C 
Cartesia
Ultra-low-latency voice models built for real-time conversation.
NOT REALLY
why this verdict
Keep paying — OpenAI has not replaced it
OpenAI's version overlaps, but does not finish the voice & audio job, so this one still earns its $5/mo.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- ElevenLabs dominates the text-to-speech category. OpenAI, February 1, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 2 of 2 listed replacements have a usable free tier: ElevenLabs and Deepgram.
- What the call is worth $60/yr
- $5/mo at the entry paid tier — $60 a year per seat.
Reason composed from the fields above missing: announcement linked recorded: free replacement listed recorded: two or more escape hatches
- Threatened by
- OpenAI
- Since
- February 1, 2025
- List price
- $5/mo
- Per year
- $60
The backstory
Cartesia optimised for the one thing that breaks voice agents: the pause before the reply. Its Sonic models generate speech in tens of milliseconds, which is the difference between a phone agent that feels human and one people hang up on. ElevenLabs sounds superb but was built for narration first.
Escape hatches
E 
ElevenLabs Better quality for narration.
elevenlabs.io open_in_new D 
Deepgram Strong speech-to-text plus voice.
deepgram.com open_in_new2 of 2 replacements have a usable free tier.