Gradium vs Rime (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Gradium grades higher than Rime: 2.4 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Gradium grades higher on features and ease of use. Rime grades higher on the free plan. They get the same grade on value for money and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Gradium
Real-time voice AI API for speech, transcription and voice cloning
Rime
Voice models for phone agents: text to speech and speech to speech
Which one is for you
Pick Gradium if
- Fits if you are a developer adding voice to an app through an API
- Makes sense if you need cloned or designed voices and care about data controls
Look elsewhere if
- Tight if you stay free: about an hour of speech a month and no commercial use
- Pricey if you need pro voice clones, which start on the $312 a month M plan
- Watch out: plan credits don't roll over, only pay-as-you-go credits do
- Watch out: overage costs 5% to 20% above your plan's own rate if you turn it on, and live translation burns 30 credits a second
Pick Rime if
- Fits if you build phone or call-center voice agents
- Makes sense if you want per-minute pricing with no monthly fee
Look elsewhere if
- Not for you if you want a text box for voiceovers, because this is built for agents
- Pricey if you want a plan, since Scale starts at $100 a month
- Watch out: custom voices, a HIPAA BAA and the SOC 2 report are Enterprise only
- Watch out: speech to text is listed as free only until Nov 19
How we grade them
| 2.4GPAGradiumFair | 2.2GPARimeFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CPaid plans start at $12 a month billed yearly ($13 monthly), about the middle of what voice tools charge. M is $312 and L $1,480 a month for the larger volumes. | CFlex has no monthly fee: Mist v3 at $0.030 a minute, Coda v2 $0.050, Prism $0.080. Scale is $100 a month with rates 20% lower. The one paid plan is far above the category's middle. |
| Free plan and trial | CFree plan of 45,000 credits a month, about 1 hour of speech, with up to 5 custom voices and no commercial use. You'll reach that in a week or two of real work. | B$50 of usage every month on all models, no card. For testing an agent that is a lot of minutes. |
| Features | BSpeech both ways, translation, 10-second clones, designed voices and data controls on paid plans. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the job, though pro clones start on the $312 plan. | CSpeech, speech to speech and speech to text, with cloud, VPC and on-prem options on Enterprise. Custom voices and compliance reports sit there too. |
| Ease of use | CNo store rating on record. It is an API first, so there is code to write, with a web studio for trying voices. | DNo store rating on record. It is an API for developers building agents. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb studio and an API, deployable via Baseten and SageMaker. No desktop or phone app is listed. | BWeb and an API, with LiveKit, Pipecat and Twilio listed. |
| Best for | voice AI through an API, from developers | voice models for phone agents |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Gradium and Rime. How we grade
Price against what you get
Gradium starts at $12 a month and scores 2.7 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Rime starts at $100 a month and scores 2.0.
Gradium scores higher and starts $88 a month lower. Of the other AI voice generators on the chart, 4 score higher than Gradium for less, and 38 score higher than Rime for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Rime also covers AI agents.
At a glance
| Gradium | Rime | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | $12 per month, billed yearly ($13 billed monthly) | $100 per month, with $100 of usage credit |
| Free plan | 45k credits a month with text-to-speech, speech-to-text and voice design, which is about 1 hour of speech. | $50 of usage every month, renewing monthly, across Prism, Mist v3, Coda v2 and Rime speech to text. No card required. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Gradium | Rime Labs |
| Price read from | gradium.ai | rime.ai |
| Checked | Nov 13, 2026 | Nov 12, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Gradium
- Free-plan credits cover about an hour of speech a month, and commercial use needs XS or above.
- Plan credits do not roll over; only pay-as-you-go credits carry into the next month.
- Beyond a plan's credits, overage is billed at 5% to 20% above the plan's own rate if turned on in settings.
- Extra credits cost $7 per 100k on XS, falling to $3.80 on L.
Rime
- Flex has no monthly fee and bills usage by the minute: Mist v3 text to speech at $0.030, Coda v2 at $0.050 and Prism speech to speech at $0.080 a minute.
