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Cartesia Ink Review

Streaming STT for voice agents with native turn detection

Among the 43 speech-to-text tools we track, Cartesia Ink has the 12th-widest language coverage - a fit for multilingual and localization projects.

From $5/mo

Facts verified Jul 20, 2026Try Cartesia Ink

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What we know about Cartesia Ink

Cartesia Ink sits in the speech-to-text apis category, where it is streaming STT for voice agents with native turn detection. We keep this Cartesia Ink profile grounded in primary sources, each fact dated to when we last confirmed it.

On pricing, Cartesia Ink starts at $5 per month for its entry tier. That is the sticker rate: real production cost usually runs higher once you add a language model, a voice provider, and telephony minutes.

On capabilities, Cartesia Ink covers word-level timestamps, custom vocabulary / keyterm boosting, soc 2 type ii, self-host / on-prem option, and websocket streaming api, and does not offer entity detection, sentiment analysis, and summarization endpoint. Each of those is verified against Cartesia Ink's own docs or dashboard, not marketing copy.

For compliance, with Cartesia Ink: SOC 2 Type II is in place. If you are in a regulated space, confirm the current posture with Cartesia Ink before you commit, since these change plan by plan.

Cartesia Ink ranks the 12th-widest language coverage of the 43 speech-to-text tools we track, so where it lands for you depends on which of those matters more.

In total we track 21 verified facts for Cartesia Ink today, each linking the primary source it came from so you can check our work - and vendor claims we have not measured ourselves are labeled as such on the Cartesia Ink fact sheet below.

Reviewed by vsref Editorialfacts verified Jul 20, 2026Methodology →

Fact sheet

Pricing
Pricing facts
Pricing modelcreditsJul 20
Cheapest paid plan$5Jul 20
Free tier quota20K credits/mo (~1h 51m Ink-2 STT)Jul 20
Concurrency on base planFree: 8, Pro: 12 concurrent STT requestsJul 20
Capabilities
Capabilities facts
Streaming latency (vendor-claimed)~88 msJul 20
Languages supported99 languagesJul 20
Speaker diarization✗ Not availableJul 20
PII redaction✗ Not availableJul 20
Word-level timestamps✓ YesJul 20
Custom vocabulary / keyterm boosting✓ YesJul 20
Entity detection✗ NoJul 20
Sentiment analysis✗ NoJul 20
Summarization endpoint✗ NoJul 20
Speech translation✗ NoJul 20
Compliance & trust
Compliance & trust facts
HIPAA BAA available✓ YesJul 20
SOC 2 Type II✓ YesJul 20
Self-host / on-prem option✓ YesJul 20
Build experience
Build experience facts
Official SDKsPython, JS/TSJul 20
Max file size / durationBatch: any length (server chunks long files)Jul 20
Supported audio formatsBatch: flac,m4a,mp3,mp4,ogg,wav,webm; stream: raw PCMJul 20
Websocket streaming API✓ YesJul 20

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Cartesia Ink head-to-head

Cartesia Ink vs Deepgramwon 1 · lost 4 · tied 2
Call CenterslostDeveloperslostDictationtieMedicallostMeetingslostSelf-HostedtieVoice Agentswon