Cartesia vs Tavus
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Cartesia if you want low-latency voice ai models and a platform for real-time voice agents (Assistant, freemium); choose Tavus if you want api-first conversational video ai for real-time face-to-face agents (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Cartesia | Tavus | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Low-latency voice AI models and a platform for real-time voice agents | API-first conversational video AI for real-time face-to-face agents |
| Type | platform | platform |
| Autonomy | Assistant | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (20K credits/mo); Pro $5/mo | freemium · $59/mo (Starter) |
| Best for | developers, enterprise | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas, api, self-hosted, on-prem | saas, api |
| Modalities | text, voice, api, code | video, voice, text, api |
| Models | proprietary | proprietary, model-agnostic |
| Protocols | rest-api, function-calling | rest-api, function-calling |
| Integrations | LiveKit, Twilio, Pipecat, Vapi | OpenAI-compatible LLMs, @tavus/react-cvi (npm), REST API, Daily / WebRTC, custom infrastructure (Vercel, AWS) |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 6 documented |
Cartesia
- +Genuinely differentiated state-space-model tech with best-in-class latency and on-device efficiency
- +Full stack (TTS, STT, cloning, and the Line agent platform) plus deep ecosystem integrations and self-hosted/VPC options
- +Strong technical credibility and capital, including NVIDIA backing
- -Younger and less battle-tested than ElevenLabs and Deepgram; the Line agent platform is barely a year old
- -Closed, proprietary models (no open weights for production Sonic/Ink), creating lock-in
Tavus
- +API-first and bring-your-own-LLM, so the conversation logic and knowledge stay in your stack
- +Low-latency real-time video (reportedly ~600ms speech-to-video) with perception and turn-taking, not just lip-sync
- +Generous free tier and a clear usage-based ladder priced on conversational minutes
- -Minutes-based usage pricing can climb quickly for high-volume, always-on agents
- -It supplies the video front-end, not the agent's reasoning, so you still build and own the LLM and knowledge
Which should you choose?
Cartesia is low-latency voice ai models and a platform for real-time voice agents, best for developers, enterprise. Tavus is api-first conversational video ai for real-time face-to-face agents, best for developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.