Cartesia vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) pricing
STT: Cartesia from $0.0065 vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) from $0.006; TTS: Cartesia from $37.38 vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) from $4.00.
Last updated · prices checked daily
Speech-to-text: Cartesia vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly)
Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) has the lower listed STT price: $0.006 per minute (Transcribe batch (us-east-1)) vs $0.0065 for Cartesia (Ink (Scale plan)), about 8% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Transcribe batch (us-east-1) Taken from AWS's own worked pricing example for US East (N. Virginia). | $0.006 |
| Cartesia Visit site ↗ | Ink (Scale plan) | $0.0065 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Transcribe streaming (us-east-1) Taken from AWS's own worked pricing example for US East (N. Virginia). | $0.01 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | Cartesia | Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $6.50 | $6.00 |
| 10,000 min | $65.00 | $60.00 |
| 100,000 min | $650.00 | $600.00 |
Text-to-speech: Cartesia vs Amazon (Transcribe / Polly)
Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) has the lower listed TTS price: $4.00 per 1M characters (Polly Standard) vs $37.38 for Cartesia (Sonic (Scale plan, $299 / 8M credits)), about 89% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/1M chars |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Polly Standard | $4.00 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Polly Neural | $16.00 |
| Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) Visit site ↗ | Polly Generative | $30.00 |
| Cartesia Visit site ↗ | Sonic (Scale plan, $299 / 8M credits) Derived: plan price / included credits; page states 1 credit = 1 character. | $37.38 |
| Cartesia Visit site ↗ | Sonic (Startup plan, $49 / 1.25M credits) Derived: plan price / included credits; page states 1 credit = 1 character. | $39.20 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Characters | Cartesia | Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) |
|---|---|---|
| 1M chars | $37.38 | $4.00 |
| 10M chars | $373.75 | $40.00 |
| 100M chars | $3,737.50 | $400.00 |
Cost-per-call calculator
Estimate what one call really costs. Prices come from today's table; LLM and telephony presets are per-minute rates published by Retell and Vapi. Everything is editable.
Cartesia's pricing page puts one minute of speech at 750–800 characters; Rime says about 1,000. The talk share is your own guess at how much of each call the agent is speaking.
FAQ
Is Cartesia or Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) cheaper for speech-to-text?
Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) has the lower listed STT price: $0.006 per minute (Transcribe batch (us-east-1)) vs $0.0065 for Cartesia (Ink (Scale plan)), about 8% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
Is Cartesia or Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) cheaper for text-to-speech?
Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) has the lower listed TTS price: $4.00 per 1M characters (Polly Standard) vs $37.38 for Cartesia (Sonic (Scale plan, $299 / 8M credits)), about 89% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
How often are these prices updated?
Every day. A script reads each vendor's public pricing page, extracts the listed rates and keeps a dated copy, so price changes show up in the history.
All Cartesia prices · All Amazon (Transcribe / Polly) prices