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The Humanness Index™
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The Humanness Index™

The open benchmark for how human voice AI sounds. Built and operated by Vapi.

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Code is Apache-2.0. Standings data is CC BY 4.0. Audio clips and source voices are licensed recordings, all rights reserved. Provider logomarks belong to their respective owners and are used nominatively. “The Humanness Index™” name and logo are Vapi trademarks; see TRADEMARKS.md.

  1. Humanness Index™
  2. Cartesia

Humanness Index™ · Provider

Cartesia

Cartesia

cartesia.ai

Cartesia was founded by the researchers who created state space models, the S4 and Mamba architectures from their academic work.

Best ranked model
#3 Sonic 3.5
Humanness
82

Standings as of Jun 13, 2026, 00:15 UTC

Cartesia
Models on the Index
4
Languages
42
Price / 1M chars
$50
Visit Cartesia

Cartesia models on the Humanness Index™

RankModelHumannessLatencyLanguagesPrice / 1M chars
#21Sonic0116 ms15$50
#18Sonic 244159 ms15$50
#20Sonic 323166 ms42$50
#3Sonic 3.582128 ms42$50

Compare against the full Humanness Index™ rankings

About Cartesia

Cartesia was founded by the researchers who created state space models, the S4 and Mamba architectures from their academic work. Every Sonic generation is a state space model rather than a Transformer, which is the architectural basis of the latency claims the family is known for.

Sources: cartesia.ai

Platform and compliance

Four Sonic generations sit on the Humanness Index™, from the May 2024 debut model to the current Sonic 3.5 flagship. Since Sonic 3 the platform has carried SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and PCI Level 1 compliance, aimed at regulated phone work.

Sources: docs.cartesia.ai

Cartesia stats

Languages
421
Price / 1M chars
$502
  1. docs.cartesia.ai (checked 2026-06-10) Sonic 3 and 3.5; earlier Sonic and Sonic 2 shipped 15, encoded per model.
  2. cartesia.ai/pricing (checked 2026-06-10) 1 credit per character (docs.cartesia.ai/pricing); entry self-serve Pro plan is $5/mo for 100K credits, a $50 per 1M effective rate; larger plans drop to $37-39 per 1M. Same credit rate for every Sonic.

Other providers on the Index

ElevenLabsElevenLabsBest ranked model #5 · Eleven v3xAIxAIBest ranked model #1 · Grok TTSMiniMaxMiniMaxBest ranked model #8 · Speech 2.5GradiumGradiumBest ranked model #19 · Gradium TTSCanopy LabsCanopy LabsBest ranked model #4 · OrpheusInworldInworldBest ranked model #9 · TTS-2Smallest.aiSmallest.aiBest ranked model #11 · Lightning v3.1NeuphonicNeuphonicBest ranked model #13 · neu_hq

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