- Scale rates are 20% lower than Flex: $0.024 a minute for Mist v3, $0.040 for Coda v2 and $0.064 for Prism.
- Custom voices, a HIPAA BAA and the SOC 2 Type II report are limited to Enterprise.
- Rime's speech-to-text model is listed as free until Nov 19.
Key features
Gradium
- Text-to-speech
- Costs 1 credit per character; the pricing page says about 45,000 characters is roughly an hour of audio.
- Speech-to-text
- Transcription is billed at 3 credits per second of audio, or 4 credits per second with translation.
- Live voice translation
- Speech-to-speech translation costs 30 credits per second, the most credit-hungry feature on the page.
- Voice cloning and design
- A standard clone needs a 10-second sample. Pro voice clones use 30 minutes to a few hours of audio and start on the M plan. Voices can also be designed from a text description.
- Data controls
- Paid plans add data controls such as zero data retention and a choice of EU or US data residency; the vendor lists SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001.
- Phonon on-device model
- Gradium describes Phonon as its first open, on-device text-to-speech model.
Rime
- Mist v3 text to speech
- Positioned as the lowest-latency model, with 78 voices in English, French, German and Spanish and a listed 37 ms median time to first audio.
- Coda v2 text to speech
- Positioned as the most natural model, with 313 voices across 10 languages including Japanese, Arabic and Hindi, and custom pronunciation lexicons.
- Prism speech to speech
- A model that hears the call, reasons over it and speaks; text is generated before audio so guardrails can check it, and it supports tool calls mid-call.
- Real-time streaming and telephony
- WebSocket streaming and 8 kHz phone audio are on every plan, with LiveKit, Pipecat and other agent-platform integrations.
- Custom voices and self-hosting
- Custom voice cloning and fine-tuning on your own calls are Enterprise features. The text-to-speech models can be self-hosted with Docker Compose or Kubernetes.
Plans
Gradium
Free$0
45k credits a month, about 1 hour of text-to-speech, with up to 5 custom voices. Commercial use is not included.
XS$12
per month for 225k credits, billed yearly ($13 billed monthly)
About 5 hours of text-to-speech a month, adds commercial use, up to 1,000 voices and data controls.
S$39
per month for 900k credits, billed yearly ($43 billed monthly)
About 20 hours of text-to-speech a month, with cheaper top-ups and lower overage than XS.
M$312
per month for 9M credits, billed yearly ($340 billed monthly)
About 200 hours of text-to-speech a month, adds pro voice cloning (5 pro clones) and higher concurrency.
L$1,480
per month for 45M credits, billed yearly ($1,615 billed monthly)
About 1,000 hours of text-to-speech a month, with 20 pro voice clones and the cheapest top-ups.
EnterpriseCustom
Unlimited credits and custom concurrency, with dedicated inference or on-premises deployment available.
Rime
Free$0
$50 of usage each month on all models, no card required; email support and community docs.
Scale$100
per month, billed monthly to your card
$100 of credit a month that rolls over up to $200, with every rate 20% lower than Flex. Usage past the credit is billed at the same rates.
EnterpriseCustom
Volume rates billed annually, cloud, VPC or on-prem deployment, SLAs, custom voices, a HIPAA BAA and a SOC 2 Type II report. Sold through sales.
Ways to pay less
Gradium
- Annual discount
One month free on yearly billing
The pricing page says one month is free when billed yearly: for example XS is $12 a month yearly against $13 monthly.
- Startups
Gradium for startups
Founders can apply for $2,000 or more in credits through the startup program.
Rime
No public discounts listed.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Gradium or Rime?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Gradium is cheaper to start with: $12 a month, against $100 a month for Rime. Gradium starts at $12 per month, billed yearly ($13 billed monthly), and Rime starts at $100 per month, with $100 of usage credit.
Which has a free plan, Gradium or Rime?
As of Nov 13, 2026, both Gradium and Rime have a free plan.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.