறோம்.

48 kHz · MonoReady when you are

0:00 / 0:10

voice
Neha
language
Tamil
speech
0:10
characters
167

Fourier TTS, voice neha, rendered 17 Oct 2026. One request, not edited.

Text114 characters

నమస్కారం, నేను సమీర్ మాట్లాడుతున్నాను. నిన్న మీరు మా కొత్త ఇళ్ళ గురించి అడిగారు. ఇప్పుడు కొంచెం సేపు మాట్లాడవచ్చా?

48 kHz · MonoReady when you are

0:00 / 0:08

voice
Sameer
language
Telugu
speech
0:08
characters
114

Fourier TTS, voice sameer, rendered 17 Oct 2026. One request, not edited.

Side by side

Here is Cartesia beside Frequency.

Every price in rupees³, from their own pages and ours.⁴

Price

A plan, or a wallet

Cartesia sells Sonic on monthly credit plans, where one credit is one character. You get 20,000 free each month, 100,000 on Pro for $5, 1.25 million on Startup for $49, and 8 million on Scale for $299. Go past your credits and overage runs from ₹3,608 to ₹6,172 per million. The commercial licence starts on Pro.

On our pay-as-you-go plan there’s nothing to choose. You pay ₹1.80 per 1,000 characters from a prepaid rupee wallet, and the credit never expires. So 10 lakh characters cost ₹1,800. A request that fails costs nothing, and every response tells you what it cost.

Room to talk at once

This is where the entry plans differ most. Cartesia allows 2 requests at the same time on Free, 3 on Pro and 5 on Startup. Our pay-as-you-go plan allows 5, and Business allows 25. Once a few calls are speaking at the same moment, that can matter more than the price.

Text to speech, ₹ per 10 lakh characters
Text to speech, Cartesia and Frequency, in rupees per 10 lakh characters
OptionBar₹ per 10 lakh characters
Startup, credits used in full $49 a month for 1.25M ₹3,722$39.20
Scale, credits used in full $299 a month for 8M ₹3,549$37.38
Startup overage past the plan's credits ₹4,273$45
Pro overage past the plan's credits ₹6,172$65
Fourier TTS every plan, from the first character ₹1,800
How we read these numbers

Dollar prices converted at ₹94.96, the ECB reference rate on 16 October 2026. The rate.

  • Startup, credits used in full: “Startup $49: 1.25M”, cartesia.ai
  • Scale, credits used in full: “Scale $299: 8M”, cartesia.ai
  • Startup overage: “$45 (Startup)”, cartesia.ai
  • Pro overage: “$65 (Pro)”, cartesia.ai
  • Fourier TTS: 1.80 rupees per 1,000 characters, on every plan, from our price list.

One credit is one character for Sonic, and 10 lakh is 1 million. A plan used in full: $49 ÷ 1.25M = $39.20 per million on Startup, $299 ÷ 8M = $37.375 on Scale.

From cartesia.ai/pricing, checked . Ours from our price list.

What speech costs, Cartesia and Frequency, in their words
DetailCartesiaFrequency
Published price Free: 20K credits/month. Pro $5/month: 100K. Startup $49: 1.25M. Scale $299: 8M. One credit is one character for Sonic overage $65 (Pro), $45 (Startup) and $38 (Scale) per 1M credits cartesia.ai ₹1.80 per 1,000 characters, on pay as you go and on Business (₹50,000/month commitment), before GST

Hindi and Hinglish

Languages and voices, Cartesia and Frequency
DetailCartesiaFrequency
Hindi and Hinglish Sonic 3.6 lists Hindi among 44 languages, with "expanded support for Hindi transcripts written in Latin script" Cartesia documents Hindi–English code-switching in one generation docs.cartesia.ai Hindi, Gujarati, English, Tamil and Telugu, plus Hinglish Hindi in Devanagari with English words in Latin script

Where it runs

Where it runs, Cartesia and Frequency
DetailCartesiaFrequency
Where it runs The pricing page names no region Enterprise customers can get dedicated deployments in regions including India docs.cartesia.ai Every call and every request runs on our own GPUs in India

How to switch

Getting started, Cartesia and Frequency
DetailCartesiaFrequency
How to switch Cartesia's own API: POST /tts/bytes, POST /tts/sse and a TTS WebSocket docs.cartesia.ai OpenAI's POST /v1/audio/speech with model mira-tts, and a WebSocket for whole calls

