Hume AI Pricing 2026: The EVI-Minute Ceiling

TL;DR: Hume AI pricing starts free and climbs through Starter ($3), Creator ($14), Pro ($70), Scale ($200) and Business ($500). The catch: TTS characters (Octave) and voice minutes (EVI) are two separate meters. Your agent can have characters to spare and still hit the EVI-minute ceiling, and EVI minutes, at $0.04–$0.07 each, are what a talking agent really costs.

Last updated: August 2026 · By Sandeep Singh, DailyFix

Hume AI meters Octave TTS characters and EVI voice minutes on two separate balances.

Hume AI is one of the most distinctive voice platforms in 2026 because its EVI model, the Empathic Voice Interface, reads emotion in a speaker's voice and responds naturally, which makes it a favorite for warmer conversational agents. As of August 2026, its plans look almost too cheap at the low end, with Starter at $3. The nuance that decides your real bill is that Hume AI runs two meters, and the one that matters for agents is not the one on the headline.

What are the Hume AI pricing plans in 2026?

Hume AI has a free plan and six paid tiers: Starter ($3), Creator ($14), Pro ($70), Scale ($200), Business ($500) and custom Enterprise. According to Hume AI's pricing page (checked August 2026), each tier raises both the included Octave text-to-speech characters and the included EVI voice minutes, along with requests-per-minute and concurrent connections.

For a solo builder, Starter or Creator covers experimentation and light production, while Pro at $70 is the first tier with real EVI headroom at 1,200 minutes. The plans scale predictably, but pick your tier by the meter you will actually stress, which for a conversational agent is EVI minutes, not TTS characters.

What does the Hume AI free plan include?

The Hume AI free plan includes 10,000 Octave TTS characters, roughly 10 minutes of audio, and 5 EVI voice minutes per month, with unlimited voice cloning to create and use, one concurrent connection and 15 requests per minute. It is enough to hear the voices and test the API.

The limit that bites instantly is those 5 EVI minutes. If you are building an empathic voice agent, five minutes is a couple of test calls, so the free plan is for evaluation, not a live agent. The generous part is unlimited voice cloning even on free, which lets you prototype a branded voice before paying. Treat free as a demo bench and upgrade the moment an agent goes live.

What is the difference between Hume AI Octave characters and EVI minutes?

Hume AI meters two products separately: Octave is text-to-speech billed by characters, and EVI is speech-to-speech billed by minutes. They are independent balances, so a plan can have plenty of Octave characters left and still stop your voice agent when its EVI minutes are gone.

This is the EVI-minute ceiling in one sentence. Octave characters power narration and one-way audio; EVI minutes power live, back-and-forth conversation. A voice agent leans on EVI, so the character allowance is almost irrelevant to it. When you size a plan for an agent, look only at EVI minutes and the per-minute overage, and treat the character count as a separate budget for any narration work.

What do extra Hume AI EVI minutes cost?

Extra Hume AI EVI minutes are usage-based and cheaper on higher tiers: about $0.07 per minute on Starter and Creator, $0.06 on Pro, $0.05 on Scale and $0.04 on Business, per Hume AI's pricing page (checked August 2026). Included EVI minutes rise too, from 40 on Starter to 12,500 on Business.

Because EVI minutes are the conversational meter, this rate is the true cost of a talking agent, not the Octave character price. Do the math before quoting a client: a receptionist agent handling a few hundred minutes a month on Pro costs the plan fee plus $0.06 per minute over the included 1,200. If your volume is high, moving up a tier lowers the per-minute rate enough to pay for itself, so re-check the break-even as usage grows.

Hume AI vs ElevenLabs pricing: which is cheaper?

Hume AI's plans start cheaper, with Starter at $3, and Octave text-to-speech falls to $0.05 per 1,000 characters on Business, while ElevenLabs offers a larger voice library and strong cloning. Hume AI's real edge is emotionally expressive, empathic voice through EVI; ElevenLabs' edge is raw realism and breadth of voices.

The honest split: if your product benefits from a voice that senses and mirrors emotion, Hume AI's EVI is genuinely differentiated and its entry pricing is hard to beat. If you want the widest catalog of highly realistic voices for narration or dubbing, ElevenLabs is stronger. For a conversational agent, compare Hume AI's EVI minutes against ElevenLabs' agent pricing directly, since that meter, not TTS, decides the winner.

