ElevenLabs vs Rime
ElevenLabs vs Rime text-to-speech for voice agents: per-character vs per-minute pricing, low-latency models, languages, phone audio and self-hosting.
| ElevenLabs | Rime | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | High-quality text-to-speech and voice cloning used widely in voice agents. | Realtime TTS voices optimized for natural conversational agents. |
| Type | tts | tts |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Categories | Text-to-Speech | Text-to-Speech |
| Install | npm i elevenlabs | — |
| Website | elevenlabs.io | rime.ai |
Both are listed under Text-to-Speech, so they can substitute for each other. Run the same test script — a real phone call, interruptions, a tool call — through both before choosing. Vendor claims change; check pricing on their sites.
Key differences
Pricing units
The ElevenLabs API bills text-to-speech per character: $0.04 per 1,000 characters for Flash/Turbo and v4 Turbo, $0.08 for v4, v3 and Multilingual v2. Rime bills per minute on its Flex plan (Mist v3 $0.030/min, Coda v2 $0.050/min) and says a minute is about 1,000 characters, so the two units are roughly comparable. Rime's Scale plan ($100/month) takes 20% off its rates. Both have free tiers.
Latency (vendor-stated)
ElevenLabs lists about 75 ms for Flash and about 100 ms for v4 Turbo, which it positions as its model for real-time agents. Rime lists a P50 time-to-first-audio of 37 ms for Mist v3 and sub-100 ms for Coda v2. These are the vendors' own figures. Measure on your own calls, from your region, over a phone line.
Languages and voices
ElevenLabs lists 90+ languages for v4 and v4 Turbo and 32 for Flash, plus a large voice library and voice cloning. Rime lists Coda v2 in 10 languages (including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi) and Mist v3 in English, French, German and Spanish, with a curated voice roster; custom voice cloning is on its Enterprise plan.
Built for phone calls
Rime focuses on conversational and telephony use: it lists 8 kHz phone audio, spelling and pronunciation control for names, addresses and alphanumerics, and word-level timestamps (Coda v2) for interruption handling. ElevenLabs covers a broader range (narration, dubbing, music) alongside its agent-focused models and its own ElevenLabs Agents platform.
Deployment
Both offer streaming APIs. Rime offers self-hosting via Docker Compose or Kubernetes, VPC/on-prem on Enterprise, and lists LiveKit and Pipecat integrations. ElevenLabs is a hosted API with Enterprise terms such as SSO and BAAs for HIPAA customers.
Which to shortlist
Pick ElevenLabs when you need many languages, a large voice library or voice cloning across products. Shortlist Rime when the agent lives on the phone, you need tight control over how names and numbers are read, or you may need to self-host. Many voice agent platforms let you switch TTS per agent, so A/B both on real calls.