For developers

For developers, Cartesia and Frequency
DetailCartesiaFrequency
Phone-line audio Raw pcm_mulaw or pcm_alaw at 8 kHz PCM up to 48 kHz; WAV and MP3 on the bytes endpoint only docs.cartesia.ai Raw 8 kHz μ-law or A-law PCM or WAV, 48 kHz by default
Concurrent requests 2 on Free, 3 on Pro, 5 on Startup, 15 on Scale custom on Enterprise cartesia.ai 5 on pay as you go, 25 on Business more on Enterprise

Spot something out of date? Tell us. Six platforms in one table: Voice AI platforms compared.

Which to pick

Which is right for you?

Sometimes it's them. We'll say so.

Choose Cartesia if…

  • You need many languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam.
  • You want to clone a voice. Instant cloning starts on the $5 Pro plan.
  • Your text is Hindi typed in Latin script, which Cartesia says Sonic 3.6 now handles better.
  • You want word or phoneme timestamps.

Choose Frequency if…

  • You'd rather pay per character, in rupees, than pick a monthly plan.
  • You need several requests at once on the entry plan. Ours allows 5.
  • Your code already calls OpenAI's speech API.
  • You want the speech made in India, with call transcripts on the same key.

Moving

Moving your code across is easy.

Your code stays. Three values change.

  1. Step 1

    Open the sandbox.

    Look around with no sign-up. When you are ready, create a key in Developers.

  2. Step 2

    Change three values.

    The base URL, the model and the voice. The rest of your OpenAI code stays as it is.

  3. Step 3

    Pick a voice.

    Four voices, each speaking Hindi, English, Gujarati, Tamil and Telugu.

Open the sandbox

Switching

The request looks a little different. Cartesia’s bytes endpoint takes a transcript, a voice ID and an output_format object. Ours is OpenAI’s speech API, with a model, a voice name and a response_format such as ulaw_8000 or pcm_16000. For live calls, our WebSocket endpoint works much like Cartesia’s. One socket per call takes text as it’s written and sends audio back a sentence at a time. A cancel message stops it when the caller cuts in.

Test what we both claim

We both say we handle Hindi with English mixed in, so test exactly that. Write lines with names, rupee amounts and English product words inside Hindi. If your text arrives in Latin script, add some of those too, since that’s where Cartesia says it has improved. Play them blind to people who speak Hindi every day, then once more over a phone line. The Hindi TTS comparison has the other Hindi voices and their prices.

If Sonic is the voice of your agent, you could also hand us the whole call. Our agents cost ₹1 a minute on the volume plan.

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["MIRA_API_KEY"],
    base_url="https://sandbox.voice.miraiminds.co/v1",  # 1. our URL
)

with client.audio.speech.with_streaming_response.create(
    model="mira-tts",       # 2. our model
    voice="ashu",           # 3. one of our voices
    response_format="pcm",  # always send it
    input="चलिए, आपका order कल deliver होगा।",
) as response:
    for chunk in response.iter_bytes():
        ...  # raw 16-bit mono PCM at 48 kHz, playable as it arrives

Questions

Here is what people ask before switching from Cartesia.

What do 10 lakh characters cost?

On Cartesia, a million characters is a million credits, which fits inside the $49 Startup plan's 1.25 million: about ₹3,722 a million if you use them all. Past a plan's credits, Startup charges ₹4,273 ($45) per million. On Fourier TTS it's ₹1,800, with no plan needed.

Can Fourier TTS clone my voice?

Custom voices are part of our Enterprise plans, so talk to us. If you need self-serve cloning today, Cartesia has it from the Pro plan.

Does Fourier TTS take text as my LLM streams it?

Yes, on the WebSocket. Send text as your model writes it, and audio comes back a sentence at a time. One message stops a reply when the caller interrupts.

Still deciding? Ask us.

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  1. AI agents from ₹1 a minute: on our volume plan, ₹1,00,000 a month. Pay as you go is ₹5 a minute. Prices exclude GST.

  2. Fourier TTS is ₹1.80 per 1,000 characters on pay as you go and on Business (₹50,000 a month). All prices exclude GST.

  3. Dollar prices converted at ₹94.96, the ECB reference rate on 16 October 2026. The rate.

  4. Cartesia’s figures are from its own pages, linked beside each one and listed under Sources, checked . Ours are from our price list and docs.