Hume AI plan comparison (2026)

Plan	Price	Octave chars	EVI minutes	EVI overage
Free	$0	10,000	5	—
Starter	$3/mo	30,000	40	$0.07/min
Creator	$14/mo	140,000	200	$0.07/min
Pro	$70/mo	1,000,000	1,200	$0.06/min
Scale	$200/mo	3,300,000	5,000	$0.05/min
Business	$500/mo	10,000,000	12,500	$0.04/min

Octave overage runs $0.15/1k characters (Creator) down to $0.05/1k (Business). Prices and limits change often — verify on the official pricing page before deciding.

Frequently asked questions

Is Hume AI free?
Yes. Hume AI has a free plan with 10,000 TTS characters, roughly 10 minutes of audio, and 5 EVI voice minutes per month, plus unlimited voice cloning to create and use. It caps you at one concurrent connection and 15 requests per minute. It is a real testing tier, but the 5 EVI minutes run out fast if you build a conversational agent.

How much does Hume AI cost per month?
Hume AI has six paid tiers as of August 2026: Starter $3, Creator $14, Pro $70, Scale $200, Business $500, and custom Enterprise. Each raises both your included TTS characters and your included EVI voice minutes, plus concurrency and request limits. Free voice cloning is included on every plan.

What is the difference between Octave characters and EVI minutes?
Hume AI meters two products separately. Octave is text-to-speech, billed by characters, and EVI is the Empathic Voice Interface, a speech-to-speech model billed by minutes. They are separate balances, so a plan can have plenty of TTS characters left but still stop your voice agent once its EVI minutes run out.

What do extra Hume AI EVI minutes cost?
Extra Hume AI EVI minutes are usage-based and get cheaper on higher tiers: about $0.07 per minute on Starter and Creator, $0.06 on Pro, $0.05 on Scale and $0.04 on Business, as of August 2026. Because EVI minutes are the conversational-agent meter, this per-minute rate, not the TTS character rate, drives the cost of a talking agent.

Is Hume AI cheaper than ElevenLabs?
Hume AI's plans start very cheap, with Starter at $3, and its Octave text-to-speech is competitively priced, dropping to $0.05 per 1,000 characters on Business. ElevenLabs has a larger voice library and strong cloning. Hume AI's edge is emotionally expressive, empathic voice via EVI; ElevenLabs' edge is raw realism and breadth. Compare both meters if you run agents.

What is EVI in Hume AI?
EVI, the Empathic Voice Interface, is Hume AI's real-time speech-to-speech model that detects emotional cues in a speaker's voice and responds naturally. It is the piece you build a conversational voice agent on, and it is metered in minutes separately from Octave text-to-speech. Octave 2 delivers audio in under 200 milliseconds, which keeps agent conversations responsive.

Who should not use Hume AI?
Skip Hume AI if you only need plain, high-volume text-to-speech and do not care about emotional expressiveness, since a pure TTS provider may be cheaper at scale. It is also more than you need if you never build conversational agents, because EVI, the empathic voice interface, is its main differentiator and you would be paying for a strength you do not use.

Bottom line

Hume AI is the standout choice when you want a voice agent that senses and responds to emotion, and its entry pricing, from a free plan to $3 Starter, makes it easy to start. Prototype on free, but size your real plan by EVI minutes, not TTS characters, because EVI is what a conversation burns. Pro at $70 is the first tier with serious agent headroom, and higher tiers cut the per-minute EVI rate. Just remember the two meters run independently: watch the EVI-minute ceiling, and Hume AI is a genuinely differentiated pick.

Sources

Hume AI official pricing page (checked August 2026)
AutoGPT — Hume AI pricing explained, 2026

About the author — Sandeep Singh. Sandeep builds and tests AI tools and automations daily, and runs DailyFix to show solopreneurs which ones actually save time.

Sandeep Singh Founder & Editor, DailyFix

Sandeep Singh is the founder and editor of DailyFix. He served in the Border Security Force for five years before moving into software, where he now builds and tests AI automations for solopreneurs and small teams — mostly in n8n, Make, and Zapier, plus voice agents on Vapi and Synthflow. He runs DailyFix on the same principle he uses in his own work: no tool goes into a post unless he'd actually put it into a client build. Every review, prompt and workflow on the site is tested end-to-end on real projects before it's written up. Alongside DailyFix, Sandeep ships SwiftSite Studio. Recent focus: AI receptionists for contractors, and turning ranking-audit output into repeatable, one-person publishing systems. Reach him on GitHub.

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