Cartesia vs OpenAI pricing
Voice agents: Cartesia from $0.06 vs OpenAI from $0.05; STT: Cartesia from $0.0065 vs OpenAI from $0.003.
Last updated · prices checked daily
Voice agent platforms: Cartesia vs OpenAI
OpenAI has the lower listed Voice agents price: $0.05 per minute (gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech)) vs $0.06 for Cartesia (Managed voice agents (call duration)), about 17% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech) Bundled models Per-minute session price; backend model and tool usage are charged separately. | $0.05 |
| Cartesia Visit site ↗ | Managed voice agents (call duration) Bundled models Telephony extra ($0.014/min on Cartesia numbers per page); LLM free for UI agents for a limited time. | $0.06 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | Cartesia | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $60.00 | $50.00 |
| 10,000 min | $600.00 | $500.00 |
| 100,000 min | $6,000.00 | $5,000.00 |
Speech-to-text: Cartesia vs OpenAI
OpenAI has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated)) vs $0.0065 for Cartesia (Ink (Scale plan)), about 54% less.
| Vendor | Product / tier | $/min |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated) Token-billed; OpenAI's own per-minute estimate. | $0.003 |
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-transcribe (batch) | $0.0045 |
| Cartesia Visit site ↗ | Ink (Scale plan) | $0.0065 |
| OpenAI Visit site ↗ | gpt-live-transcribe (streaming) | $0.017 |
What it costs at volume (lowest listed rate)
| Minutes | Cartesia | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 min | $6.50 | $3.00 |
| 10,000 min | $65.00 | $30.00 |
| 100,000 min | $650.00 | $300.00 |
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 OpenAI cheaper for voice agent platforms?
OpenAI has the lower listed Voice agents price: $0.05 per minute (gpt-live-1 (speech-to-speech)) vs $0.06 for Cartesia (Managed voice agents (call duration)), about 17% less. Prices checked Oct 28, 2026.
Is Cartesia or OpenAI cheaper for speech-to-text?
OpenAI has the lower listed STT price: $0.003 per minute (gpt-4o-mini-transcribe (estimated)) vs $0.0065 for Cartesia (Ink (Scale plan)), about 54% 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.