Hume AI
Voice AI that understands and responds with real emotion
- Category
- Audio & Voice
- Pricing
- Free plan with 10k TTS characters and 5 EVI minutes/mo; paid plans from $3/mo (Starter) up to $500/mo (Business); usage-based per-character and per-minute overage; custom Enterprise pricing with SOC 2/HIPAA/GDPR.
- Best for
- Hume AI is best suited to developers and product teams building conversational voice agents where emotional nuance matters, such as customer support, coaching, interview prep, or companion apps, and who are comfortable working directly with a developer API.
- Official site
- www.hume.ai
- Last updated
- August 2026
Hume AI is a voice AI platform built around the idea that emotional intelligence, not just accuracy, is what makes voice interfaces feel natural. Its core product, the Empathic Voice Interface (EVI, now on version 3 with an EVI 4 mini option), is a real-time speech-to-speech model that listens to both what a user says and how they say it, then responds with a vocal tone that matches the emotional context of the conversation. Alongside EVI, Hume offers Octave, a text-to-speech engine built on LLM-level language understanding rather than manual emotion tags, so it can infer delivery style, character, and pacing directly from a script. Developers can plug in external language models like Claude, Gemini, or Kimi K2 to handle reasoning while Hume manages voice generation and emotional expression, and EVI supports function calling so an assistant can look up orders, check calendars, or query a database mid-conversation without breaking conversational flow.
Hume differentiates itself from generic TTS or voice-cloning vendors by grounding its product in published emotion-science research rather than treating emotion as a stylistic add-on. The company was founded by Alan Cowen, a computational psychologist known for his research on the dimensionality of human emotional expression, and the platform grew out of that research into a developer-facing API business. Hume also runs a separate Expression Measurement API for analyzing emotional signals in voice, face, and language, which is used in research, UX testing, and analytics contexts beyond conversational voice agents. The company has positioned EVI as a direct answer to advanced voice-mode products from larger AI labs, publishing head-to-head comparisons and leaderboards (like its Real World VoiceEQ Bench) to argue that empathic, emotionally aware responses produce measurably better user engagement than emotion-blind voice models.
Hume AI is best suited to developers and product teams building conversational voice agents where emotional nuance matters, such as customer support, coaching, interview prep, or companion apps, and who are comfortable working directly with a developer API. It is a weaker fit for non-technical users wanting a no-code voiceover tool, or teams needing large-scale, predictable flat-rate pricing rather than usage-based billing.
Key features
Empathic Voice Interface (EVI 3 / EVI 4 mini)
A real-time, speech-to-speech model that processes live audio for both content and emotional tone, then generates responses with matching vocal expression, precise turn-taking, and interruptibility.
Octave text-to-speech
An LLM-driven TTS engine that infers emotional delivery, character voice, and pacing directly from the input text rather than requiring manual SSML-style emotion tags.
Unlimited voice cloning
Every paid plan, including the $3/mo Starter tier, includes unlimited creation and use of cloned or fully designed synthetic voices.
External LLM integration
EVI can be paired with Claude 4, Gemini 2.5, Kimi K2, or other language models for reasoning, while Hume handles the voice and emotional layer of the conversation.
Function calling / tool use
EVI can invoke external tools during a live conversation, such as calendar booking, order lookup, or CRM queries, adjusting tone to match user urgency or frustration.
Expression Measurement API
A separate API for analyzing emotional expression across voice, face, and language, aimed at research, UX evaluation, and sentiment analytics use cases.
Adjustable voice modulation
Continuous-scale controls for pitch, nasality, gender, and other vocal qualities let developers fine-tune how an EVI persona sounds without retraining a model.
Enterprise compliance and team tools
Higher tiers add organization-level team seats, and Enterprise adds SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance with dedicated Slack support.
Pricing breakdown
Free
- 10,000 TTS characters/mo (~10 min)
- 5 EVI minutes/mo
- 15 requests per minute
- 1 concurrent connection
- Unlimited voice cloning
- Discord support
Starter
- 30,000 TTS characters/mo (~30 min)
- 40 EVI minutes/mo ($0.07/min after)
- 5 concurrent connections
- Unlimited voice cloning
- Discord support
Creator
- 140,000 TTS characters/mo (~140 min)
- 200 EVI minutes/mo ($0.07/min after)
- 75 requests per minute
- Additional characters at $0.15/1,000
Pro
- 1,000,000 TTS characters/mo
- 1,200 EVI minutes/mo ($0.06/min after)
- 10 concurrent connections
- Additional characters at $0.12/1,000
Scale
- 3,300,000 TTS characters/mo
- 5,000 EVI minutes/mo ($0.05/min after)
- 20 concurrent connections
- 3 team seats
Business
- 10,000,000 TTS characters/mo
- 12,500 EVI minutes/mo ($0.04/min after)
- 225 requests per minute
- 5 team seats
Enterprise
- Unlimited characters and EVI minutes
- Unlimited concurrent connections and team seats
- SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA compliance
- Dedicated Slack support
Pros and cons
Pros
- Emotion-aware responses set EVI apart from standard voice bots: it detects vocal cues like frustration or urgency and adjusts tone accordingly, a feature users highlight for customer-service and interview-prep use cases.
- Conversation flow feels natural thanks to precise turn-taking and interruptibility, avoiding the stilted call-and-response pattern common in older voice assistants.
- Unlimited voice cloning is included on every paid tier starting at $3/month, unusual compared to competitors that gate cloning behind premium plans.
- Developers can swap in Claude, Gemini, or Kimi K2 as the reasoning engine behind EVI rather than being locked into a single proprietary model.
- Pricing scales from a $3/month hobbyist tier up to enterprise-grade SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance, covering both indie developers and regulated industries.
- The platform is grounded in published emotion-science research from founder Alan Cowen's background, giving it a distinct research pedigree compared to typical TTS vendors.
Cons
- Integrating the API, particularly function calling and external LLM wiring, has a real learning curve according to user feedback.
- Usage-based pricing meters characters and EVI minutes separately, so costs can escalate quickly for high-volume applications.
- Support is limited to a community Discord server until the Enterprise tier, which may not suit teams that need SLA-backed support.
- The third-party integration ecosystem and community are smaller than more established voice platforms like ElevenLabs.
- Lower tiers cap concurrent connections at 1-5, which can constrain testing multi-user prototypes before upgrading.
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Compare →Frequently asked questions
What is Hume AI's EVI?
EVI (Empathic Voice Interface) is Hume's real-time speech-to-speech API that processes both spoken content and emotional tone, then generates vocally expressive responses with natural turn-taking.
Does Hume AI offer text-to-speech as well as speech-to-speech?
Yes. Octave is Hume's text-to-speech engine that infers emotional delivery and character directly from text, separate from the real-time EVI conversational API.
Is voice cloning included in Hume AI's pricing?
Yes, unlimited voice cloning is included on every paid plan starting at the $3/month Starter tier, and Enterprise adds API-level access to cloned voices.
Can I use my own language model with Hume AI?
Yes, EVI supports integration with external LLMs such as Claude 4, Gemini 2.5, and Kimi K2 for the reasoning layer while Hume handles voice and emotion.
What compliance certifications does Hume AI have?
SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance are available on the custom Enterprise plan; lower tiers do not include these certifications.
How is Hume AI priced?
Plans range from a free tier (10,000 TTS characters and 5 EVI minutes/month) up to $500/month Business plans, with usage-based overage charges per 1,000 characters and per EVI minute, plus custom Enterprise pricing.
Ready to try Hume AI?
Head to the official site to explore pricing and start a free trial where available.
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